Happy new year 2011

First of all, let me wish all of you a very happy year ahead!

I am back to Bangalore after an eventful week in Mumbai. Back to office, back to work. Quite some things changed in my life in the past week: some for the worse, some for the better. I hope in the long term I will be happy for the past 10 days.

I must admit that the year didn't start of well, the shocker of a XAT being the first of several lows. Comments of the paper ranged from a simple 'It was the toughest paper ever..' to creative ones like 'XATack!', 'XATom Bomb!' and 'Even Rajnikanth would have struggled :O'. Really, with the extremely high level of paper that was set (with differential marking and an ambiguous marking scheme), and the resulting luck factor that inevitably creeps in, one tends to question the rationale behind such a paper. I respected the XAT for their impeccable papers and flawless conduction of the exam till now, but this year was a disappointment to say the least.

The CAT on the other hand was literally out of the bag this year. What seems to have happened was for some time on 2nd Jan and 3rd Jan, the CAT 2010 results could be accessed by providing the year 2010 credentials on the google cached page of the CAT 2009 result page. Apparently the results were being uploaded, and some innovative students found out a way to access the same. The data (photo, address, date of test) etc is accurate, the percentiles and scores are consistent, mostly being as expected by the candidates. So it does seem the the CAT authorities goofed up. Meanwhile the CAT convener has done a Kalmadi and outright denied any leak, stating categorically that since the results were not uploaded at all, the students could not have possibly accessed them. I have a feeling the esteemed professor is a little behind the times when it comes to understanding how the technology, the web and databases work. But come on, at least accept that it was a mistake: perhaps the data is wrong, but how can the photos and address be wrong? 

And they teach business ethics!