I am Biswarup Ghosh, a software engineer with 3.5 years of experience in IT. I have recently converted two of the most coveted B schools of India- MDI GURGAON and SJMSOM, IIT BOMBAY. Finally, I have taken admission into SJMSOM, IIT BOMBAY.
It all started back in 2018 when I decided to prepare and give CAT seriously. I was preparing by self and took a test series of both - CL and IMS. My preparation was going in the right way and after initial setbacks, my mock scores also started improving. I was hopeful that I would be able to do well in the exam. Fast forward to the D-day, I panicked and underperformed. I ended up getting a mere 70%. This was a shocker as well as an eye-opener for me. I was feeling hopeless and even doubted myself whether I will be able to score well in the upcoming year even if I prepare well. I pulled myself up in a couple of weeks or so and decided to give one more try.
This time I decided to start early. I wanted to join a coaching institute, but keeping in mind my office hours and time needed for self-study, I felt that online coaching would be the best option for me. This is when I decided to enrol for Iquanta online course and I was part of the first batch which started in late January. With this started my CAT 2019 preparation journey. I had also enrolled for the test series of TIME and IMS simultaneously. Fast forward to the D-day, I was able to keep myself calm and cool, I didn't panic and my exams went smoothly. I knew that my exam had gone well and I was elated when I saw my results, I had secured 98.03%(VA-89.87%, LRDI-98.44% AND QA-97.94%) in CAT 2019. This taught me that PERSEVERANCE, SELF BELIEF and NEVER GIVE UP ATTITUDE can take a person long way in life.
Now coming to few pointers about my preparation strategy and some information related to my profile/GDPI experience:
- Profile: I had a decent profile with 9/8/8 in 10/12/B.Tech. I had around 34 months of work ex till Dec,2019 in TCS.
- Resources used for CAT: I was Iquanta classroom student. The tricks, shortcuts and doubts solved there helped me in my preparation. Other than that I relied on the mocks of IMS and TIME. I also had Arun Sharma, Time materials and past year mock/cat papers which I used too.
- No.of Mocks taken: I took close to 30 full length mocks, and around 10-15 sectional tests of all the 3 sections(VARC, LRDI and QA)
- Time management: I had to manage both my office as well as my cat preparation. I used to read articles or solve RCs while travelling to the office. Even during office hours, I tried to solve a few sums/few LRDI sets whenever I got time. During my free time, I used to go to the library. My target was to put at least 2-3 hrs daily for my preparation.
- Other exams are taken: I have scored 99.06% in SNAP and around 90% in XAT
- GDPI preparation strategy: I joined IMS for my GDPI preparation. GDPI is all about knowing to communicate and speak fluently and clearly, knowing everything related to yourself-school, hometown, hobbies, etc, current affairs and a little bit of economics/statistics.
- Tips to CAT aspirants: Read 2-3 articles daily, solve 2-3 RCs daily. This would improve the VA part. For LRDI, try to solve 2-3 sets daily, preferably from past year mock papers. For QA, try to solve 20 sums daily. Analyse mocks well and make a point not to repeat the same mistakes. If you give a mock for 3 hours, it should be analysed for at least 6 hours. This is the most important part. P.S: I maintained an excel tracker to track my mock scores and see the areas where am lacking or doing well.
Being an engineer it has always been a dream to be part of the IIT ecosystem. It had been a dream come true for me and I couldn't be happier. Finally, all those hard work and years of struggle paid off :)
The journey is more important than the destination. Happy learning :D
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