In India, every year around 3-4 lakh candidates prepare for their journey to pursue MBA. They apply for multiple entrances like CAT, MAT, XAT, IBSAT, NMAT etc. But the most important among them in CAT, because it is the only single entry for the prestigious IIMs. Many students dream to pursue their post-graduation in Management from IIMs or other top institutes like SP Jain, IMI, MDI Gurgaon and many others. But entry to these institutes is not that easy. The journey has mainly two phases. Firstly, to clear entrance and then to appear for WAT, GI, PI for various colleges. The first step requires to ensure to get a score of at least above 90 percentile in CAT. The interesting about CAT is there is no age limit, so you will need to compete with people who may be having 5 years of experience to candidates who are freshers. Another thing is that in CAT candidates from mostly any discipline or background like engineering, commerce, BBA can appear. These make the competition tougher.
I started my dream to pursue MBA in 2015 during my final year of engineering. I had not attended any coaching or sessions for the same. I just attended some placement sessions in college which covered Basics of aptitude, logical reasoning and verbal reasoning. I did not attend any CAT specific sessions. I didn’t use to study for long hours for CAT or practice all the time. Rather I used to solve one problem but would look at the entire problem practically and understand the fundamental concepts behind. CAT is totally unpredictable, so you can’t expect a similar pattern of questions all the time, so it’s important that concepts are clear. And to visualize the problem and solve. I appeared for CAT 2015 and scored 85 percentile. Though 85 is good but not a decent percentile to get into top management institutes. I realized I did some mistakes. Even after finished marking the questions I actually knew, I guessed and attempted more questions in hope to get more score. This was one of the biggest mistakes which resulted in more negative marks reducing my overall score. In CAT, when you are above 75 percentile range even a reduction of a score to a value of 1 could drop your percentiles. The second mistake I made was I focused more on aptitude and Logical part. Because of this, I scored less in Verbal part. In CAT, the focus should not only be on overall performance, but you must give importance to all three sections. I appeared for few colleges through my scores like BIMTECH, Nirma University, and IISWBM to get a B-School interview experience. I got selected but I dropped out as I wanted a better B-School.
So, I decided to join Accenture and continue preparing for CAT. Preparing during job tenure was difficult. After working for long hours, it was getting difficult to take out time. I got very less time in a week to prepare. I used to solve fewer questions but whatever I did I completely analyzed the fundamentals regarding it. As is it better to have 2 years' experience then join a B-school, I appeared for CAT 2017. This time I kept in mind my previous mistakes. This time I got an improved score of 90.71 percentile. After getting selected in multiple colleges I chose IFMR to pursue my MBA career.
The main technique to clear CAT is to take a practical approach towards questions rather than an automated approach and attempt those questions only which you are sure of. Don't make guesses. Also, don't be disheartened because the paper level was tough or get very excited if the level was easy. Because in the end it is all about percentile and depends upon how your competitors have performed and not just your performance. And even if you could not clear this year keep trying. There are people who got 90 percentile in first and also people who got above 95 after multiple attempts. So keep trying you will make it.
Sudip Pal
"1st Year MBA student at Institute for Financial Management and Research, IFMR"