The IIMs deserve both–bouquets and brickbats.

Bouquets, for a what they have done with their placement process. In the past three years, placements have never been so organized (Ok, agreed there are salary figures floating around but by the own admission of the IIMs, they are speculative).

Before the placements began, a communication from IIM-A and IIM-C read somewhat like this: “Media will not be entertained on campus over the entire span of the placement process. We request you to kindly cooperate with us on this. The placement committee will not be dealing with the media directly over these days. They will pass all their statements through the external relations secretaries.”

Wish they could come up with a similar formal communication regarding CAT scores.

While MBA aspirants have been vocal about the right to information (RTI) applications they have filed (they are fully aware that by the time they receive responses to their applications, the admissions at IIMs would be over), IIMs still remain in-communicado.

An IIM-C professor tells me that the IIMs were always unified in their decision over making CAT a computer-based exam. But IIM-C is said to have warned the other IIMs of getting into the computer-based format, too soon. 

While an IIM director says that there could have been some errors in the scores, he says that could be stray cases. You might want to agree with him. But if you go by the statement of test-preparing institutes, whose faculty members took the test and attempted only one section (still ending up with a score as high as 90 per centile), the IIM director’s argument does not hold much water.

While the blame game continues, what remains to be seen is if the students manage to get some details from the IIMs on the RTI applications filed. Vice Chairman of a test-preparing institute tells me that he has been filing RTIs to the IIMs since 2003 and has not yet received a proper reply to any of them.

Prometric, the agency which conducted the test has owned owned responsibility for the lapses and delays and says it has learnt its lessons. Let’s see what the IIMs will say. Or will they go mum, as usual, over the whole issue.