While almost a year of hard work has brought fruitful results, there is still a long way to go. Preparing for and attempting the most popular MBA exam of India was just the initial half. Now your job is to start with the next step of preparing for the interviews while keeping a keen eye on MBA colleges. It is advisable to keep all your certificates attested and ready. It is also a good idea to speak to someone senior to get tips regarding group discussions and personal interviews.
Your first step should be to analyze your chances of expecting a call according to the previous year results. Try to understand the various other parameters while looking for colleges like gender diversity, academic excellence, WAT, GD/PI, essay writing, work experience, etc.
Immediately after CAT results are out, MBA aspirants should start by preparing for the second stage of selection: the GD stage. The objective of a group discussion is to appraise a candidate’s ability to critically analyse a given piece of information and collectively work in a group to arrive at a solution or develop a perspective. B-schools conduct GDs to find out whether candidates possess the qualities that are critical to becoming an effective manager. The rationale behind this exercise is that when a group of students is given a task to accomplish within an unstructured situation, they will try to accomplish it by establishing some order or structure. In this process, they will reveal some of their personality characteristics. One thing that will help you to tackle group discussions and personal interviews is reading newspapers regularly so that you do not fall short of content.
Coming to the Written Ability Test (WAT), you can divide the allocated time into three parts-firstly jotting down all the points you want to include in your paragraph. You can do so by using the PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental) format to cover all the aspects related to a topic. It is important for every Management aspirant to know how to structure the essay with three basic components - introduction, body, and conclusion. Next, once you’re done writing your article, take 2-3 minutes to proof-read it to check all the grammatical aspect of the paragraphs.
Finally, coming to personal interviews, prepare the three most asked questions: “Tell me something about yourself”, “Why MBA?” and “Where do you see yourself in the upcoming three years?”. Make sure to prepare for these questions thoroughly and honestly, nothing too common or picked-up from the internet. Try to make your answers as innovative as possible because remember, they are going to listen to hundreds of such answers and you want to differentiate yourself.
Whatever you do, don't lose heart, whatever the result.
Whenever we prepare and appear for any exam we hope and pray to be able to get through. This is especially true of the CAT because of all the hype around it. However, if you do not crack CAT, it's not the end of the world. Your career will depend upon the next move and the hard work you put in.
Good luck with the upcoming rounds!