I was in the final year of engineering studies and actively sought placement opportunities on campus. Despite having an electronics and telecommunications background, I had never touched a breadboard (a material where you join wires, resistors, and other electronic stuff to make a functioning circuit), nor did I pay attention to my lectures. Mugging up answers to PYQs was my go-to method for passing exams. Therefore, getting into a software job was the way out of my misery. Against my best expectations, I made it into a decent-paying product company. Elated, I spent the remaining college days dreaming about an air-conditioned office, my desk, with a laptop, mug, and all the other accessories that I read about in LinkedIn posts. However, there was this feeling, deep inside my mind, that something was lacking. I always wanted to know how businesses function, how I can directly contribute to their growth, and eventually become a business leader. As a software developer, I can only go so far in my career to bring about significant changes to an organization. I sought advice from my father, a man who spent 25 years in corporate, who suggested that I pursue an MBA. Initially hesitant to go back to studying again, I relented on my father's advice and decided to give CAT a shot. After all, it's just elementary mathematics, some reasoning, and English, right? My ICSE background is enough to cover English, and I am an engineer, so math and reasoning would be a breeze. Little did I know I was about to fight a gladiator with a plastic sword.
My first CAT attempt was in 2022, during my final year of college. A few days before the exams, I decided to brush up on my quants. I discovered a large playlist of quant concept videos by Rodha on YouTube and started binge-watching those, straight for 2 weeks. A day before the exam, I went through some past year RC questions. Armed with this knowledge, I attempted the exam. English (or VARC, as I came to know later) was tougher than I expected. Having no reading practice, I struggled to go through those humongous passages, and the tricky reasoning-based questions didn't help me either. Next came the DI and LR section, which I hadn't practiced at all. I tried solving one set (a multi-line chart interpretation puzzle), but spent the entire 40 minutes solving that. With most of my energy drained, dejected, I moved on to the Quant section. This is where I lost the little bit of hope I didn't know I still had. Those formulae I mugged up, the concept videos, and practice questions didn't help at all. The questions in the actual paper were quite hard, and I ended up being stuck on the first 5 questions for the entirety of 40 minutes. With zero expectations, on the result day, I opened the scorecard. The results were better than I originally expected: an 86.18th percentile overall, although I didn't clear the sectionals for DILR. Of course, this score was of no consequence in the grand scheme of things, and so, I joined the company I got placed at and began my corporate journey.
Despite scoring low, I was certain that with proper preparation, including concept clarification and mock practice, I would eventually perform well next time. So I decided to enroll in CATKing, an online coaching institute. Balancing work and studies proved significantly challenging. At work, I was asked to complete a fast-paced 1-month training with daily assignments and small work projects, which proved quite hectic. This was compounded by the fact that I travelled 2 hours daily to work from my home, which left very little time for studies. I usually left home by 7:00 AM and reached home by 9-10 PM. I began missing initial lectures and resorted to self-study over the weekends to make up for these classes. As months went by, my interest in studies waned too. I began shifting my focus toward work and didn't attend a single lecture. I realized that multi-tasking and time management were skills that I lacked. But it was the initial leg of my corporate journey, so I prioritized building a reputation at my workplace. Fast forward a month before the CAT exam. With no preparation and to prevent a complete disaster on the D-day, I decided to skim through some content from the CATKing dashboard. I completed basic material on Arithmetic and Algebra. For DILR, I went through some previous year questions, and the same for VARC.
On the D-day, I realized that I was pretty much in the same situation as I was a year ago: no mock practice, no concept revisions, and a huge portion of the syllabus left out. Defeated, I went to the exam hall. VARC was a breeze, I don't know how, but for the first time, I managed to pull off three RCs and solved all VA questions within the 40-minute limit. Then came DILR, my Achilles heel. Again, I managed to solve only 3/5 questions of a single set. This section destroyed the initial confidence that had been built up in the VARC section. Dejected, I started with the last section, the final boss of the entire paper, my arch-nemesis, the Quant section. With most of my energy drained after that horrific DILR section, I realized that the game was over when I spent close to 6 minutes on the first quant question. And thus began the downward spiral. Again, I solved only 5-6 questions in this section. Went back home hoping that a strong VARC attempt would outweigh the other two sections.
Result? Again, quite surprising. I knew that VARC went well, but didn't know it would fetch me a 99.81 percentile in this section!
Although I ended up with a good overall percentile of 97.28, it didn't help much since I couldn't clear sectionals for Quant and DILR. Thus, not even CAP IIMs gave me a call. I also missed filling out the MDI Gurgaon form, which closed before the CAT exam, another setback.
However, I did receive calls from colleges like XIMB, IMT Ghaziabad, IIT Kharagpur (VGSoM), IIM Rohtak, and IIFT (my best call). I didn’t sign up for any GDPI preparation courses since I didn’t want to join most of these colleges, except for IIFT Delhi. In the end, I converted XIMB BM, IMT Ghaziabad PGDM Marketing, and IIFT Kolkata. A part of me wanted to end this exam prep ordeal and join one of these colleges, but the other part wanted me to give the management entrances one last try. I knew that I hadn’t given my all in the preparation, and maybe I still had the potential to improve with a focused attempt.
I consulted my parents and well-wishers, who recommended that I give another shot at CAT and prepare on the side while continuing my job. Self-study was never my forte, and I realized that I get easily distracted and tend to procrastinate a lot. I thus decided to join a coaching institute that offered online night classes to balance both my work and studies. I found Elites Grid as the perfect choice in this regard. They offered a 6-month course from June with classes between 10 PM and 12 AM, suitable for someone who has a day job with long traveling hours. What I liked about this institute was the structured learning path they had to offer. They made a weekly and monthly schedule until the D-day with daily achievables. The classes, especially Quants, were particularly good at clearing concepts right from the fundamentals. The approach I followed was to sit through and learn from these tutorials during the weekdays, and work on assignments and tests over the weekend. Following this religiously, I ended up finishing Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry before the first week of September. As for DILR, we were trained on basic arrangements first to build up problem-solving skills. This proved to be of immense help later in OMETs like NMAT and SNAP. This time, I focused on attempting all PYQs and understanding the approaches to solving similar questions. Our mentors insisted on this since most new questions are variations of those in past papers. September onwards, I started attempting regular mocks and review sessions to work on timed testing. On the side, I continued revising previous concepts to ensure better recall on the exam day. The results were quite favourable!
I had significant breakthroughs in CAT, NMAT, SNAP, and XAT exams:
This time, I managed to clear sectional cutoffs in CAT and, for the first time, was in the 99th percentile! Got some good calls, including MDI Gurgaon, IIFT, IIT Bombay (SJMSoM), SIBM Pune, TISS Mumbai, and XLRI. I also invested in GDPI prep with the same coaching institute. It was an affordable option with 12 mock interviews and GDs that could be customized as per college and specialization. The regular feedback from these mocks helped me shape proper answers to questions, which eventually paid off in the actual interviews. By the end of the season, I secured converts from XLRI Delhi-NCR, MDI Gurgaon (PGDM Core), IIFT Delhi IB, SIBM Pune, and TISS HRM & LR program. I never imagined making it to tier-1 colleges, especially after two failed attempts. But hard work and a bit of luck helped me sail through.
Tips for CAT 2025 and OMET aspirants:
1) If you're still in college, focus on your academics. You might have seen and heard about those 9/9/8 or 9/9/9 profiles being preferred for shortlisting at top colleges. Yes, that's a reality. Bad academics put you significantly behind others, as colleges put a huge weightage on 10th, 12th, and grad scores. However, there are colleges like FMS Delhi, SIBM Pune, XLRI, and SPJIMR that do consider your overall profile more.
2) If you are a working professional, please don't resign and take a drop for CAT preparation! Gap years aren't taken well by colleges. Instead, continuing your work and preparing on the side is the way to go. Remember, colleges put a significant weight on work experience.
3) If you are someone who has trouble studying by yourself and needs mentorship, please join a coaching institute for focused preparation. There is an ocean of content available on the internet, but one can easily get lost here. Coaching helps you with a structured preparation plan with weekly and monthly targets, perfect for tracking your progress.
4) Focus on concept building above all else. These exams test you mostly on fundamentals, morphed into a twisted word problem. This is where practice can help you understand and remember patterns. Go through all PYQs mandatorily. For context, in CAT 2024, there were several questions that were based on the past 2 years' papers. I can recall direct copies of a PNC and a linear equation problem in Slots 1 and 2.
And lastly, believe in yourself! CAT exam and OMETs are not rocket science. They test basic reasoning and elementary concepts under time pressure, which one can attempt with practice.
