How I Secured 99.28 Percentile In CAT With 2 Months Of Preparation | Ft. Animesh Choudhuri, FMS

The Opening Innings

1st mistake: Loving Mathematics and English till my 10th standard. I would participate in Olympiads, Spell Bees, and Debates and manage not to lose.

2nd mistake: Scoring 10 CGPA in CBSE 10th Board exams. This somehow gets your parents and teachers higher than you get in your engineering college hostels.

3rd mistake: Being clueless about my future at the age of 16, when in India it's expected from you to be ready with a plan for the next 50 years.

Now, these were the 3 mistakes of my life, and there was the saviour for every middle-class parent's child, their favourite teacher at school who suggested to me: “Maths-Science leke bas 2 saal padh lo, fir life set hai”. So, there I was a confused 16-year-old nodding at my parent's and my teacher's well-thought decision.

So, I appeared for IIT-JEE Mains and IIT-JEE Advance, got into ISM Dhanbad and NIT Kurukshetra.

Now, this moment in my life, this very moment I call happiness. I started making my own decisions and decided to choose NIT Kurukshetra over ISM Dhanbad. The best decision of my life, simply because I took it. I will always be grateful to my parents for letting me make my choices since then.

The Middle Muddle: National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, the Jugaad campus of India.

This place has taught me so much more than I ever expected. I am an Electrical Engineer with 9.5/10 CGPA, but I don't know shit about circuits or machines or power systems.

So what did I learn?

I learnt to manage people, time, and money. The relationships I made in college taught me that people are always paramount. I learnt that if you have a strong connection with someone, if you have mutual respect, then you can achieve everything. I became the Secretary of Hindi fest, the Convenor of Technical fest, and the President of E-Cell, these experiences taught me much more than the electrical engineering lectures.

After lots of partying, friendships, careless days, and sleepless nights came to the jolt of reality.

The Death Overs: True to its character, the death overs brought a lot of deadly bouncers and yorkers. I joined a leading automobile manufacturer in India after my graduation. The training period was filled with fun and learning, pubs and partying, projects and trips, awards and accolades, but after that office politics, lack of meaningful work and the factory working schedule of staying at the plant for 10 hours even without any work ran to bite me.

The Pursuit of Happiness: One fine Saturday, I literally ran away, left my id at the office desk, told my manager I am leaving, and just ran. Office to Guest House to Railway Station and back to Jabalpur. I ran for my life because I saw that the life of a 22-year-old, 30-year-old living in front of my building and 40-year-old living above my flat was exactly the same. It scared the shit out of me. Every single person I know (except my parents) told me it was a wrong decision because I had no backups.

The Flourishing Finish

English and Mathematics: Remember the child, with no plans about future, no fear of losing, lots of confusion, and open to all possibilities and probabilities. That's where I returned, back to basics. I enrolled at T.I.M.E. Jabalpur, almost all coachings rejected me because even the crash course classes were 50% into the syllabus. Every single person told me to target CAT 2018. But once I joined T.I.M.E. after that it was a dream journey through October and November 2017.

Eat-Read-Practice-Classes-Extra classes-Mocks-AIMCATs-Revise-Sleep and Repeat

The Semi-Finals: November 26, CAT 2017

Reading Comprehension was like Ashok Dinda, promised a lot but turned out to be pretty easy to negotiate.

Verbal Ability was like Rashid Khan, the more you try, the more chances of you making a mistake. Dodged it successfully.

Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation was like Mitchell Starc and Jasprit Bumrah combined into one package. Couldn't decipher a single question till 40 minutes. Finally decided that 1.5-2 months wasn't enough, will prepare well for CAT'18. Somehow, that lifted all the pressure. I started treating each question on its merit and ended up solving 12 questions with 100% accuracy in the last 15 minutes (IIM Lucknow was gracious enough to release the answer copies).

Quant was like Kedar Jadhav, if you know how to play floaters, you could hit each question out of the park.

Ended up scoring:

RC-VA: 95.65, LR-DI: 98.64, QA: 98.72

Overall: 99.28 percentile

Calls: FMS, MDI, IIM K, IIM I, SP Jain, IIM Shillong, all New and Baby IIMs

Converts: surprisingly FMS, MDI, IIM I, IIM Shillong, all New and Baby IIMs

The Finals: FMS interview

Forgot to fill the personal information form and SOP, realized 2 days after the deadline, and called the admissions office. I was in tears. The mam was so generous and caring to console me and tell me to come on the allotted day anyways.

I was staying in Gurgaon, woke up at 8 am for 9 am slot, 2 hours to FMS, and couldn't find my tie. I decided to give up because everyone, even my best friend (now Co-Founder) told me not to keep my hopes high for FMS and all the signs also suggested that it wasn't meant to be. Only that it was.

I went without a tie, personal information form, SOP, and was 1.5 hours late. FMS was considerate enough to allow me to fill the forms by hand and appear for the process.

Group Discussion: It was fairly easy as I had the same topic at IIM Indore and IIM Kozhikode as well (Lucky dude, ikr ;) ). The topic was a complex version of ‘The impact of technology on our personal and professional lives.’

Personal Interview: It's the best experience I have ever had. The entire interview was about me, my achievements, and failures. I had mentioned beforehand that my technical knowledge sucks and surprisingly I wasn't asked a single question on Electrical Engineering. The panel listened patiently to all my answers and was empathetic enough to incorporate my point of view.

For Extempore I was asked about the Best Social Worker in recent times, as I had worked for an NGO in my college. All I could come up with was Mother Teresa (like she was behind the Swachch Bharat) and after a 1-minute struggle to justify my choice, all the 3 panelists burst into laughter. After that, the entire discussion was on the Indian education system with little bursts of laughter on my unfiltered responses on the same.

It was more of interaction to judge the fit between FMS and me. What FMS stands for is humility. Those are not just words, I was judged on those parameters.

After the last day of the interview, the list was out. I was waitlisted at 44.

I waited for 1.5 months, took admission in IIM Indore, didn't celebrate it, didn't even celebrate my birthday, my father was very angry on me for being too harsh on myself.

Then there was the day, 28th June 2018, I was leaving for Indore the next day, 5:00 pm was the deadline to withdraw the advance amount from IIM Indore. I went to purchase a laptop with my father. I was still waitlisted at number 3.

4:00 PM: 4th list is expected. My mother is alone at home, frantically refreshing the results page and praying for my wish to be fulfilled.

4:30 PM: I go to configure the laptop 1 km away from my father. I refresh the page, I see the list and I howl, I cry, I call my parents and I cry (still crying while writing this, I know such a cry baby).

4:55 PM: Rushed to withdraw my admission from IIM Indore and successfully did it just in time.

I made it! All those years, all those tests, all those classes, my parents, my teachers, my friends, everyone who did or didn't believe me, I just had empathy and gratitude for everyone. I was there!

1 in every 200 they said. I said bring it on. Now, a dreamer for life, branded for life!

The Red Building of Dreams!!

The Faculty of Management Studies!!

That day I decided I would make the most of this opportunity. I started working on my startup Key2IQ in Recruitment-Tech space and we are going strong, helping startups build cohesive teams even during these difficult times. The journey is long and the path is filled with challenges. We would require support from all of you. But we will make it because we believe!

If you come across any query or face any roadblocks during your preparation, feel free to reach out. I am available on LinkedIn, Quora, Facebook, and Instagram. You can find my contact easily on any of these platforms and call me directly as well. I will be more than happy to help.

If I can, you can too! See you on the other side!

Believe me, it feels great to be here!