Chirag Mann will be joining IIM Ahmedabad for the Batch 2022-2024. He is an English Literature graduate from Hindu College, the University of Delhi who completed his graduation in 2021 with a 6.75 CGPA. His scores in Class 10 and 12 were 95% and 89.5% respectively. He scored a stellar 99.47 percentile in CAT with a scaled score of 106.10. VARC- 43.16{98.57} LRDI- 27.01{96.90} QA- 35.92{99.06}. He is also a national-level swimmer and has won many medals in swimming both at the state and national levels during his school and college days. Chirag had calls from all the IIMs except BCL and was able to convert all of them except Kozhikode. He also converted XLRI BM with a XAT percentile of 99.7. In this interview, he shares his detailed preparation strategy. Read on!
Q) Please Share Your Score And Percentile With Our Readers.
Overall score- 106.10 Overall Percentile- 99.47VARC score- 43.16 VARC Percentile- 98.57LRDI score- 27.01 LRDI percentile- 96.90QA score- 35.92 QA percentile- 99.06
Q) Please Share Your Journey In Achieving The Mentioned Percentile.
The journey was full of ups and downs, I wrote 5 management exams in 2020 and was able to clear only one NMAT but here also was rejected in the interview so it did hurt my confidence and made me question my decisions about whether I should go for an MBA or not but I believed in myself and decided to write CAT again in 2021. This year also I gave the major 5 management exams in which my scores were CAT 99.47, XAT 99.7, IIFT 98.1, NMAT 257, and SNAP 96I would also like to share my D-day experience-My slot was 3 and I arrived well before time ie around 2 hours before and was sitting in the car waiting.
From slot 1 people I came to know the split of questions across the three sections so was mentally preparing myself for the same, the rumor was that VARC is on a difficult side and Quants easy. When the 2nd slot people came out, I heard from them that VARC was easy and LRDI difficult lol, so at this moment I knew IIMA is playing with our minds and I should not go with any preconceived notions in advance. So I entered the hall, took I deep breath, and as soon as the time hit 0 I started my paper.
In VARC, I skipped the first RC as it looked difficult, then solved the other 2 RCs, did 6 VA questions, then 4th RC, then the remaining 2 VA questions. I found this section to be on the easier side since I had marked all the questions except that one RC in around 30mins, I got pumped up, stretched a bit, and started solving that dreaded RC passage. 9minutes for one RC but the result? Marked only one question and that too was wrong. Then came LRDI, was already feeling happy as VARC went better than expected, spotted one easy set straightaway, solved it 4/4 boom! 12 marks in 8mins not bad.
Now came the real trouble I didn’t know how to solve the other 3 sets. Solved one question from the Beaker set, and marked the other 3 nevertheless because they were TITA. Then I left the javelin set because it was 2 pages long and I knew If I got stuck in between there was no coming back. So I picked the last set which I had to solve no matter what because if I didn’t it was game over for me. So I had 20mins and one set of 6 questions to solve.
Was scribbling my rough sheet here and there but was not able to figure out the solution, 10mins passed and I was going nowhere but I maintained my cool, and then finally when 6 mins were remaining it struck me, drew the diagram again and in the last 2 mins was able to mark 5 questions out of 6, it was a really close call. After this dreaded LRDI experience came Quants. I was confident in Quants because I had worked super hard on it, luckily I didn’t get any negatives in this section and solved every question with 100% accuracy.
Q) Please Share Your Month-Wise Preparation Insights For Upcoming Aspirants.
So 2021 was my second attempt at CAT, I wrote CAT 20 as well in which I scored 81 percentile overall( ). What didn’t work well for me was- 1) lack of practice 2) giving less number of mocks 3) panicked during the exam so I started CAT 21 prep in April, I took coaching from Unacadmey, bought mock test series of Both IMS and TIME, and for practice material used TIME’s material. Initial 3-4 months I used to watch lectures and solve questions from the study material. I think it is very important to build a strong base right from the start, especially in quants, your basics should be clear because CAT is not an exam where you can straightaway use the mugged-up formulas to get the answer, you need to have a strong fundamental knowledge of the chapters. So from April to July, make sure to cover your syllabus and do self-study and practice side by side.
You can give a mock every 2 weeks in between if you want. Then from August onwards increase the mock’s frequency to once a week and start to identify and work on your weaknesses, and side by side finish your remaining syllabus. Once you have finished your syllabus then you have to do just 2 things till the D-day, Revision, and Practice.
Revise the concepts again, see where you are making mistakes, and try not to repeat those mistakes in the next mock. So by October, you should start feeling confident about your prep, increase the frequency of the mocks as you like, and can manage.
The same continues till November. This is what I followed, but this does not mean that people who start in June/July can’t crack CAT, they do but the sooner you start preparing the better it is.
Q) Please Share The Section-Wise Strategies Followed By You During Preparation.
VARC- For me reading didn't work, so what I did was that I used to solve 5 RCs every day from past year mocks because they are the closest to the actual CAT papers after actual past year CAT papers of course. So now you have the practice material to solve but how to actually solve an RC and do well in this section. The answer is simple POE. It stands for the process of elimination in which you eliminate all the wrong options instead of directly selecting the right ones, trust me it works wonders once you become habituated to it.
Also if you have some money to spare invest in VARC1000 by Gejo sir of CL, it will take care of all the techniques and tools which you'll require to solve both RC and VA questions, rest all is practice LRDI- for LRDI I used an old school approach, practising lots and lots of sets. I was taking coaching from Unacademy, so I used to solve the sets provided by Ravi Prakash sir and after that, I used to solve sets from the past year mocks like VARC. There is no defined syllabus for LRDI, you just have to train your mind to solve puzzles, think fast, and make sense of data and you'll eventually improve.QA- For QA first build your basics of each topic, then solve questions on your own, and get your doubts cleared from your friends/mentors.
Revise them and select the questions wisely.4th section- You should be a master of question selection if you want to Ace CAT, after all, you need to solve just 50% of the paper to be in the top 1% of the country, so work on this skill by giving mocks and thoroughly analyzing them each time. You can also give sectionals since they provide for great practice within a stipulated time.