CAT 2013 score discrepancy: Convenor says, “We are collating complaint mails and sending it to Prometric”

In an exclusive interview to Shiksha.com, CAT 2013 Convenor Rohit Kapoor has confirmed that complainants’ mails are being collated and send to Prometric for validation. “As soon as Prometric replies, complainants will receive individual replies,” said Professor Kapoor.
Eye balls were raised when some glaring discrepancies in CAT 2013 score cards were found. Candidates claimed discrepancies between actual and normalised scores apart from getting very low percentiles in Verbal section.

Students are now in talks with various lawyers and planning to take legal action. Some of them have also filed RTIs. “Our future is at stake. Some of us took a break of one year. If the results of other exams were bad, we wouldn’t have worried that much. But CAT is the Mecca of MBA examination. It affects us,” says one such RTI petitioner Shashank Saurabh.
Professor Kapoor’s confirmation about contacting Prometric for results shows a positive sign. However, we are yet to witness some action.
Read this entire interview of Professor Kapoor, explaining the scoring process and pacifying all CAT aspirants.

There are a lot of confusions going around with the CAT scores. What do you have to say about it?

I understand that people have lot of expectations. We have followed a process and I can vouch for it. All the scores are relative scores. For example, I get minus 10 (-10) and another person who has not attempted any question will get zero (0). Now, if I put the minimum marks received to zero level, the scaled score of the person with zero marks will become plus ten (+10). These scaled scores are not absolute scores. These are relative distances from the minimum scorers of that section.
So for people who are claiming that I have not attempted any question but got a score –these are not scores, but relative distances from the minimum scorer. Moreover, remember, the relative scoring is between 1.73 lakh students. This is logical and there should be no confusion.

Doesn’t it sound wrong on some level that a person scoring zero is getting a higher percentile?

Percentiles are ranked. This is not percentage. Percentiles are relative ranking with other person.

Maybe any other process can be adopted, where a person who has zero score and hasn’t attempted any question could be on a different level. Maybe we should look at a different possible way to examine.

But then how will we compare people getting negative marks? It won’t be a full-proof process.

Students claiming discrepancy wanted to pass on this message to you - ‘We don’t have any personal grudge against the CAT convenor. We feel something is wrong and therefore raising our voices.’

I fully respect my students and will always love them. As a teacher, it is my dharma to stand for them. But I, too, am a part of the process, and everything has to be followed through a process. If you think calmly, logic itself will tell you that this is a possibility (zero marks but 55 percentile). I believe they have worked very hard, spending sleepless nights. But my request is, don’t get too worked up about it. Whatever mails students have sent to us, we will respond to each and every one of them individually. My intention is not to miss a single mail, but it will take some time to reply.
My job is to put the results safely and securely across the students in a way that no leakage or tampering happens. Therefore, I involved only National Informatics Centre and no third party vendors. We also introduced online vouchers to make it easy for students.
But we will respond to each and candidate. I request them to write to CAT2013 in case of any discrepancy. Right now we are collating all these mails and are sending it to Prometric. Whatever response we get from them, we will individually respond to them. I am for the students and will stand for them.