One Mantra To Crack CAT 2020 | My Failure, Your Success

"Learning from others’ mistakes helps you in improving yourself because no matter how smart you are, there is an equal chance that you will commit a similar mistake." - Jack Ma

Hearing such sayings and theories from business leaders makes you rethink your philosophies, ideologies and paths. I am one of the few fortunate, who got the learning from this theory at the best time possible. In 2018, I was attempting CAT, one among 2lakh+ candidates who had the same aspirations as of me to join one of the top B-Schools in India.

The start of my journey was full of enthusiasm, fun and learning. But as soon as I moved up the ladder, day by day, started giving mocks, assessing myself, comparing my performance with other peer candidates, I got to know where I stood. To give myself a further push, other than surrendering myself to a busy schedule of work and study, I made it a point to listen to some of the success stories of the candidates who cracked CAT with bang on percentiles and had requisite knowledge and wisdom about the ways to strategically prepare for the exam, get ready for D-Day and were willing to share it with the next batch of CAT takers. After hearing almost 50+ success stories and reading all about them and their approach towards the exams, their strategies, their struggles, their point of improvements, I thought it was my time to implement all of this.

After giving almost 1500+ hours of my life and attempting 50 odd mocks, I still failed to get into a B-School of my dreams. I was shattered. For a girl who hasn’t failed at any exam, who was a topper of her under-graduation batch, it was too much to take on. I could not resonate with myself; I didn’t know what to do. The biggest question for me was what next? Should I give another attempt or just leave it forever. After brainstorming about all the questions that were popping now and then, I decided to give another attempt, but this time with more dedication, efficiency and smartness.

At this point and time in my life, where I was ready to implement any and every advice given to me, I got the best advice of my life. Learn from other people’s mistakes because you are never smart enough to not commit the same. Jack Ma rightly pointed to the simple fact that we all overlooked. It was a basic math, ironically, I was good at the subject but couldn’t apply it in real life. Out of the 2Lakh+ odd CAT takers, the stories we knew were of handful of people. Less than 10% of test takers are able to convert a decent B-school. The point of attraction here is that nobody knows the story of the rest, who tried enough but couldn’t make it. I was one of them.

That fine day I got one learning that will always remain with me and that is: we cannot replicate someone’s success because it is too subjective and personal. But one thing that we can be sure of is to hold ourselves from repeating the mistakes that other candidates have committed and learn from it.

This time instead of hearing success stories, I turned myself to hear the failure anecdotes. I went through almost all the videos and text at my disposal to search about the stories of the candidates who failed in CAT, about what went wrong and how it could be improved. I was perplexed to see that we have been making the same errors, everybody has been committing. I had prepared a not-so-exhaustive list of common mistakes committed by the aspirants for my consideration and prepared a solution of how it could be rectified. I am sharing the solutions here for everybody’s welfare.

Preparation Strategy:

1.      Never take any subject for granted.

2.      Working on your weaknesses is more important than just focusing on your strengths.

3.      Analyzing mocks is more important than taking them.

4.      Give yourselves well-deserved breaks.

5.      Indulge some of your time in your hobbies, they would get you through.

6.      Cannot emphasize enough about the benefits of meditation and exercise.

D-Day Strategy:

1.      Have healthy food before attempting the paper

2.      Sound sleep before the D-Day is of paramount importance.

3.      Change the strategy in the initial few minutes if you feel your developed strategy isn’t working.

4.      No matter how hard is the paper, don’t give up, you will sail through, sailor!

5.      Remain confident no matter what.

This trick of learning from failures worked for me like magic. I applied it and I got my dream B-School and here I am sharing all the wisdom I could gather in that 1 year of life lesson.

At last, I just want to say that don’t miss out on things because of closed and conventional drapes in your mind. Start researching, reading and acquiring knowledge of the surroundings and environment you are in. I wish all the luck to the future candidates. May you get the B-School of your dreams. Do work hard because eventually, you will have to once you enter your dream college.

Also, this list is not exhaustive, do let us know in the comment section, the things you feel students should be vary of.

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