IIMs Delay CAT 2023 Answer Key Release: Reasons and Implications; Released 8 Days After the Exam Date on Dec 5

The wait for CAT 2023 answer key release with response sheet is now over as IIM Lucknow has released the CAT answer key on December 5, 2023. Your next step is to download CAT answer key and your response sheet from iimcat.ac.in with your login credentials. You should match your responses with official answer key and in case of any objection, you can challenge the official CAT answer key through the objection form available at CAT website. Please note that you need to pay Rs.1500 for each objection raised to challenge the official answer key. Last date to download and challenge the answer key is December 8, 2023 till 5 PM.

Till December 4, IIM Lucknow did not announce the date of CAT answer key release. After CAT 2023 exam got over on November 26, 2023, the Candidates were eagerly waiting for the IIMs Official Answers. Last year IIM Bangalore released the CAT 2022 answer key within 4 days after CAT exam was over but for CAT 2023 the wait for answer key lasted for more than one week from CAT 2023 exam date.  

  CAT Answer Key Release: CAT 2023 Vs CAT 2022

No Earlier Announcement
Before release of Candidate response sheet and official answer key, IIMs make an announcement one or two days before about the expected date of release of response sheet at CAT website iimcat.ac.in. Last year IIM Bangalore had made such announcement before release of answer key as “The Candidate Response tab and Objection Form tab for CAT 2022 will be active from 11.00 AM on 1st December 2022 till 5:00 PM on 04th December 2022. Candidates will be able to see the Answer Key as well as their Individual Responses to Questions during this duration”

However, no such announcement was visible for CAT 2023 Answer key release on official CAT website iimcat.ac.in Possible Reasons for Delay in CAT 2023 Answer Key
CAT 2023 has witnessed highest number of applicants and highest number of test takers in the history of CAT exam. CAT 2023 registration number has gone up by 30% at 3.30 lakh candidates and 2.88 lakh (66000 more than last year) actual test takers as against 2.55 lakh applicants and 2.22 lakh test takers in 2022.

The sharp increase of number of test takers in CAT 2023 might be a reason for delay in releasing the CAT 2023 answer key and candidate response sheet.

Delay in CAT 2023 Answer Key Release: Implications on Students
There would be multiple implications due to the further delay in CAT 2023 response sheet and answer key release. This would not only impact the test takers but also the IIMs and would cause further delay in response verification, raising objection, verification of objections by experts at IIMs, releasing final answer key and releasing the CAT 2023 result. Check below:

Verifying Own Responses with CAT Answer Key: Time Taking Process
CAT 2023 Response sheet and Answer key is a Pdf document. A candidate has to download it first from iimcat.ac.in with his/her login credentials and then only can verify own responses with official responses of IIMs. If it is delayed more and any technical glitch occurs, the candidate may not be able to complete the process of viewing own marked responses and then comparing them with official CAT response sheet released by IIMs.

Challenging the Answer Key: 3 Day Time Needed
CAT response sheet offers opportunity to the CAT test takers

IIMs Need Time to Verify the Raised Objections
Experts at IIMs check and verify the objections raised by candidates to ascertain their correctness vis-à-vis official answer keys and in case the objections are found correct, the answers to the respective questions are changed or the questions are removed from the exam. All the candidates are then awarded equal weightage to these questions in score normalization process.

Last year after verifying such objections by CAT test takers, IIM Bangalore dropped two questions and had announced, “The CAT Committee has decided that two questions from the DILR section (one from 27th Nov 2022 shift 2 and the one from 27th Nov 2022 shift 3) will not be considered for evaluation as these questions found to be ambiguous. Scores of candidates for the DILR section in these shifts shall be adjusted on a prorated basis based on their responses on the balance questions in DILR section.”

This process will take sufficient time and may further delay the other activities impacting the fate of students.

Final Answer Key for CAT 2023: Only After All Objections Scrunitized
After the completion of process, IIMs release the final answer key before the result release. It may be delayed further for CAT 2023. Besides the Quant section in CAT 2023 has been found very difficult and it is very much possible that one or two questions from Algebra as appeared in CAT 2023 might be dropped in case of logical and strong objections raised. If for any reason, it gets involved in any controversy, the release of CAT 2023 final answer key may be delayed leading to further delay in release of result.

CAT 2023 Result Declaration: May not be Possible in December
Although CAT 2023 result release date is announced as 2^nd week of January 2024, the previous trends show that CAT result is declared much earlier. Last year IIM Bangalore declared CAT 2022 result on December 21, 2022 in 3 weeks from the date of exam. It does not appear that IIM Lucknow will be able to release the CAT 2023 result so early which may go beyond 1^st week of January 2024.     

Every year, there are grumblings on the ambiguous response options in CAT exam. The release of CAT 2023 response sheet in time will help candidates to raise their genuine queries against such official CAT responses which are not found correct and the candidates are not satisfied with them. When would IIM Lucknow comes out with the announcement with the date of release of CAT answer key, remains to be seen.