I am Ratula Bandyopadhyay, and I am an English Literature graduate from Presidency University, Kolkata, West Bengal (yes, Nobel Laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee did go to our college!). B-school result season is here, and I belong among those who the universe conspired in support of, even in this frightening time of the pandemic. I recently received my final admission letter from the Indian Institute of Management(IIM), Kozhikode.
In this article, I am elaborating on a few pointers that 'converted' me from an aspirant to a B-school final admit over the past year. :)
To begin with numbers and facts, here are a few self-explanatory ones:
RESOURCES I USED: I heavily relied on mocks for my preparation. I took the mock series of all 3 established institutes - CL, IMS and TIME. All those obviously helped me a lot, and sustained about all of my preparation. I had access to old CL materials in the form of some books, but I didn't refer to them much during my prep for CAT 2019. The exception to that is QA, for which I visited those books, in which modules such as Geometry, Algebra and the like were comprehensively broken down, with important formulae in place.
MOCK TESTS I TOOK: I subscribed to mock series of all 3 institutes I mentioned earlier. Therefore, I obviously did not have the time to exhaust all mocks of all 3 places. In totality, I attempted anywhere in the ballpark of 30-35 full-length mocks. I supplemented these with a lot of
DILR sectionals, DILR having been my
weak point.
I was pretty bad at DILR at the outset, and my scores in that section would often be the only one in the 70-80 or 80-90 percentile ranges, while the other two sections touched 99+, 95+ or at least 90+ consistently in mocks. Repeated practice is what helped me achieve a 90+ in this section on the D-day.
There was a
'trick' I had devised towards the end of my prep days, around August or early September, which
helped my performance in this section substantially. I used to attempt only the DILR sections of many mocks, which saved time on the sections I was comfortable with, while acquainting me with this section of the mocks from important institutes, so that I could benchmark my progress levels in this section with time. If you counted the number of 'truncated' mocks I took, it would be close to 15.
Also, I belong in the team which yells really loud that mock analyses are very, very important parts of prep. I was often the only person in my friend group who analysed a 3-hour mock investing 6+ hours - and I stand by my decision. :)
NUMBER OF HOURS I PUT INTO PREP: I started my CAT '19 prep during late March 2019, and I was holding down a fulltime job as VARC trainer with Wordpandit at that point. Therefore, I put about 6-7 hours of solid prep in on Saturdays, and 2-3.5 hours on weekdays, but the second target was flexible. Keeping Sundays free to avoid burn-out was an inviolable rule to me, and to make up for any prep deficit I accrued on the weekends, I'd often try to push more hours on weekdays and succeed. I'd easily do 5-6 on weekdays I'd been granted leave on due to festivals and national holidays. I took a two-week leave before CAT as well.
EXISTING LEVEL OF PREPARATION: I am an English Literature student and have been a voracious
reader all my life, and almost breezed through VARC during prep. I'd score 99+ or 99.5+ in mocks most of the time, and I relied entirely on mock analysis for remaining prep requirement. In reality, VARC of CAT 2019 was a 'shock' to many people including myself and I underperformed in a way I had not really anticipated, but there weren't a lot of things I could have done differently during prep or on CAT day and I am all right with that fact now.
I have loved mathematics for most of my life and still do, and had been quite good at it till class 12. I had been out of touch upon entering college but I loved re-building that connection during CAT prep. Interestingly, this was the section I scored highest in on CAT 2019.
Preparing for DILR was indeed the most intensive and exhaustive part of my CAT journey.
A few personal nuggets of advice to current aspirants:
These pointers consist of a few small things which made a big difference to my prep. I hope they will to yours too:
1. Have an encouraging boss at work, if possible: I will be eternally grateful to my immediate boss and founder of Wordpandit for all the understanding he extended during my CAT journey. I could take leaves when I really needed them, and we had a very professional and co-operative working relationship. That really boosted my strength of mind during prep.
2. Reach out: I connected with many seniors and like-minded people who were either where I wanted to be, at a B-school, or those who were on the way, and they provided help without me needing to even ask, at times. There are almost no downsides to being connected, and I would strongly recommend this activity.
Oh, and do not forget to pay it forward and be helpful in your turn. :)
3. Find a few role models: I came out of the CAT 2019 grind with some people who I think I will look up to for the rest of my life: Lionel Messi primarily, among all of them. The others include Kylian Mbappe(not mentioning Cristiano Ronaldo because I have loved him since at least 2012). The point is, sometimes people who are in as much of a hustle situation as you are the only ones that understand you - your friends and family sometimes fail, even with your best intentions at heart. Therefore, it is good to look up to people fighting very hard battles of their own, and totally nailing it. C. Ronaldo is a good place to start if you are looking for willpower. :)
4. Embrace uncertainty: This prohibits you from putting all your eggs in one basket, freaking out unnecessarily, and staying in the comfort zone you won't have as you grow up. All the battles I fought during prep helped me keep my calm when CAT 2019 VARC didn't go as planned.
5. Surprise others and surprise yourself: I started out with no classmates, teachers or relatives being confident in me as I was embarking on CAT prep, as not a lot of English majors go this route. Also, I was taunted by a few engineers for not supposedly being math-savvy once. :)
I myself hadn't known I was capable of the hard work I have invested in CAT 2019, or of ignoring all people's opinions to chart a path of my own. But at the top of this previously-unconquered mountain, the view looks good indeed and I am glad I took the risks I did. I have learnt that it is okay to withdraw in a bubble, to have over-ambitious dreams that make those you know laugh at you, to fail time and time again. And then to get back up. Because you can, and genius is really about getting back up after being hit hard (Rocky Balboa).
6. There really aren't any ways around working hard.
Happy prep! CAT 2020 is gonna be your show. :D
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- How I Scored 99.75 %ile In CAT 2019 | Sanjana Rout, IIM Calcutta 2020-22
- How I Scored 99.73%ile In CAT 2019 | Althaf Abdulla, IIM B (2020-22)