The Common Admission Test (CAT) in its new 20-day computer-based avatar has been coinciding with the Hindu festive season of Diwali in both 2010 and 2011. However, that does not seem to deter candidates competing for coveted seats at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and other top CAT-affiliated b-schools to successfully distract themselves from the festivities and appear for the test immediately after the Diwali holidays.
The daily registration data shared by Prometric for the CAT in both 2010 and 2011 shows that per-day registrations for CAT slots were on an upswing during the Diwali weeks. On October 25, 2011, a day before Diwali, 6,743 candidates took the CAT 2011. After the Diwali breaks of 2011 ended, the registrations shot up to 7,271 and 9,311 on October 28 and 29 respectively, to reach a high of 11,509 on Sunday, October 30. There was a similar pattern in CAT 2010, with registrations being on the upswing during the November 5, 2010 Diwali week to reach a high on the immediately following Sunday.
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Download the Excel sheet on which the chart is based.
Registrations, however have tended to drop consistently on Mondays, reflecting the impact working candidates have on the registration patterns. Throughout CAT 2010 and CAT 2011 (less erratically in 2011), the general pattern has been that of registrations starting from a Monday low and rising steadily towards a Sunday high.
Sunday, November 6 — Day 11 — was the day when the highest number of test takers of CAT 2011 appeared on a single day — 12,759. That was also the day when the test crossed the halfway mark of 102,673 in terms of test-takers appearing. Once it reached that high, it stayed consistently chin-up except for Mondays when it saw a drop. Contrary to expectations that the trailing days of the CAT garner the maximum number of test takers, the day with the largest potential turnout happened on Day 11, right in the middle of the test window. The second highest number was slated to take the test on the second-last day, November 17 when 12,727 candidates had registered to sit for the test.
The last day of CAT 2011, November 18, was in fact the day with the lowest registrations. This was partly driven by the fact that Prometric itself had not been running both the slots at all test centers. Still, what made people register for a day that the least people preferred? This story provides a few reasons.
The registration data however does show that people like to wait and observe the first few reactions from early test takers before sitting for the CAT. However once they get a hang of what the test is going to be like, they prefer to take it as early as possible after the middle date in the testing window. This gradual rise in registrations is better visible in CAT 2011 than in CAT 2010.
The variation between the day of the highest turnout and the lowest turnout has been as much as 2.73 times. The lows, especially those on the first and last day of the CAT are artificial, because Prometric itself does not run all the slots on that day. On October 22, the first day of the CAT, Prometric ran only the morning test slot. This is perhaps a learning it gathered after its embarrassing CAT 2009 experience, when on November 28, 2009 computers at test centers across the country failed in the morning slot and were followed up by more glitches in the afternoon slot, spiralling the public and the media into a frenzy that is now commonly referred to as the ‘CAT 2009 glitches’.
Smarter now, Prometric has in 2010 an 2011 run only the morning slot on the first day of the CAT, which has allowed it to limit the number of test takers it must handle on Day 1 in case something terribly goes wrong and also iron out any problems observed in that slot for the sake of better-run future slots. People closely related to the CAT also admit that a dominant cause for ‘limiting the damage’ on Day 1 is the knowledge that if the media sees the first day of the CAT pass peacefully, their scrutiny of the test in the later days is likely to reduce. The proof of it is that all major newspapers and television channels of the country turned their heads away from the CAT in 2010 and 2011 after Prometric sent out the press release announcing a successful first day.