Hi, I'm Ritabrata, an incoming MBA student at IIM Lucknow. Having completed a Political Science major from Hindu College, I secured 99.56%ile in CAT '24, and cleared CFA L1 alongside. Here, I share my heartfelt thoughts on embracing this path and clearing the hurdles while hailing from a non-technical educational background.
If you’re not an engineer/economics/commerce graduate, why should you take the CAT exam in the first place?
The answer to this should stem from both genuine pull and push factors. The primary reasons that may make an MBA appealing are multiple and diverse. It can be the variety of domains in which one can possibly work post-MBA - from marketing to HR to consulting - or the educational and exposure gains needed to fulfill one’s pre-existing ambitions in the corporate/startup spheres. It can also be because one additionally feels drawn by the nature of the CAT exam, which is fully aptitude-based and requires no content retention at all.
Some push factors strengthen the motivation stimulated by the above. For conventional engineering or commerce graduates, it is often the desire to upgrade from the existing job role and acquire some valuable skills and network in the process. For students from natural and social sciences, the undeniably bleak professional prospects offered by their fields often, and now increasingly, give a further nudge. Neither can one expect that all students would have the sustained appetite to pursue research or devote years to government job exams, whose success rate is minuscule.
Pros and Cons of CAT and MBA:
If one feels sufficiently motivated to take a shot at the CAT exam and do an MBA, there would still be some concrete aspects that would support/oppose the decision. The CAT exam allows unlimited attempts, and being an aptitude test, requires no memorisation and reproduction. The sections which are tested - English, Logical Reasoning and Maths - are not radically new to any candidate irrespective of background, and preparation for the exam is not a full-time affair. In fact, candidates are expected to be in a full-time course/job, or pursuing a professional exam like CA/CFA, alongside CAT prep. It is ‘expected’ as there are interviews following the CAT to filter candidates, which again makes the process quite holistic and multi-step. Heading into the course, one is exposed to a wide variety of core papers, from accounting to strategy to operations, that pique and broaden one’s interests. Placements, at least in the top ten B-schools, are usually impressive and provide the potential to rise up the ranks to reach senior executive positions in one’s career span (and earn a correspondingly sizeable financial corpus). Some exceptional deviations also happen in the form of PhDs (e.g., RBI ex-governor Raghuram Rajan), or quitting it all in corporate to ace UPSC! (Vikram Misri, a person of poise you must have seen representing the nation in official briefings in the last few weeks, is an XLRI MBA alum).
All is not hunky-dory, of course. The nature of the exam - and course & career thereafter - is ill-suited for folks with an aversion towards Maths, and even without that, the extremely short time given for each section and question entails that even candidates with superb preparation and mock scores can, and do, falter on the D-day. Fast judgments on what questions to attempt, and more importantly, which ones to leave, decide the fate in a few minutes. The course itself is quite taxing and fiercely competitive, and significant variations in pay, work culture, job security, and satisfaction occur and ensue after passing out.
Meeting Maths (Again):
For folks hailing from Arts majors like English or Journalism, or essentially anyone with a considerable hiatus with Maths, the natural question creeping in would be - is it true that CAT’s Quant section is standard tenth-level Maths? As someone who did not take Maths in 10+2, and has come out of the CAT grind reasonably unscathed, my answer is both a yes and no.
Yes, because most of the topics tested are done in 10th grade, from arithmetic to algebra to geometry. There’s no calculus, nor advanced functions of trigonometry.
No, because the nature and context completely change. Time allotted per question is dramatically lower than your 10 board exams, and you’re not tested on the completeness of steps and accuracy of calculations at the end. Rather, CAT demands you to compress the thinking and solving aspect into your mental gymnastics as much as possible, write steps and symbols deemed unavoidable, and reach the answer in a jiffy, with no one caring for the sanctity of steps or method.
More fundamentally, the questions require much more thinking, as opposed to the template-memorisation which 10th boards have devolved to. To illustrate, here is a question on time, speed, and distance (TSD) from ICSE Class X boards (2024):
Now, using the same underlying concepts and formulas, compare it to this problem in CAT on the same topic (CAT 2023 Slot 2):
It would be quite intuitively clear how the same topic, and the same toolkit of formulas, can be associated with varied degrees of difficulty and expected solving capability.
Importance of Profile in admission prospects, going beyond CAT scores:
For someone intent on doing an MBA, it is crucial to focus on the profile almost equally as the CAT exam, for that has weight in all the rounds of filtering, and going ahead, during placements too. It includes one's scores in the two board exams and graduation (most of which is often already set in stone), work experience, if any, and qualifying certifications like CA, CFA, FRM, and internships. These provide not just a positive impression and conversational substance during interviews, but many have direct weightage in shortlisting and final selection. Above all, taking a break year to solely prepare for CAT - and not being engaged in any job or ancillary exams mentioned above - can pose a serious handicap during interviews, requiring one to mount a solid defence of the situation. Thus, it would be imprudent to focus solely on CAT, which, even if it leads to a sky-high percentile, can dampen prospects during the interview.
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