CAT 2017 Plan For Non-Working Professional - iQuanta
There are three types of non-working aspirants:
There are three types of non-working aspirants:
The happiness that you get when you finally get into the top business school after the stressful months of preparation for the most awaited exams of the year, writing applications and essays, just to get into one of the top colleges. So you thought that was it? Wait till you take your first class. That’s when the realisation hits you like a bullet. We hardly plan little further than that. I remember preparing for CAT, one of the tutors told something which I can never forget, "Do not think you are preparing to get into a b-school, CAT tests you how good you would be after going to a b-school, as a future manager".
It was March 2017, when Aradhya Sethiya received admission acceptance offer from Yale University for their L.L.M. program, which is considered to be best in the world. He also received an admission offer from Oxford and Cambridge for the same course. In May-June 2017, he became the recipient of prestigious ‘Inlaks Scholarship’ which is awarded to around ten students from India every year for studying in top universities abroad. Former Inlaks Scholars have been who's who of the country. All his expenses including tuition fee, living, airfare, visa, etc. are covered under this scholarship. Shivraj Singh Chouhan, CM of Madhya Pradesh, invited him to meet when he came to know about his achievement.
IIM Lucknow, also known as the marketing campus and well known for its academic rigour lives up to its name truly. The second year’s list of electives and courses provide the students with a plethora of choice. One among these subjects (selected by the selective bidding process on campus) that I have taken up has changed my outlook towards courses and classes.
Started in 2014 by the batch of 2016 as a promotional event for Manfest-Varchasva (the annual business, cultural and sports festival of IIM Lucknow), Campus Radio managed to create a hefty amount of buzz back then. After a gap of one year, it was revived in 2016 November to again promote the then upcoming edition of Manfest-Varchasva. It then took place in February 2017 again, right before the PGP31 batch graduated from IIM Lucknow, which was in fact pretty close to Valentines’ Day and even prom on campus.
Most of the case studies we are given for analysis in b-schools are borrowed from HBR (Harvard Business Review), the case is well written and the analysis is easily available online, and in some cases, some of these cases are so often repeated that they attain stardom (Pepsi –Cola wars). There is no indigenous element to these cases leaving us crippled during internships which cater to Indian markets.
The summer internship is the time when budding managers get the chance to apply the classroom knowledge into the real world and have a sneak peak of the future which lies ahead after MBA. No matter how many quizzes, case studies or projects that we ace, nothing comes close to a live project in a company when it comes to the learning. I was lucky enough to get into the company whose existing supply chain network is already taught as a case study in B-schools.
I scored 99.81percentile in VARC section of CAT 2015. I am sharing my approach to VARC section below, hoping it will resonate with a few of you.