The truth about NITAT

NIIT conducted a nationwide IT Aptitude test today (18.1.09) to test the industry readiness of the various graduating students in IT sector. It was a widely advertised event with many IT companies as its partners. The paper was a multiple choice questions having three categories- Mental Ability, Mathematics and Decision Making. The application cost was 100 INR.

I appeared for the test. The test was of 100 minutes. The test began on 1:10 PM instead of its scheduled 1:00 PM after much confusion. The test was surprisingly not an OCR evaluated test, and we had to write the option number by hand. The supervisors changed every 15 minutes or so, and we were invigilated by 4-5 different teachers. The initial invigilator gave all the wrong instructions regarding the test code, paper code etc, later corrected by other member. During the test, the teachers started talking amongst themselves which seemed like bitching to me. The last faculty to supervise us had some calculation problems and announced the finish time at 1:40 PM against the correct 1:50 PM. Few minutes of persuasion and mistake realisation took her to correct her mistake.

Upon finishing the test I found myself to be a guinea pig giving the test and falling to clever marketing strategy. The answer sheets were evaluated in the test center itself and of course the high probability of incorrect evaluation loomed large. This is the reason they left out negative marking so that papers can be easily and quickly evaluated, the reason that the results will be declared so soon (By Jan 24). The more serious problem however, is that answer sheets can easily be manipulated and even the question papers can be leaked easily.

Hence, the examination was a mere eyewash. The more important strategy behind this is more clear than ever, marketing NIIT's name. They managed to get industry partners like Microsoft, Sun etc. to make it feel genuine. Partners in crime I guess, and why not its a wonderful time to get group publicity. Test takers are being given free MSDN and SDN subscription.

Hence, the conclusion is that it was an unethical timepass, to take the test. Rather I would prefer blogging away.

Mental Harassment for NIIT on web. (not related)
http://www.consumercomplaints.in/complaints/mental-harassment-c69505.html

I too faced some mental harassment few years back when I subscribed to one of their programs. It is a long story, so I'll leave it for now.