Many Aspirants Get Over 99.7 Percentile

Hyderabad: City students have scored well in the Common Admission Test (CAT-2009), the results of which were declared on Sunday, with many of them getting over 99.7 percentile thereby ensuring a seat in most of the top B-schools in the country. Like in the previous years, a majority of the CAT toppers from the city were software professionals with Bschool aspirations.
Experts from the city said that candidates from the city did better than in the previous years with many more qualifying the exam this time around.
One of the top percentilers from the city, a software professional working in an IT firm, said that the test results came as a surprise since CAT-2009 was full of glitches.
The candidate, who got 99.82 percentile, said that he was shortlisted for both IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Shillong.
According to CAT experts, students who scored 99.7 to 99.9 percentile would figure in the top 400 CAT takers’ list and are likely to get calls from almost all IIMs.
While many students were happy with their CAT scores, there were others who claimed that the technical glitches which marred the first online CAT affected their scores. According to them, those who took tests in the first phase of CAT 2009 got lower percentiles than those who attempted the test in the second phase.
According to some experts too, most of the toppers were those who attended the test in the second phase which had less number of technical errors.
CAT-takers said that the difference came about as the testtakers in the second phase became more familiar with the pattern of the online method.
According to CAT experts, students who appeared in the first phase were able to get percentiles which were close to 99 and 99.1 while there were many who scored higher than 99.6 in the second phase.
Meanwhile, technical snags in CAT-2009 continued even during the announcement of results due to the crash of the official website www.catiim.in.
While the results were put up around 12 noon on Sunday, candidates were not able access the results till 6.30 pm. The server strength kept fluctuating throughout the evening, making it almost impossible to access the results.

The Times Of India , Hyderabad Edition , March 1 2010