In our endeavours to push the envelope every time when it comes to helping budding managers in securing the coveted 99th+ percentile, we at InsideIIM are excited to present a new webinar series InsideIIM’s CAT 2021 RoadMap.
The CAT exam is one of the most competitive entrance exams in India, and cracking the exam itself is no easy task; in fact, it is not unheard of CAT aspirants attempting the exam even five times before finally making it to their dream IIMs. In a webinar conducted by InsideIIM, we brought together five MBA students from India's top business schools, including IIMs Ahmedabad and Calcutta, to share some invaluable tips on CAT preparation and answer some important questions. Here are the six key questions that students from IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, XLRI, and SPJIMR answered with brutal honesty.
Avoiding a mistake or learning from a mistake can be a key to success. "Never Give Up" has always been my prime motto. I was brought up in Srikakulam of Andhra Pradesh. I joined NIT Patna in 2014 in Electrical Engineering. Despite my low grades (6.75 CGPA in B.Tech), I was part of many extra-curricular clubs and also worked as Coordinator for Fest and Placement Cell. One of my seniors helped me realize that I possess few skills which helped me get into these positions. I decided to make the best use of those skills and realized that pursuing an MBA would help me with it.
Irrespective of where you stay or what you do, 2020 was an unusual year for everyone. I am no different. I was due to complete three years with my organization. Wanting to expand my career path and explore more opportunities, I began toying with the idea of doing an MBA just as the lockdown was imposed. Being a hotel management graduate, I knew that the preparation process would not be a bed of roses. To add to that, I had performed poorly in maths throughout my school life and was afraid of anything to do with numbers.
The verbal section is usually taken very lightly. People tend to focus more on quants and DI & LR and think the verbal can be handled easily. But there is one thing which most of us forget. Verbal can’t get into your head in one day or even one month. It is a habit, it has to be made a habit. As I have always said, CAT is all about consistency and the Verbal section is a testament to that.
Here is a statistic for you: of the total number of aspirants who attempt the CAT exam, less than 4 percent end up getting admission to one of the twenty IIMs in the country. The acceptance rate reduces further when you look at only at IIMs ABCLIK, which implies that Harvard Business School has a greater acceptance rate than the top six IIMs. With such degree of competition, it doesn't help matters if you have been out of touch with quantitative problem solving for many years due to your non-engineering background. So does that make it impossible for non-engineers out of touch with quant to crack CAT? Absolutely not, and here is a shining example of it in the form of a hotel management graduate with no background in mathematics who cracked CAT 2020 and got shortlisted by top business schools, including IIM Kozhikode.
Being a commerce student, quants was my weakest point. I started my preparation in August 1st week and I had almost 4 months to prepare for CAT but since I was working, I had just weekends and the spare, 2 or 3 hours after working for 10-11 hours in the office. If you guys think that in mocks, your percentile is lower and when will it actually go up, just to give you a startling fact, I was getting around 49%ile in August, 60%ile till September. Then, around 80% till October Mid. It was only by November 1st week, that I started getting around 90%ile by November. So, how did I do it?
DILR is an Achille’s heel for many. Personally, my DILR scores in the mocks used to be quite inconsistent – I couldn’t understand why it was happening because I wasn’t being able to develop a fair idea of where I stood.
In our endeavours to push the envelope every time when it comes to helping budding managers in securing the coveted 99th+ percentile, we at InsideIIM are excited to present a new webinar series InsideIIM’s CAT 2021 RoadMap.
The CAT exam is one of the most competitive entrance exams in India, and cracking the exam itself is no easy task; in fact, it is not unheard of CAT aspirants attempting the exam even five times before finally making it to their dream IIMs. In a webinar conducted by InsideIIM, we brought together five MBA students from India's top business schools, including IIMs Ahmedabad and Calcutta, to share some invaluable tips on CAT preparation and answer some important questions. Here are the six key questions that students from IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, XLRI, and SPJIMR answered with brutal honesty.
Avoiding a mistake or learning from a mistake can be a key to success. "Never Give Up" has always been my prime motto. I was brought up in Srikakulam of Andhra Pradesh. I joined NIT Patna in 2014 in Electrical Engineering. Despite my low grades (6.75 CGPA in B.Tech), I was part of many extra-curricular clubs and also worked as Coordinator for Fest and Placement Cell. One of my seniors helped me realize that I possess few skills which helped me get into these positions. I decided to make the best use of those skills and realized that pursuing an MBA would help me with it.
Irrespective of where you stay or what you do, 2020 was an unusual year for everyone. I am no different. I was due to complete three years with my organization. Wanting to expand my career path and explore more opportunities, I began toying with the idea of doing an MBA just as the lockdown was imposed. Being a hotel management graduate, I knew that the preparation process would not be a bed of roses. To add to that, I had performed poorly in maths throughout my school life and was afraid of anything to do with numbers.
The verbal section is usually taken very lightly. People tend to focus more on quants and DI & LR and think the verbal can be handled easily. But there is one thing which most of us forget. Verbal can’t get into your head in one day or even one month. It is a habit, it has to be made a habit. As I have always said, CAT is all about consistency and the Verbal section is a testament to that.
Here is a statistic for you: of the total number of aspirants who attempt the CAT exam, less than 4 percent end up getting admission to one of the twenty IIMs in the country. The acceptance rate reduces further when you look at only at IIMs ABCLIK, which implies that Harvard Business School has a greater acceptance rate than the top six IIMs. With such degree of competition, it doesn't help matters if you have been out of touch with quantitative problem solving for many years due to your non-engineering background. So does that make it impossible for non-engineers out of touch with quant to crack CAT? Absolutely not, and here is a shining example of it in the form of a hotel management graduate with no background in mathematics who cracked CAT 2020 and got shortlisted by top business schools, including IIM Kozhikode.
Being a commerce student, quants was my weakest point. I started my preparation in August 1st week and I had almost 4 months to prepare for CAT but since I was working, I had just weekends and the spare, 2 or 3 hours after working for 10-11 hours in the office. If you guys think that in mocks, your percentile is lower and when will it actually go up, just to give you a startling fact, I was getting around 49%ile in August, 60%ile till September. Then, around 80% till October Mid. It was only by November 1st week, that I started getting around 90%ile by November. So, how did I do it?
DILR is an Achille’s heel for many. Personally, my DILR scores in the mocks used to be quite inconsistent – I couldn’t understand why it was happening because I wasn’t being able to develop a fair idea of where I stood.
