Amit Agarwal, IIM Calcutta, Batch of
2008-10
Username on PaGaLGuY: amitnsitian
A Journey called CAT IIM – The acronym every B-Schooler aspires for in India. I being not too different from others had similar aspirations, desires and dreams. Oh yes, forgot to mention the common full form of IIM is Indian Institute of Management; but I came to know of another full form during this journey, which will be eventually revealed to all. !Umm…where do I start from? Let me go back to April of the year 2000. It was the time when my sister made it to the well… Joka land. it was the time when I was preparing for my engineering and had already made up my mind to make it to an IIM.!
First two and a half years of Engineering went fine but it's generally in the third year when one starts
thinking about what next! Then I joined Career Launcher in Delhi in my fifth semester and little did I know that I was not the only one aspiring in my batch. I met the junta of Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology (NSIT) there. The classes started and very soon I realized the weakest link for me to the ultimate goal – the VERBAL part. Anyhow, my senior gave me this wonderful advice of taking CAT in the third year to get a "feel" of the
exam. I liked the idea and finally took it. And yes, at that time, CAT had no rule which barred people
taking the exam who are not in their final years. I think it is because of people like me that they thought of this rule. It's good to be a reason which made IIMs take a policy decision.!
CAT No. 1: Year 2002 in November!
It was a normal 3 section paper in which I had no pressure to perform. The paper went fine and it was the first time wherein the percentiles were to be revealed. Moving to the results, QA was 99.5 percent with an 86 odd in DI and some 65 in verbal. This clearly told me where I had to work on – as if I didn’t know it before. !Jan 2003 – Oct 2003 – The time when all of my friends, classmates and everyone and anyone was a CAT aspirant. It was good to be in excellent company and I think that competition forced me to prepare for the exam which eventually I think I did.!
CAT No. 2: Year 2003 in November!
Was I nervous??!! I WAS. This was the day, the time, the 2 hours which are going to decide the future for me. I still remember how the exam went. The sound of opening the sheet, the answer sheet being filled, the sweat, the tension – everything is still like a movie in my mind. Anyhow, in the end I was quite happy with my performance in DI and QA . Also, I knew that I had done well in Verbal because the two RCs which I attempted in the exam were luckily from some of the test mock papers of the institutes. !But then disaster struck as soon as I crossed the gates of the school of my centre when my mother told me, "Amit, CAT is
cancelled. The paper got LEAKED last night. "!I was like noooooooooooooo, it's difficult to give your best
again. Well, with no option left in life, I started preparing for my semester exams. !Forgot to mention this, three weeks before CAT, I had a disc collapse in my back which forced me into bed rest for two weeks which also meant no studies, nothing. However, I think that did not have any adverse effects on my CAT preparation. !Ah yeah, had that CAT not been cancelled, I would have never joined PaGaLGuY.com.! Year 2004 came and I had already done the greatest mistake of my life by filling just 3 forms – CAT, XAT and MDI. The XAT exam was next and with so much verbal focus that I knew it was difficult to clear it. But then trying was important, which I did and eventually failed also. But since CAT was still there, I thought to
myself that I still have a chance to make it to my dream school.!
CAT No. 3: Year 2004 in February!
After being there already, I was not as nervous but yeah, pressure to perform kills you. The exam was little on the tougher side but it went fine. In this Internet age, the solutions were out by the evening but I had decided not to check till the next day. !Next day, I started checking my paper. As always, I started here also with Quant. The performance was sufficient enough to clear the cut-off. I don't know what prompted me to check verbal next. I did and was amazed to see my score and was already jumping in my room but hang on, story is not over yet.! I checked DI then and my world came crashing down. I had attempted four caselets and got two of them ABSOLUTELY WRONG!!! I scored a single digit in DI; it was something I was not prepared for, why why why!!! After not being able to make it in IIT-JEE because of Maths, again DI did me in.! Crying made me no better and I knew that it was bye bye IIMs and MDI.! The results came out as expected and I was prepared for it. Some of my close friends had all six calls or single call or some calls at least. Most of them made it and then we parted on our different paths in life.! I joined HCL Technologies in Delhi in July and was sure of cracking CAT this time. One intelligent thing that I did this time was widening my B-School list – IIMs, XLRI, NITIE, MDI, SPJain, IIFT and FMS. This meant I had to take four exams this time and that too with my job. Also, somehow I got a really good project in the company which required me put in a lot of effort. I could have avoided work but somehow it's in my nature to give 100 percent to everything that is entrusted on me. That year, I went to office for 29 days in October, 2 days off being 2nd October (Thanks to Gandhiji) and Dusshera (Thanks to God Ramchandra); else I would have been in office then also. Add to this was a family problem which required me to spend 3 months(nights) in hospital as my grandfather was ill. When I look back, I wonder how I managed all this. Oh one more thing, my sister wedding plans was also underway which required my inputs and participation too.!
CAT No. 4: Year 2004 in November
The exam time came. CAT, XAT, IIFT and FMS. Results: calls from IIM-L, MDI, IIFT and NITIE. I was confident of converting one call at least this time. CAT percentile overall was 98.94. Also, this was the time when PaGaLGuY shot to fame with that result link getting exposed and all. This was the first CAT in which differential marking was introduced.
Jan 2005 – MDI interview, my first B-School GD/PI experience. Somehow managed the GD and went in the interview. Interview was okiedokie. With next three interviews in March, I had loads of time to prepare for them.
Feb 28, 2004 – MDI results were out. Not selected, not even in the waitlist, was I that bad? Maybe yes. With around ten days to go, I left no stone unturned to prepare for the other GD/PIs. Next interview was NITIE in Mumbai on 8th March, 2004 (which was my birthday too).
March 7, 2004 – Disaster will be an understatement with what happened. I slept with a little back pain but just could not lift myself up from the bed. The pain in my lower back was killing me and even lying straight was not helping. We rushed to the hospital and I was diagnosed with slip disc. Three weeks bed rest, no movement nothing. My NITIE interview was the next day, IIFT in three days and IIM-L in ten days. No way was I going to miss them. I had to get admitted in the hospital and doctor did not allow me to move at all.
This meant, all pleadings for attending interviews for NITIE went waste. IIFT also went by and I sat there; could not do anything about it – just cry a bit, ok, not a bit but a little more. I had on my mind, come what may – I will attend my IIM interview. When the doctor heard the word "IIM", he also became a little soft and asked me to postpone it as much as possible. We tried our best but the next date given was still within my bed rest period. With some change in is heart, he allowed me to take the interview.! The GD was bad for me as the pain was still there and it was bad. I had to wait for nearly three hours for my interview and that aggravated the pain. Somehow, I braved it and faced the interview panel. It was an above average PI but performance in GD was still enough to ensure that I didn’t get in. !The results came and I was waitlisted at 107. This is when I joined PaGaLGuY.com and my first post was on the IIM L thread. After months of praying and tracking the WL day and night, it closed at 102!!!!I applied for a transfer to Mumbai to stay with my parents and take care of my back. Eventually the company did transfer me and I landed here in Mumbai. I joined the TIME test series and was doing pretty fine but the office culture here was really bad. For the first
six months from July to December, there was not a single day when I did not contemplate resigning.!
CAT No. 5: Year 2005 in November!
I added one more exam in my list – JMET. Exams came and went and somehow I screwed ALL of them. CAT 97 percentile, XAT 99 percentile, JMET – 500 plus rank and similarly all. All but one – FMS. Had calls from both the courses and went to Delhi for the interview. MS GD was average, PI was also average. Then came the FT day. That time, people having both FMS calls did not have the process the same day, unlike today. Since I had become quite visible on PG, I met many familiar people. GD was excellent and PI was also good but FMS thought otherwise. My name did not figure in both the list, not even the waitlist. This was the very famous 1:1 ratio batch of FMS. One interesting thing about XAT. Had a 99.9 plus percent in both DI and QA but 86.80 or something in Verbal. Basically I missed the verbal cut-off by 0.01 percent. With two years work experience already in my kitty and entering the third year, the GMAT option was also available (just hang on for a bit, the other IIM is coming now). In April, I registered for a June date for my GMAT and also joined TIME classes for CAT preparation. I knew it was NOW or NEVER. PG was a really big help for GMAT and after 3 months of study, I scored a 710. This is where I found the other IIM which stands for Indian IT Male. Most of the applicants from India fall in this category and no wonder it is really difficult to get in US B-Schools when you are an IIM .Had plans to apply to only three schools – ISB,
CMU Tepper and Goizueta Emory. The application process in these is a pain but in the end, it is quite insightful. One comes to know so much about oneself . Coupled with this, I was attending classes in TIME and working too. Somehow, I stuck the right chord in Mocks and was posting on PG big time. I earned the label of "sophisticated spammer" which I still disagree to. I am not and never was a spammer.
October, November 2005 – Had interview calls from all three schools – ISB, Tepper and Goizueta. CAT day was also coming. I was done with my ISB interview (which was very very arbit) and Tepper interview over phone before CAT. The last interview was scheduled in Mumbai in December as a part of the World MBA Tour. Both the US B-School interviews were pretty straightforward – Why MBA, strengths, weakness etc.!
CAT No. 6: Year 2006 in November
The five options paper for CAT, man I had seen it all. Started with Quant and killed it. Moved to the most arbit verbal paper ever and then did DI. When the solutions came in the evening, verbal had left me hanging, well almost. By the way, SP Jain was out of the hit list.
Dec 2006 – Jan 2007 –> Worst time of my life. Rejects from ISB, Tepper and Goizueta. CAT result out. 100 percentile in QA, 95 in DI and 82 in verbal. It was over for me. With just 5 days to go for XAT, I had no option but to give it my best. It was verbal and verbal and just more verbal.7th Jan, 2007 – In the XAT paper itself, I knew that finally verbal is cracked. Meanwhile, JMET had given me a rank of 39 and calls from IIT B, D and KGP were on. MDI also found me suitable for college, even NITIE thought the same.!20th Jan,
2007 – The evening before the FMS paper. Just went online for something and saw the XL result link. With all my confidence, I punched in my roll number and saw the line "Sorry…." WTF !!!! how how how, then clicked on the scorecard link. QA 99 something, Verbal 95.42, scorecard is not over yet, DI 77 percentile This was just not possible, gave up all hope of MBA.Took the FMS exam and also prepared for the
upcoming GDs and PIs. Then someone advised me about the MAT route to JBIMS and MH-CET was
also added on the exam taking list. MAT went awesome and 99.99 percentile with a composite score of 800 ensured that JBIMS was there now.
All the interviews came one by one and I attended all of them. Some in Mumbai, some in Delhi, GOD! it was maddening. Filling forms, carrying the requisite stuff etc was quite arduous.!Finally came the news I was waiting to hear all my life.13th March, 2007 2230 hrs. A friend of mine called from FMS and here it was – WL 1. FMS it was. MS was WL 7. By the way, I attended my MDI and IITB interviews after my FMS convert. Though, people advised me against it but they had taken a lot of my hard earned money so I decided to take them.!Well, in the end, I had all converts – FMS (both), JBIMS, IITs (all 3), MDI and NITIE. It was
Delhi again for me. I resigned from my job and then decided to utilize my time by teaching in TIME. This is where ARKSS Sir (ARKS Srinivas, TIME Director, Mumbai) said to me, "Amit, CAT ek baar aur likh de." (Amit, please write the CAT once more for me) I was like no, never sir. I was tired of writing it. We left it there.!July came and I was in here – FMS. Met some of the sharpest people in the country and some awesome faculty. After one month of grilling, I called up ARKSS and told him that FMS is not chill at all. And people, I am serious. During that phone call, again the CAT thing came up and he said "Mere liye likh de."
(Please write it for me). I told him I can't do it now anymore, no time to study and all. He somehow convinced me to fill the form and I did it. Just filled the form and no preparation. No test series. There was no time in FMS. Initial work there, then summers, then exams everything was packed. And whatever time I had in life, I ensured that I sleep well.
CAT No. 7: Year 2007 in November
CAT was on the 18th and our first semester exams got over on the 15th evening. 15th and 16th were spent in chilling out in life and 17th was taken away by room cleaning. The only sane thing I did on 17th was sleeping at 2230 hours. Next day, I went to the exam centre which was nearby to the hostel, thankfully. From there, I called ARKSS again and told him that I still don't know why I am doing this. Finally, the paper started and it was exciting to do Math after so many months. Did QA, then Verbal and finally DI. Came back to the room and slept. In the evening, got up and checked the score. QA and DI were fine but as always a 20 in
verbal according to TIME keys. My score varied from 15 to 25 depending on institute keys. In either case, I was not clearing cut-off for verbal according to any of the institutes. So, it was over.! Life moved on, then came the day of the results. However bad one performs, there is always a desire to check the result (ok, I have it. ) The link given on the CAT IIM site was not working from the hostel. Then I came to know about the result by SMS thing. I SMSed and received the following reply.!QA (percentile) 99.98 with a score of 70!DI (percentile) 99.97 with a score of 76!Verbal (percentile) 96.40 with a score of 30!OA (percentile) 99.99 with a score of 176!YES YES YES I HAVE CRACKED IT !!! Calls started coming in and had all 6 calls. I was elated. But then, I had another problem. What will I say in the interview. FMS is awesome, why should one leave it. I had no clue what to do. The interview schedule came and the forms too. Took a lot of help from ARKSS for the same and prepared for the interview. I knew what to prepare – MBA academics and why chuck FMS for an IIM.!The first interview was IIML. A pretty decent GD and average PI. Next was IIM K. An average GD and bad PI. Indore was next but had a very important class to attend in FMS so
decided against it. By the way, both K and L asked about FMS.!The Big One was next – Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. And man, I was nervous. The essay was fine and PI was a dream one. They just could not believe that someone wants to leave FMS and come to IIM A. I think I did a pretty decent job there and rest of the questions varied from work experience to MBA Academics to general stuff in life.!IIM Calcutta was next. A decent case study discussion followed by stress interview. Was asked Maths, Sub Prime, Telecom War, Quiz, FMS and everything.! Bangalore was the last one to be held. The date clashed with my second semester exams of FMS and it must have taken like 10,000 calls to them to get it shifted. Finally, it was shifted to the evening slot of the same day with my exam in the morning and another exam the next morning and interview sandwiched in between. The case study was the Scrablous one and the group was
quite decent in discussing the stuff. I was last to be interviewed. It was HORRIBLE. It was so so so bad
that they would have left a seat vacant in the college rather than taking me.!With interviews over, summer internship was something which was coming up. But, Supreme Court had other plans. I was also a part of the waiting pain but had no window to vent out the frustration because it was a secret I wanted to keep. By the way, my FMS classmates came to know about it somehow in January itself. I know who did it but have not done anything to that person. But I still have time to do it.!May 1 was about to dawn, I slept without much
tension in life. Was woken at 7 a.m. by a friend's call informing me about IIM B results being out. I checked and as expected, did not get through. I had to go the office and was on my way. Meanwhile, another friend called me and told me to check the WL of IIMB. He checked for me and no; I was not there, as expected though.! I reached office and realized that Wi-Fi was not working on my laptop (Murphy’s Law at its best). I went to IT guys and they needed "some" time to fix it. Just then, another person called me to tell me about IIMC results being out. I sat on the IT guys head as I wanted my laptop back up and running. After 20- 25 minutes of patience, laptop was handed back to me. !First thing I did was, checking the IIMC result. Opened the link, entered my details; my heart was beating fast as never before. And there it was. CONGRATULATIONS!!! Just could not believe it. Tears of joy tricked down my eyes I was IN. FINALLY IN!!!!! Got through L and K too but surprisingly A ditched me. But no issues…JOKA I AM COMING!I want to clarify two things regarding which I have been receiving a lot of queries.
1. Is FMS not good? - People, it is an awesome college; I just took CAT for the heck of it and my
stay in FMS had nothing to do with it. So, please don’t get me wrong here. Go ahead and join
without batting an eyelid.
2. Justifying interview panel about leaving FMS and going to IIM – The answer was a very planned out one and was structured in a way so that no cross questioning was possible, thanks to ARKS Srinivas sir again.! Some of the quotes which I had heard over so many years are really true!1.Patience pays!
2. Efforts never go waste!
3. Samay se pehle aur kismet se zyada kuch nahin milta and the likes. (No one gets anything before the
right time and more than what destiny has to offer.)
But my personal favourite is the one which my cousin said once she heard the result – "Finally, CAT ki aatma ko shanti mili" (The soul of CAT will finally rest in peace).
Showing posts with label Success Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Success Stories. Show all posts
Monday, August 31, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Success Srories 2 (Motivational and Real Stories of CAT Success)
Anupam Majumdar, IIM Bangalore, Batch
of 2006-2008
PaGaLGuY Username: anupam will return
The story of an average guy who dared to dream
BIG!
I was never interested in CAT. In my Engineering days at Institute of Information Technology,
Calcutta (IIIT-C), I always aspired to be an IT nerd or should I say programming Geek! I’d my eyes on GRE. The trend then was work under a set of distinguished Professors, take the GRE when you are fully prepared, apply to the US Universities and then get a big chunk off your expenses using those coveted recommendations. My target was no different. But then what drove me to CAT ?
I found some of my classmates glued to IMS/T.I.M.E material right there in the second
year. Holla ! what was that?and what exactly was CAT ?
One of them replied: you don't know CAT ? ( with a big frown on his face! ) CAT is supposed to be an extremely tough exam (realized later, CAT’s nothing but an extremely hyped test). You crack it and you make your way to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Managements. Wow. Sounds attractive but why the hell should I pursue it ? After all, I always
wanted to become an IT nerd! My NDA dreams still disturb me…
I always wanted to be in the Air force. I knew being the only child of my parents I would be
discouraged, but what the heck. I decided to take extreme steps..
When I was in the 11th standard, I purchased the NDA (National Defense Academy) form, appeared for the test, got selected and was called for an SSB
interview for the Indian Air force at Dehradun. Went there, aced and got selected! And all these without caring to inform my parents!
Gosh! When the final call letter came, I got the bashing of my life. And for the first time in my life I cried. This is what I wanted to be.
Coming back to CAT. In the third year of Engineering we had to do a summer internship in
an organization. I’d offers from Price Water House Coopers and Tata Consultancy Service
Limited ( well wasn’t a Limited then) and was very sure to do it from PWC. But one of my pals came to my room one lovely evening and told me.. “Hey, ditch PWC, we’re going to IIM A!”
My reply : “IIM A? pagal hai kya ? what am I supposed to gain from there? I need corporate not
IIM exposure” Somehow this pal of mine convinced me to ditch the corporate offers and join him. So here we went. Come June'03 and we were on our way to the
Mecca of Management!
All it takes is just 2 months. No more. I still remember my first reactions when I stood
right in front of IIM A. The reaction of a “wow” on my lips and an “awe” in my belly.
The next two months were breath taking. Me and my pal were put up in one of the dorms of IIM
A.The work load was extreme to say the least, but fun never deserted us. I took my time to make a lot of wonderful acquaintances there. I saw people running with sandwiches clubbed in their mouths and hands in their zips; trying to zip the last thing before entering the classrooms.
Aw! what was this?
“We’ve a surprise test now, will catch u later” was the reaction. I was dumbfounded. The next 15-20 days, I made it sure to take some time out of my work and observe the life of an MBA student, and the results were tempting!
The two months at IIM A were good enough to motivate me for CAT. Now, since I’d to do
something filmy, I went to a rock ( they call it the CEO’s rock primarily because most of the IIM A junta sits there and sips tea ), touched the rock and promised to crack CAT! (To be very specific I promised to return to IIM A; only this time as a Post Graduate Program (PGP) student)
My first MOCK. Quant + DI are my strengths!
Motivated, I returned to IIIT-C. This time with a determination to crack the CAT. Now what was the first thing to do? Take some material and start over? Nah. I decided to follow what IMS would ask us to follow.
So, one fine Sunday morning I set off for the nearest IMS center to take the preliminary test. The test was modeled on the pattern of CAT 2002, and I spent one hour with Quantitative Aptitude and the next one hour with DI/LR.
"2 hours up. Now Students please calculate your scores and let us know. Please note at this stage
even if it’s a 20 you should be glad" was the announcement.
10-13 people took the test and their score hovered around the 15-25 mark. I calculated my score. It was an encouraging 44.75 ( with a negative marking of 0.25 ). “Wow,” remarked the counselor,
"did u take CAT before?". “NO “ I said with a broad smile. Oh boy, was I to crack CAT without any preparation?
The counselor asked my sectional breaks:
I replied : 23.50 in Quant and 21.25 in DI. The smile on her face trimmed down to a frown. “What about English?"
“English. why the hell should I go for English when I can score in Quant/DI ?"
What followed was a hoard of laughter (and it still rings!) Never had I felt so embarrassed before! The counselor explained to me that in CAT I need to perform equally well in all three sections; only then will I be eligible for the IIMs..
Afflicted and determined. I returned home.
CAT’03 : The prelude to my CAT expedition.
I enrolled for the IMS Simcat that year. Since I started preparing on August ’03, I had had very
little time to go through the basics. Honestly speaking I touched nothing of Quant/Di. The only
thing which I worked on was RCs and a bit of vocabulary and grammar.’
I never performed excellently in my mocks, but I was consistent. I usually hovered around the 97 to 98 percentile and could clear the cutoffs only on 2 occasions out of 8! (thanx to a section they call verbal ability! )
Then comes D-day and with it Goosebumps, henpicks, turkeysnippet and everything else.
The paper was given to us, the first thing I did was to smell it! At 11:00 am sharp, the invigilator said
“START”.
11:35 am and I was still stuck with verbal ability. Would you believe it? didn’t touch a single RC by then. I could sense sweat everywhere. 12:00 pm done with verbal ability and one RC (so
much for English & reading speed). With one hour left I had two sections but the best part was, they were my strengths.
12:30 pm done with DI – attempted 26 questions.
1:00 pm done with Quant – attempted 25
questions.
I quickly checked my attempts : 26 + 25 + 32
(English) = 83 attempts!
With a feeling not so good. I made my way back to my hostel. Was disappointed for not performing well in English. As soon as I reached my common room, someone came shouting : “CAT’03 stands canceled, thanks to Ranjit Don"
Pagalguy.com : another forum on the wall ?
I knew God won’t give me any better chance than this. Here I screw CAT and the test stands canceled
what more can I ask?
I have this habit of surfing the net during my free time and on one such occasion I bumped into an interesting forum named www.pagalguy.com The name struck me. 'Pagalguy', sounds cool, maybe some resemblance. "Let me check this", I thought And what did I find there? with some 400-500 odd members, here we had an MBA forum which discussed almost everything under the sun! whoa!
that’s my cake!
I found Gods like philiptj (100 percentiler), puneet(100 percentiler) and many more who posted
on the forum. Now I needed to jump in. What was the first thing? well create an ID and register.
So here it went: My first id on pg.com :
vision_mission
I used to spend most of my time reading about how PaGaLGuy.com was created. (thanks to Allwin), CAT’03 scores, strategies. Slowly I started getting involved into a lovely community. It was so much fun to take a mock and post your scores and analysis; and the interaction was of high quality.
Then we had wonderful threads where we usually had heated discussions. PG.com was a part of life now.
CAT’03 : the retake
“I may fail once, now that God’s given me an opportunity, let me make best use of it.”
These were the words I said to myself when I entered the exam hall.
11:00 am sharp we started answering. I discover Quants/DI was tougher than the previous time
while English looked the same!
11:25 was still stuck with verbal ability. "What the hell, was I going to repeat the same performance again?" “YES” I did!. I repeated the same
performance.
11:55 pm done with English ( full VA and two RCs!) with just 65 minutes at hand, somehow I made hay of the other two sections. My attempts : 21 (Quant)
+ 27(DI) + 34(English) = 82 and another performance to crib!
As soon as I left the exam hall. I could hear people shouting: “I attempted 105, arrey I 110 and so on”.
I knew I hadn’t done well! With a lot of courage I calculated my score later
that evening :
Quant: 14
DI : 21
English : 14.33
Overall: 49.33
All coaching institutes came up with their analysis with cutoffs at a strict 58 plus for at least one IIM ( IMS went to extremes declaring 78 plus for at least
one IIM call).
That night I wept. All my aspiration were going down and to add to my woes, I was so confident
that I had skipped the placements at my institute.
SP Jain & MDI to the rescue
97.33 (99.40 in DI, 96 in Quants and 78 in English) was bad. I mean pretty bad considering I’d
my eyes on the IIMs. However I got calls from MDI and SP Jain. I attended the interviews since I’d applied to them. I was elated to know that I could make it to the merit lists of SPJ and MDI.
For a few moments I let go of my IIM aspirations, first attempt at CAT and I could get into two of the best institutes in the country. Wasn’t it an
achievement?
That evening, I called my pals at IIM A and informed them of my results. They were happy but
one of them said, “Good. But don’t u think you can give CAT another short? Remember your promise”
I soon realized my promise. All my joy was out in seconds. I knew I’d a mission to accomplish.
anupam will return : boy! what a strange Id? Those days we had this ‘points’ concept on PG
wherein you could add colours or sparkles to your online profile on PaGaLGuY in exchange of points.
The points were generally earned and we had some generous divas who actually donated them too! One could also change his user id in exchange for
3000 points and this is exactly what I did.
Overnight vision_mission vowed to return for
CAT’04. This time as: anupam will return!
Final year in engineering , the first thing I wanted to do was to get placed and then prepare for CAT. I needed a company which could offer me a cool life.
After some analysis I chose TCS.
I also felt the need to network, form study groups and go on with the preparation. Being in Calcutta I knew very few people from PG there. Most of my
time I’d to be online on PG trying my hands at the Quant threads/ verbal ability sections.
One day I come across Praveen Agarwal (whocarez) a Pgite preparing for CAT’04. The platform was set..
I enrolled for the T.I.M.E AIMCATs this time. I felt the need to enroll for another Mock CAT series and hence enrolled for CL too.
Every Sunday we had AIMCATs and every Monday whocarez and I used to meet and spend the next three to four hours analyzing the paper at Barista or CCD outlets. They issued us regular
membership coupons for our cinematic visits! This group study thing worked. My performance in the Mocks skyrocketed. The first 8 AIMCATs, I got into the top 100 on six occasions (and cleared the cutoffs every time!)
Consistency is the key to success and I was proving it again and again!
18 mocks in T.I.M.E : I got into the top 100 on 11 occasions.
10 mocks in CL : I got outside the top 100 only once!
I was pretty sure I was going to make it BIG this time. At nights I used to sleep and imagine the
same Rock at IIM A. I knew I was getting close to my dreams.
I was soon placed at TCS and had to go to Trivandrum for my initial learning program. Ten
days into my training (in October), one night I got a call from my mother: My father was ill and I would have to rush back home.
CAT’04: Turbulent times…
My father was serious but thanks to the almighty he was recovering. CAT had slipped out of my mind for some time.
12th November: I realized I’d to rush to Khozikode for my CAT. After all I’d spent two years preparing for it.15th November, I made my way to the spice
capital of India.
CAT’04 had this one and two markers which tested our on the spot judgment skills as well. I remember the day. It was one of the worst days of my life.
I always thought DI and Quant were my strengths.
CAT’04 proved me wrong!
This time I completed my verbal ability in 20 minutes and went on to attack DI ( supposedly my
strength! 99.40 in CAT’03). But alas! What is this DI? I misread a one-marker caselet in DI and spent 10 minutes there without attempting a single question. The pressure was mounting and I had attempted a paltry eight or nine questions in 30 minutes. I was sweating. Never ever in my life had I come under so much pressure in a comfort section.
I cursed T.I.M.E/CL/IMS for not introducing me to such a pattern! But I had to attempt questions, curses could come later on.
Jittered, I moved to Quants. The relatively easy Quant section helped me cool down my nerves.
Once Quants was done I moved to RCs and this time completed three RCs in 25 minutes. With just ten minutes remaining, I moved back to DI. The next 10 minutes were nightmarish, couldn’t think of a strategy to attempt the DI section. “Shame on me," I said under my breath.
1:00 pm : “STOP” was the call. I knew I’d come up
with another award winning performance!
Pune gets a son. I a family
After my Initial learning program at TCS, I was asked to move to Pune. A new city, new friends,a new environment were all I needed for a recharge. I resolved to continue with the combined study group formula. With whocarez getting into IIM C, I knew this formula was a sure success. The need of the hour were some like minded people.
The first person whom I met in Pune was Sachin Kadam (Govi ). A guy who by appearance looked the academic types. "Wow seems I’m going to enjoy some serious gyan session now," I thought.
Together we penned down a plan to form a study group. The way to find people would be through a Pune PG meet.I heard from Govi that Pune PG meets were usually dull with very few people turning up every time. We resolved to change things this time. So the stage was set for the first ever Pune PG meet of 2005!
At the same time I got a PM from someone named
Aarav (Rahul Sharma).
“Aarav.. hmm.. who the hell’s he?". I remember coming across so many PGites but Aarav? Had
never even heard an 'A' of him before. The Mystery shot off when we met. I was sitting in
Barista with the legendary Ghulam (a.k.a Aarav ) a person whom I respected ( and still do) for his moral and ethical values (not to mention his
Quant).
The first Pune PG meet was a big success and helped me get in touch with some really serious
aspirants : Govi, itsrahul, Catalytic, Jackal,Subu, Aarav and I.
I got the family that I had always wanted!
Way to CAT’05! Fun, frolic and a friendship to
cherish
Pune PG meets became the routine of the day. Every week we had a PG meet with most of the
regulars turning up and everytime we had this burst of newbies who seldom came the next time!
The first All India PG meet was held in Essel World in Mumbai. Pune was well represented by
Manpreet, Aarav and I. It was a wonderful meet! I met the likes of Allwyn(pagalguy), Apurv, Subu (urMad), Sowmya (Simba) amongst the biggies..
I made two new friends : Monil (reachmonil) and Rohit (estranged_gnrs).
I was impressed by Monil & Rohit. Their attitude, positive to the core. With a gleam of determination in their eyes I could feel these ones are for the big future!
After coming back to Pune, we had a meet after every MockCAT, with Aarav’s home being the
preferred destination; thanks to his bachelorhood and location advantage.
Tied up by a hectic schedule, Sachin made it a point to pay us a visit whenever possible while
itsrahul was at his very best with accuracy in mocks. Both Govi and itsrahul are very similar
when it comes to demeanor. They were both the corporate types.
And it was fun! Studying at Aarav’s house till late in the evenings, rounding that off with a movie and then back again. It was a full night out with INMO
problems!
Hyderabad chapter: A geek and a clown meets...
well... another clown!
Office front my work load was increasing and I’d to sacrifice my appraisals for my CAT aspirations. I was soon shifted to a new assignment which
required more than hard labor. My new assignment forced me to land up in
Hyderabad. My formula had to continue there too; thus I bumped into a geek (Aditya aka HAHAHA) and a clown (anandv).
It was a lot of learning from the two; be it attempting five RCs in 25 minutes or attempting
MockCATs in 90 minutes! Competition was something these two guys taught me. Not to forget
those analysis sessions when all of a sudden the clown would crack the weirdest of PJs and bring
down the mood of the discussion to more bearable levels.
CAT’05 : The grand finale.
I wasn’t more prepared this time. Realistically speaking, I was more mentally strong this time. I
knew lady luck had been eluding me for quite sometime but if I remained patient and persevered, my goal was not far away.
The moment I saw it was a 90 question paper, I got this in my mind that the paper would be slightly tougher than the previous ones and the focus
needed to be on accuracy.
I always started off with English (as this was not only my weakest section but also the section where I marked more number of bubbles in the least time), I gave some 42-45 mins to English and attempted questions worth 41 marks. I did have this feeling that I may not end up with a
satisfactory score in this section but thanks to my pathetic accuracy (ended up with a net score of 17.66) I decided the only way out for me was to attempt more number of questions.(People strong in English will surely come up with better methods
of tackling this section).
Next, I came to my strength: Quantitative Aptitude. I realized I had more scoring opportunities in the two markers, hence gave 20 minutes to the two markers and attempted six of them. The next ten minutes were spent with the one markers where I attempted just six questions.
My net score in quants in 30 minutes was 15.33
(got one two-marker wrong).
Now I had 45 minutes in my hand. I decided to move on to my next strong section: DI and LR, but for a moment thought I needed a better score in English, hence moved back to Verbal. With almost all questions answered in verbal, I found I hadn't answered the Derrida RC (my BIGGEST mistake!). I spent some 6-7 minutes on the RC and to my horror found none of the questions answerable! I decided to mark one answer (went for a blind fluke!
: mistake number 2). I realised I'd around 35-36 minutes left for DI. CAT'04 I was murdered in DI.. for a moment I thought I was going to repeat that performance yet again. I again found that there were one markers and two markers present here.. Although the two markers were more scoring, I decided to attempt the one markers first ( to give me bits of confidence). Spent some ten minutes there and attempted questions worth seven marks.Next, I moved to the two markers. Since I had 25 minutes left, I first attacked the tennis caselet and finished it off in ten minutes. Next I went to the Olympic caselet, spent some three to four odd minutes there, but couldn't make much sense of it. For a moment, I made up my mind to take my chances and so some guesswork but Holla! CAT'04 performance's haunted spirit stopped me from doing so. Next went to the UP/Bihar caselet and cracked it just in time.
My net score in DI was 15.33
I knew I’d not done as well as I wanted it to be.. Frustrated.. I wrote down a suicide note. A note
which made me famous.
The response to that note was tremendous, even today when I sit back and remember those days, I get emotional.
2nd January,2006 - I end up with BLACKI. Alas lady luck smiled.. The results were declared at 12:00 am on 2nd January. I didn’t have the guts to check my results, the man on mission – Aarav ( the man with golden lips ) informed me of my calls.
I was overjoyed, punched the air a la Brett Lee, but alas my joy was short lived. Most of my study mates (Aarav, Govi, Monil, rohit,,teesra) couldn't make it to the next stage.
Next comes Vengeance: The GD/PI journey
It was sheer fun, waking up at 5:30 in the morning, strolling my way across Banjara hills and waiting for Aditya (HAHAHA) and his bike. He seldom came
on time.
The two of us used to go for T.I.M.E classes at Secunderabad. Attended GD sessions and
analysed our performance while returning. That was good!
Refugee at Mumbai!
Networking has a lot of merit and refugeeing at estranged_gnr’s place proved it right!
For all my five interviews I must admit I troubled Rohit and Vijay (teesra_banda) with food, internet and sleep; Beers must have enjoyed those paranthaas, not to mention Aryak!
“I thought Chicken pox affects only kids” says shrikanthk well I agree I’m an exception and heard just then, kool’s the second exception!
11th April,2006 : I rested on my hospital bed, away from PG.com with every hour. I grew restless.
Results tomorrow. "Will my fate be sealed tomorrow? Do I have the courage to contest for one
more year?"
That night I got a phone call from Aarav, a typical Rahul Sharma type: “Hello Sir, kya hala chaal hai ?”("Hello sir, How are you?")
I knew this was one guy who made me feel good for the first time in three years. I knew he had another mission.
“Man on a mission, 12th april kal hai and you are going to let me know my results. No matter what happens, good/bad, you are calling me and informing me”
Man on mission : Aye sir.. as you wish!
Redemption or .. The Return!
12th April,2006.. I still lay in my hospital cabin..
Aarav’s call wakes me up at 12:06 am..
“Congratulations Sir, you’ve done it! IIM C both PGDM & PGDCM”
I woke up. Was it a dream? No, it wasn’t. My CAT journey had ended. I couldn’t believe it!
Joy and tears compounded me. Another Brett Lee puncho!
Morning, Aarav came up with the remaining results: that of B, L , I and K. My story with CAT
comes to an abrupt end!.. but I shall post more pretty soon..
PGites whom I’ve not yet mentioned but owe a
lot to
Vahgar : For all the support you gave to me in
torrid times. You stood by me when it mattered the
most!
Dr.Watson : Alas, very few people would be lucky to
have roomies like you. You sacrificed a lot for me.
Still remember those days when I would be
studying in my room and you would do everything
in this world to make me comfortable.
Somneel : You just rock dude, if I’ve learnt
perseverance, it’s from you. Now rock IIM C and
Merryl Lynch!
estranged_gnrs : (I agree this one is a repeatition!)
Thanx for all those days when I was put up as a
Refugee at your place. You rock dude.
teesra_banda : My Indian Idol , a person who got
selected in IIM L thrice and rejected it thrice. You
are for the Big one Vijay. Keep rocking!
Rest of PG.com : I still read my suicide note, a note
which arguably made me famous on PG.com. I can
never forget the amount of love and support you
gave me. You guys deserve the best in life! All the
best.
-Vengeance (once named awr)
PGPM Batch of 2006-08,
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.
of 2006-2008
PaGaLGuY Username: anupam will return
The story of an average guy who dared to dream
BIG!
I was never interested in CAT. In my Engineering days at Institute of Information Technology,
Calcutta (IIIT-C), I always aspired to be an IT nerd or should I say programming Geek! I’d my eyes on GRE. The trend then was work under a set of distinguished Professors, take the GRE when you are fully prepared, apply to the US Universities and then get a big chunk off your expenses using those coveted recommendations. My target was no different. But then what drove me to CAT ?
I found some of my classmates glued to IMS/T.I.M.E material right there in the second
year. Holla ! what was that?and what exactly was CAT ?
One of them replied: you don't know CAT ? ( with a big frown on his face! ) CAT is supposed to be an extremely tough exam (realized later, CAT’s nothing but an extremely hyped test). You crack it and you make your way to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Managements. Wow. Sounds attractive but why the hell should I pursue it ? After all, I always
wanted to become an IT nerd! My NDA dreams still disturb me…
I always wanted to be in the Air force. I knew being the only child of my parents I would be
discouraged, but what the heck. I decided to take extreme steps..
When I was in the 11th standard, I purchased the NDA (National Defense Academy) form, appeared for the test, got selected and was called for an SSB
interview for the Indian Air force at Dehradun. Went there, aced and got selected! And all these without caring to inform my parents!
Gosh! When the final call letter came, I got the bashing of my life. And for the first time in my life I cried. This is what I wanted to be.
Coming back to CAT. In the third year of Engineering we had to do a summer internship in
an organization. I’d offers from Price Water House Coopers and Tata Consultancy Service
Limited ( well wasn’t a Limited then) and was very sure to do it from PWC. But one of my pals came to my room one lovely evening and told me.. “Hey, ditch PWC, we’re going to IIM A!”
My reply : “IIM A? pagal hai kya ? what am I supposed to gain from there? I need corporate not
IIM exposure” Somehow this pal of mine convinced me to ditch the corporate offers and join him. So here we went. Come June'03 and we were on our way to the
Mecca of Management!
All it takes is just 2 months. No more. I still remember my first reactions when I stood
right in front of IIM A. The reaction of a “wow” on my lips and an “awe” in my belly.
The next two months were breath taking. Me and my pal were put up in one of the dorms of IIM
A.The work load was extreme to say the least, but fun never deserted us. I took my time to make a lot of wonderful acquaintances there. I saw people running with sandwiches clubbed in their mouths and hands in their zips; trying to zip the last thing before entering the classrooms.
Aw! what was this?
“We’ve a surprise test now, will catch u later” was the reaction. I was dumbfounded. The next 15-20 days, I made it sure to take some time out of my work and observe the life of an MBA student, and the results were tempting!
The two months at IIM A were good enough to motivate me for CAT. Now, since I’d to do
something filmy, I went to a rock ( they call it the CEO’s rock primarily because most of the IIM A junta sits there and sips tea ), touched the rock and promised to crack CAT! (To be very specific I promised to return to IIM A; only this time as a Post Graduate Program (PGP) student)
My first MOCK. Quant + DI are my strengths!
Motivated, I returned to IIIT-C. This time with a determination to crack the CAT. Now what was the first thing to do? Take some material and start over? Nah. I decided to follow what IMS would ask us to follow.
So, one fine Sunday morning I set off for the nearest IMS center to take the preliminary test. The test was modeled on the pattern of CAT 2002, and I spent one hour with Quantitative Aptitude and the next one hour with DI/LR.
"2 hours up. Now Students please calculate your scores and let us know. Please note at this stage
even if it’s a 20 you should be glad" was the announcement.
10-13 people took the test and their score hovered around the 15-25 mark. I calculated my score. It was an encouraging 44.75 ( with a negative marking of 0.25 ). “Wow,” remarked the counselor,
"did u take CAT before?". “NO “ I said with a broad smile. Oh boy, was I to crack CAT without any preparation?
The counselor asked my sectional breaks:
I replied : 23.50 in Quant and 21.25 in DI. The smile on her face trimmed down to a frown. “What about English?"
“English. why the hell should I go for English when I can score in Quant/DI ?"
What followed was a hoard of laughter (and it still rings!) Never had I felt so embarrassed before! The counselor explained to me that in CAT I need to perform equally well in all three sections; only then will I be eligible for the IIMs..
Afflicted and determined. I returned home.
CAT’03 : The prelude to my CAT expedition.
I enrolled for the IMS Simcat that year. Since I started preparing on August ’03, I had had very
little time to go through the basics. Honestly speaking I touched nothing of Quant/Di. The only
thing which I worked on was RCs and a bit of vocabulary and grammar.’
I never performed excellently in my mocks, but I was consistent. I usually hovered around the 97 to 98 percentile and could clear the cutoffs only on 2 occasions out of 8! (thanx to a section they call verbal ability! )
Then comes D-day and with it Goosebumps, henpicks, turkeysnippet and everything else.
The paper was given to us, the first thing I did was to smell it! At 11:00 am sharp, the invigilator said
“START”.
11:35 am and I was still stuck with verbal ability. Would you believe it? didn’t touch a single RC by then. I could sense sweat everywhere. 12:00 pm done with verbal ability and one RC (so
much for English & reading speed). With one hour left I had two sections but the best part was, they were my strengths.
12:30 pm done with DI – attempted 26 questions.
1:00 pm done with Quant – attempted 25
questions.
I quickly checked my attempts : 26 + 25 + 32
(English) = 83 attempts!
With a feeling not so good. I made my way back to my hostel. Was disappointed for not performing well in English. As soon as I reached my common room, someone came shouting : “CAT’03 stands canceled, thanks to Ranjit Don"
Pagalguy.com : another forum on the wall ?
I knew God won’t give me any better chance than this. Here I screw CAT and the test stands canceled
what more can I ask?
I have this habit of surfing the net during my free time and on one such occasion I bumped into an interesting forum named www.pagalguy.com The name struck me. 'Pagalguy', sounds cool, maybe some resemblance. "Let me check this", I thought And what did I find there? with some 400-500 odd members, here we had an MBA forum which discussed almost everything under the sun! whoa!
that’s my cake!
I found Gods like philiptj (100 percentiler), puneet(100 percentiler) and many more who posted
on the forum. Now I needed to jump in. What was the first thing? well create an ID and register.
So here it went: My first id on pg.com :
vision_mission
I used to spend most of my time reading about how PaGaLGuy.com was created. (thanks to Allwin), CAT’03 scores, strategies. Slowly I started getting involved into a lovely community. It was so much fun to take a mock and post your scores and analysis; and the interaction was of high quality.
Then we had wonderful threads where we usually had heated discussions. PG.com was a part of life now.
CAT’03 : the retake
“I may fail once, now that God’s given me an opportunity, let me make best use of it.”
These were the words I said to myself when I entered the exam hall.
11:00 am sharp we started answering. I discover Quants/DI was tougher than the previous time
while English looked the same!
11:25 was still stuck with verbal ability. "What the hell, was I going to repeat the same performance again?" “YES” I did!. I repeated the same
performance.
11:55 pm done with English ( full VA and two RCs!) with just 65 minutes at hand, somehow I made hay of the other two sections. My attempts : 21 (Quant)
+ 27(DI) + 34(English) = 82 and another performance to crib!
As soon as I left the exam hall. I could hear people shouting: “I attempted 105, arrey I 110 and so on”.
I knew I hadn’t done well! With a lot of courage I calculated my score later
that evening :
Quant: 14
DI : 21
English : 14.33
Overall: 49.33
All coaching institutes came up with their analysis with cutoffs at a strict 58 plus for at least one IIM ( IMS went to extremes declaring 78 plus for at least
one IIM call).
That night I wept. All my aspiration were going down and to add to my woes, I was so confident
that I had skipped the placements at my institute.
SP Jain & MDI to the rescue
97.33 (99.40 in DI, 96 in Quants and 78 in English) was bad. I mean pretty bad considering I’d
my eyes on the IIMs. However I got calls from MDI and SP Jain. I attended the interviews since I’d applied to them. I was elated to know that I could make it to the merit lists of SPJ and MDI.
For a few moments I let go of my IIM aspirations, first attempt at CAT and I could get into two of the best institutes in the country. Wasn’t it an
achievement?
That evening, I called my pals at IIM A and informed them of my results. They were happy but
one of them said, “Good. But don’t u think you can give CAT another short? Remember your promise”
I soon realized my promise. All my joy was out in seconds. I knew I’d a mission to accomplish.
anupam will return : boy! what a strange Id? Those days we had this ‘points’ concept on PG
wherein you could add colours or sparkles to your online profile on PaGaLGuY in exchange of points.
The points were generally earned and we had some generous divas who actually donated them too! One could also change his user id in exchange for
3000 points and this is exactly what I did.
Overnight vision_mission vowed to return for
CAT’04. This time as: anupam will return!
Final year in engineering , the first thing I wanted to do was to get placed and then prepare for CAT. I needed a company which could offer me a cool life.
After some analysis I chose TCS.
I also felt the need to network, form study groups and go on with the preparation. Being in Calcutta I knew very few people from PG there. Most of my
time I’d to be online on PG trying my hands at the Quant threads/ verbal ability sections.
One day I come across Praveen Agarwal (whocarez) a Pgite preparing for CAT’04. The platform was set..
I enrolled for the T.I.M.E AIMCATs this time. I felt the need to enroll for another Mock CAT series and hence enrolled for CL too.
Every Sunday we had AIMCATs and every Monday whocarez and I used to meet and spend the next three to four hours analyzing the paper at Barista or CCD outlets. They issued us regular
membership coupons for our cinematic visits! This group study thing worked. My performance in the Mocks skyrocketed. The first 8 AIMCATs, I got into the top 100 on six occasions (and cleared the cutoffs every time!)
Consistency is the key to success and I was proving it again and again!
18 mocks in T.I.M.E : I got into the top 100 on 11 occasions.
10 mocks in CL : I got outside the top 100 only once!
I was pretty sure I was going to make it BIG this time. At nights I used to sleep and imagine the
same Rock at IIM A. I knew I was getting close to my dreams.
I was soon placed at TCS and had to go to Trivandrum for my initial learning program. Ten
days into my training (in October), one night I got a call from my mother: My father was ill and I would have to rush back home.
CAT’04: Turbulent times…
My father was serious but thanks to the almighty he was recovering. CAT had slipped out of my mind for some time.
12th November: I realized I’d to rush to Khozikode for my CAT. After all I’d spent two years preparing for it.15th November, I made my way to the spice
capital of India.
CAT’04 had this one and two markers which tested our on the spot judgment skills as well. I remember the day. It was one of the worst days of my life.
I always thought DI and Quant were my strengths.
CAT’04 proved me wrong!
This time I completed my verbal ability in 20 minutes and went on to attack DI ( supposedly my
strength! 99.40 in CAT’03). But alas! What is this DI? I misread a one-marker caselet in DI and spent 10 minutes there without attempting a single question. The pressure was mounting and I had attempted a paltry eight or nine questions in 30 minutes. I was sweating. Never ever in my life had I come under so much pressure in a comfort section.
I cursed T.I.M.E/CL/IMS for not introducing me to such a pattern! But I had to attempt questions, curses could come later on.
Jittered, I moved to Quants. The relatively easy Quant section helped me cool down my nerves.
Once Quants was done I moved to RCs and this time completed three RCs in 25 minutes. With just ten minutes remaining, I moved back to DI. The next 10 minutes were nightmarish, couldn’t think of a strategy to attempt the DI section. “Shame on me," I said under my breath.
1:00 pm : “STOP” was the call. I knew I’d come up
with another award winning performance!
Pune gets a son. I a family
After my Initial learning program at TCS, I was asked to move to Pune. A new city, new friends,a new environment were all I needed for a recharge. I resolved to continue with the combined study group formula. With whocarez getting into IIM C, I knew this formula was a sure success. The need of the hour were some like minded people.
The first person whom I met in Pune was Sachin Kadam (Govi ). A guy who by appearance looked the academic types. "Wow seems I’m going to enjoy some serious gyan session now," I thought.
Together we penned down a plan to form a study group. The way to find people would be through a Pune PG meet.I heard from Govi that Pune PG meets were usually dull with very few people turning up every time. We resolved to change things this time. So the stage was set for the first ever Pune PG meet of 2005!
At the same time I got a PM from someone named
Aarav (Rahul Sharma).
“Aarav.. hmm.. who the hell’s he?". I remember coming across so many PGites but Aarav? Had
never even heard an 'A' of him before. The Mystery shot off when we met. I was sitting in
Barista with the legendary Ghulam (a.k.a Aarav ) a person whom I respected ( and still do) for his moral and ethical values (not to mention his
Quant).
The first Pune PG meet was a big success and helped me get in touch with some really serious
aspirants : Govi, itsrahul, Catalytic, Jackal,Subu, Aarav and I.
I got the family that I had always wanted!
Way to CAT’05! Fun, frolic and a friendship to
cherish
Pune PG meets became the routine of the day. Every week we had a PG meet with most of the
regulars turning up and everytime we had this burst of newbies who seldom came the next time!
The first All India PG meet was held in Essel World in Mumbai. Pune was well represented by
Manpreet, Aarav and I. It was a wonderful meet! I met the likes of Allwyn(pagalguy), Apurv, Subu (urMad), Sowmya (Simba) amongst the biggies..
I made two new friends : Monil (reachmonil) and Rohit (estranged_gnrs).
I was impressed by Monil & Rohit. Their attitude, positive to the core. With a gleam of determination in their eyes I could feel these ones are for the big future!
After coming back to Pune, we had a meet after every MockCAT, with Aarav’s home being the
preferred destination; thanks to his bachelorhood and location advantage.
Tied up by a hectic schedule, Sachin made it a point to pay us a visit whenever possible while
itsrahul was at his very best with accuracy in mocks. Both Govi and itsrahul are very similar
when it comes to demeanor. They were both the corporate types.
And it was fun! Studying at Aarav’s house till late in the evenings, rounding that off with a movie and then back again. It was a full night out with INMO
problems!
Hyderabad chapter: A geek and a clown meets...
well... another clown!
Office front my work load was increasing and I’d to sacrifice my appraisals for my CAT aspirations. I was soon shifted to a new assignment which
required more than hard labor. My new assignment forced me to land up in
Hyderabad. My formula had to continue there too; thus I bumped into a geek (Aditya aka HAHAHA) and a clown (anandv).
It was a lot of learning from the two; be it attempting five RCs in 25 minutes or attempting
MockCATs in 90 minutes! Competition was something these two guys taught me. Not to forget
those analysis sessions when all of a sudden the clown would crack the weirdest of PJs and bring
down the mood of the discussion to more bearable levels.
CAT’05 : The grand finale.
I wasn’t more prepared this time. Realistically speaking, I was more mentally strong this time. I
knew lady luck had been eluding me for quite sometime but if I remained patient and persevered, my goal was not far away.
The moment I saw it was a 90 question paper, I got this in my mind that the paper would be slightly tougher than the previous ones and the focus
needed to be on accuracy.
I always started off with English (as this was not only my weakest section but also the section where I marked more number of bubbles in the least time), I gave some 42-45 mins to English and attempted questions worth 41 marks. I did have this feeling that I may not end up with a
satisfactory score in this section but thanks to my pathetic accuracy (ended up with a net score of 17.66) I decided the only way out for me was to attempt more number of questions.(People strong in English will surely come up with better methods
of tackling this section).
Next, I came to my strength: Quantitative Aptitude. I realized I had more scoring opportunities in the two markers, hence gave 20 minutes to the two markers and attempted six of them. The next ten minutes were spent with the one markers where I attempted just six questions.
My net score in quants in 30 minutes was 15.33
(got one two-marker wrong).
Now I had 45 minutes in my hand. I decided to move on to my next strong section: DI and LR, but for a moment thought I needed a better score in English, hence moved back to Verbal. With almost all questions answered in verbal, I found I hadn't answered the Derrida RC (my BIGGEST mistake!). I spent some 6-7 minutes on the RC and to my horror found none of the questions answerable! I decided to mark one answer (went for a blind fluke!
: mistake number 2). I realised I'd around 35-36 minutes left for DI. CAT'04 I was murdered in DI.. for a moment I thought I was going to repeat that performance yet again. I again found that there were one markers and two markers present here.. Although the two markers were more scoring, I decided to attempt the one markers first ( to give me bits of confidence). Spent some ten minutes there and attempted questions worth seven marks.Next, I moved to the two markers. Since I had 25 minutes left, I first attacked the tennis caselet and finished it off in ten minutes. Next I went to the Olympic caselet, spent some three to four odd minutes there, but couldn't make much sense of it. For a moment, I made up my mind to take my chances and so some guesswork but Holla! CAT'04 performance's haunted spirit stopped me from doing so. Next went to the UP/Bihar caselet and cracked it just in time.
My net score in DI was 15.33
I knew I’d not done as well as I wanted it to be.. Frustrated.. I wrote down a suicide note. A note
which made me famous.
The response to that note was tremendous, even today when I sit back and remember those days, I get emotional.
2nd January,2006 - I end up with BLACKI. Alas lady luck smiled.. The results were declared at 12:00 am on 2nd January. I didn’t have the guts to check my results, the man on mission – Aarav ( the man with golden lips ) informed me of my calls.
I was overjoyed, punched the air a la Brett Lee, but alas my joy was short lived. Most of my study mates (Aarav, Govi, Monil, rohit,,teesra) couldn't make it to the next stage.
Next comes Vengeance: The GD/PI journey
It was sheer fun, waking up at 5:30 in the morning, strolling my way across Banjara hills and waiting for Aditya (HAHAHA) and his bike. He seldom came
on time.
The two of us used to go for T.I.M.E classes at Secunderabad. Attended GD sessions and
analysed our performance while returning. That was good!
Refugee at Mumbai!
Networking has a lot of merit and refugeeing at estranged_gnr’s place proved it right!
For all my five interviews I must admit I troubled Rohit and Vijay (teesra_banda) with food, internet and sleep; Beers must have enjoyed those paranthaas, not to mention Aryak!
“I thought Chicken pox affects only kids” says shrikanthk well I agree I’m an exception and heard just then, kool’s the second exception!
11th April,2006 : I rested on my hospital bed, away from PG.com with every hour. I grew restless.
Results tomorrow. "Will my fate be sealed tomorrow? Do I have the courage to contest for one
more year?"
That night I got a phone call from Aarav, a typical Rahul Sharma type: “Hello Sir, kya hala chaal hai ?”("Hello sir, How are you?")
I knew this was one guy who made me feel good for the first time in three years. I knew he had another mission.
“Man on a mission, 12th april kal hai and you are going to let me know my results. No matter what happens, good/bad, you are calling me and informing me”
Man on mission : Aye sir.. as you wish!
Redemption or .. The Return!
12th April,2006.. I still lay in my hospital cabin..
Aarav’s call wakes me up at 12:06 am..
“Congratulations Sir, you’ve done it! IIM C both PGDM & PGDCM”
I woke up. Was it a dream? No, it wasn’t. My CAT journey had ended. I couldn’t believe it!
Joy and tears compounded me. Another Brett Lee puncho!
Morning, Aarav came up with the remaining results: that of B, L , I and K. My story with CAT
comes to an abrupt end!.. but I shall post more pretty soon..
PGites whom I’ve not yet mentioned but owe a
lot to
Vahgar : For all the support you gave to me in
torrid times. You stood by me when it mattered the
most!
Dr.Watson : Alas, very few people would be lucky to
have roomies like you. You sacrificed a lot for me.
Still remember those days when I would be
studying in my room and you would do everything
in this world to make me comfortable.
Somneel : You just rock dude, if I’ve learnt
perseverance, it’s from you. Now rock IIM C and
Merryl Lynch!
estranged_gnrs : (I agree this one is a repeatition!)
Thanx for all those days when I was put up as a
Refugee at your place. You rock dude.
teesra_banda : My Indian Idol , a person who got
selected in IIM L thrice and rejected it thrice. You
are for the Big one Vijay. Keep rocking!
Rest of PG.com : I still read my suicide note, a note
which arguably made me famous on PG.com. I can
never forget the amount of love and support you
gave me. You guys deserve the best in life! All the
best.
-Vengeance (once named awr)
PGPM Batch of 2006-08,
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Sucess Stories: 1 (Motivational and Real Stories of CAT Success)
Purnachandra Rao Duggirala, IIM Indore,
Batch of 2004-06
PaGaLGuY Username: Chandoo
CAT 2007 percentile: 99.56
Blog: http://chandoo.org/wp/
Calls: IIM Bangalore, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Indore, IIFT
Delhi, MDI Gurgaon
Final converts: IIFT Delhi, IIM Indore, MDI Gurgaon
At last, I have completed this marathon post. It is
divided into several sub-sections to facilitate easy
reading. Hope it helps all CAT aspirants out there.
CAT 2002 and the Aftermath
During my engineering second year, I decided to
take the CAT. Basically, I didn’t know why I wanted
to go that way. But some reasons I could think of
were,
1. A very decent pay Rs 4-5 lakhs per annum
2. A comfortable life for me and my family
3. The challenge that the CAT poses
4. I was tired of my tryst with technical courses:
first a diploma and then engineering
So, I started looking for information on
management education in India. Soon, I figured out
that I needed to crack the CAT to have any chances
of entering a business school. After some more
investigation, I found that, lots of reading and good
math and calculation skills are necessary for
cracking the CAT. I decided to improve my verbal
ability, communication skills and business
knowledge to considerable levels before I started to
attend CAT coaching classes.
Subscribed to a BusinessWorld 3 year subscription
offer in late second year (of engineering). I also
started reading Reader's Digest, India Today and
other magazines. All the while I also tried to do
reasonably well in my academics.
Come December 2001 and I decided to join a CAT
coaching class. There was not much choice
available in Vizag at that time. So I joined T.I.M.E.
for CAT 2002 coaching. I used to attend those
classes daily from 6am to 8am in the morning and
used to feel proud about doing something extra. In
the first 4 months nothing improved. It was just
classes and some sectional tests. Never ever were
we tested with actual CAT papers. Then came the
summer vacation. I convinced my parents about
staying back in Vizag so that I could attend classes
as well as take some tests. But I had absolutely no
plan and no idea of the amount of work required
for cracking the CAT. Nor was I sure about what
colleges I wanted to apply and what it is that I was
looking for during the whole ordeal. The first two
months were a breeze… well, actually they were the
hottest two months of my life with the summer
peaking at temperatures of 45 degrees. At the end
of the second month, I took my first ever mock CAT
and believe me, it came as a shock. Whatever
practice I had done so far seemed to be useless.
The results also turned out to be bad. At once I
realized the importance of solving more mock tests
and practicing CAT-like questions.
Then the academic session started. Not that I
studied for exams, but we had to do two projects in
the final year, and the pressure was building up. I
have always liked to do my work for myself. So I
started taking my project seriously and by the time
it was September 2002, I had lost my momentum
in mock tests. My ranks in the AIMCATs (mock
CATs offered by T.I.M.E) plummeted below 300 and
settled there. But they never went beyond 500.
Somehow I had a strong feeling that I could crack
the actual CAT if I maintained my AIMCAT ranks
below 500. Apart from CAT, I was also considering
other options such as FMS, IIFT, XLRI, IRMA,
NITIE and JMET. I was desperate to pursue MBA
right after graduation.
Well, at last the D-day arrived and I was sitting in
the CAT 2002 examination hall. As usual, I started
of with the verbal ability section. But since the
verbal section was the weakest link of the chain for
me, I spent a considerable amount of time on that
section and did almost 40 questions. By the time I
was done with it, I was already 50 minutes into the
test.
I quickly rushed to the quantitative ability section.
And if any one of you has seen the CAT 2002 quant
section, you know what I am talking about here.
That section was tough. But quant was always my
strength. So I put a full 40 minutes and attempted
some 27 questions there.
There were only 30 minutes left now and I
proceeded to the smaller DI sets. If you look at the
CAT 2002 DI paper, you would know that there
were 7-8 such sets with 3-5 questions each. Any
given day, one could attempt 30 plus questions
there and easily score above 25. But since I had
managed to mismanage my time, I could only solve
19 questions in 30 minutes. But, I didn’t think it
was that bad, because in the T.I.M.E. AIMCATs 19-
20 questions was always a very good attempt rate.
Little did I realize that T.I.M.E. AIMCATs were very
different from the original CAT.
After the exam I had a feeling that I could get at
least 2-3 IIM calls. All these were illusions and a
result of my poor understanding of the CAT and
lack of overall perspective. I had assumed that I
could get a score above 58, which according to
T.I.M.E. was the predicted cutoff. This was again
was due to my poor analysis of the AIMCATs. I had
not figured out my Accuracy and Strike rates yet.
The Results
They came one after another. First IIM Bangalore,
then Calcutta. Then Ahmedabad, Indore,
Kozhikode and Lucknow, in that order. All of them
had the same message for me - 'Sorry... .'
I was devastated. I could not do anything for a
couple of days. The thought that I was a loser had
consumed me completely. In the mess, I even felt
like I was shameless to be eating food. It was my
first ever major failure in life. And with no job in
hand I was down in the dumps.
By the time it was the last week of April, I had only
one final admission- from the Institute of Rural
Management, Anand (IRMA). I was not sure about
joining it. I told my parents that I want to attempt
the CAT again in 2003 and for that I wanted to stay
back in Vizag. They expressed their difficulty in
supporting me after engineering and suggested that
I should join IRMA. I started applying to companies
frantically for a job. But few seemed to be
interested in hiring a fresher. I started considering
working as a faculty in an engineering college. All
this because, somewhere in my heart I knew that
IRMA was not the place from where I wanted to do
my MBA.
At last, in the first week of May 2003, I got a job
offer through campus placements at my
engineering college. There was decent pay and no
bond. I accepted it immediately and decided to
attempt CAT 2003.
What was wrong with my approach in cracking
CAT 2002?
1. I never worked on the study material given by
the coaching institute
2. My preparation for English was very
haphazard. All I did was read the newspapers,
write unknown words in a book and do some silly
grammar exercises. I never solved practice papers
and I never paid attention to Reading
Comprehension. I did not even know what my
reading speed was like.
3. I never analysed my AIMCAT papers. Whatever
little analysis I did was focused on the quant
section. I never knew what my strengths or
weaknesses were. I paid little attention to my
accuracy and strike rate. My single focus was to
attain a high rank in the AIMCAT.
4. I did not know the difference between a sitter
question and an ordinary question. My approach
had been – start from question 1 and solve till the
50th question.
5. My preparation was completely random. I never
had a proper timetable. Even if I had one, it was
cluttered with non-important non-urgent tasks. I
thought that reading books would help me in
cracking RC in CAT. But more than reading books,
I needed to work on my reading methods.
6. My time management was poor and emotional.
By emotional, I mean that if I felt that I was not
doing a section well, I used to spend some more
time on it to satisfy my ego. This lead to an erratic
and random score pattern. Nothing was consistent
in my mocks. Not just marks, but the number of
mistakes also varied.
7. Lack of overall perspective and competition.
CAT 2003
May - August, 2003
I took a one-week break to adjust myself to the new
workplace I had joined from the campus
placement. In Mid-May 2003, I took a Diagnostic
CAT test offered by one of the coaching institutes
and my scores were reasonable. But I knew that I
needed a systematic approach to crack the CAT.
So, I planned the next 3.5 months for each day.
My work schedule kept me out of home everyday
from 7 am to 7 pm. So, I had 3-4 hours in the night
to study and slog. I categorized the entire CAT
syllabus into four broad areas.
- Logical Reasoning (LR)
- Data Interpretation and Data Sufficiency (DI/DS)
- Quantitative Ability (QA)
- Verbal Ability (VA)
I had identified the important topics in these areas
and decided to give more preference to VA.
For each topic in first three areas I had allotted
one/two days and my aim was to complete that
topic from either the coaching institute study
material or class X textbooks.
During office hours I used to solve problems posted
on CAT 2003 YahooGroups and PaGaLGuY.com.
Mock CATs
The first one was in June end, the AIMCAT 401. At
that time my preparation was only half done and I
had so many topics to complete. But, the
experience from last year helped a lot. I managed to
secure an All India Rank of 60 in that test, even
though my net score was just above 30. But this
kind of thing happens with the first T.I.M.E. mock
CATs. After this mock, I made it a point to record
my mock performances in an Excel sheet. The
columns in each row of the sheet had…
Serial Number
Date and Mock No
Vocabulary
Reading Comprehension
Quant
DI, DS and Logic
Comments
I recorded almost all mock test scores in this sheet.
I also used to write about unknown words,
shortcuts, question numbers, silly mistakes I made
and mistakes in my strategy in that sheet. Before
taking another mock, I used to first go through that
sheet. This helped me in consciously avoiding the
mistakes I had committed in earlier mocks and
fine-tuning my strategy.
Some guidelines for taking mocks
- Stick to the time. If you are taking a two-hour
test, take it for two hours only. Be merciless,
especially if you are taking them in your home.
Don’t let anything disturb you in those two hours.
- Make it a habit of using a watch.
- Have a strategy in mind before you start the test.
Take 2-3 minutes to analyse the paper and say to
yourself something like, “VA is heavy – there are
four RCs, quant has some diagram-based sets of
questions, DI has lengthy sets and some DS
questions, and there is no LR. So let me start with
VA and then move to QA and then finish with DI.”
Once you know the order of sections, set time
limits to each section and stick to them. Never let
your ego surface in those two hours. This is what I
used to do – I used to give time limits of 35 minutes
for each section. And in the end I used to visit the
toughest or easiest section and make up for a good
overall score.
- Most importantly realise that you have to get
most out of the test. Don’t be egoistic and sit on a
problem beyond 2-3 mins. If you get it in 1 minute,
it’s ok. Beyond that, learn to leave problems. Try to
read as many questions as possible and decide
which ones you can solve quickly. This knack of
identifying the ‘sitter’ questions comes from taking
30-40 mocks in a span of three months.
- After the paper, don’t rush to the answer key.
Take a break, relax for sometime and then start
looking at the paper. Try to find out correct
answers without looking at the key. Analyze your
answers and see if there was any faster or better
method to solve the questions. Try to reason out,
why you did not attempt that RC or DI set and
cross check whether that was really as tough as
you thought. Try to estimate your score before
jumping to the answer key. This will help you in
learning about your accuracy. After the analysis is
over, verify your answers with answer key and if
needed, go through the detailed answers. My
mistakes used to mostly surface in the analysis
phase. Checking with the answer key was more
about validating my analysis.
- Always try to share your mock score and analysis
with others. This will give you a better overall
picture and good understanding of your relative
standing. Use PaGaLGuY.com or Yahoogroups for
this purpose. Many people use these groups for
only posting scores. They don’t realize that these
groups are not notice boards. What you should
instead do is to try and analyze the paper and post
that also. With that you are helping no one else but
yourself.
- Always calculate accuracy and speed figures for
individual sections and the overall paper. And try
to maintain a stable figure of speed and accuracy.
If there is an abrupt change in those figures, try to
investigate why the change happened. Ideally, 60
pc speed (attempts) with 80 pc + accuracy will help
you in getting good scores. But speed sometimes
varies with easiness of the paper. Identifying the
trends of speed and accuracy in August or
September will help you to fine tune your strategy
before the D-day. I was a 75 percent speed and 70
percent accuracy person earlier. After some hard
work, I was able to cut down on my speed and
improve my accuracy.
Some guidelines for Individual Sections
Quantitative Ability
I cannot emphasize enough on the need for
identifying sitter questions in this section. Most of
the time, solving 15-20 questions in a 50-question
quant section will give you a percentile of 90 and
above (sometimes, even 99). For me, QA had always
been a strong point. So I used to solve more than
25 quant questions in most mock CATs and get
good percentiles too.
From what I have learned from my preparation…
- Everyone has weak areas in quant. For me they
were probability, permutations and combinations
and I used to leave all questions from those topics.
- Most of the times, solving questions sequentially
from 1-50 will not work.
- It is always better to give a shot to sets of
questions. Something like 'A and B started from P
and Q with 20 and 30 kmph speeds at 10 pm on a
day...' followed by 5 questions. If you know the
concept well, you can crack all the questions in
that set.
- You must know three of the following topics to
have an easy sail through the quant section –
Algebra, Number Theory Mensuration or Geometry.
See the last 3 years’ CAT papers and you will know
what I am talking about.
- Before starting the first mock, try to learn as
many fundamental concepts as possible on QA
topics. Use notes to jot down the unknown
formulas and shortcuts.
- While analyzing the QA Section, try to find out the
sitter (easy) questions that you missed during the
mock. And try to reason out why.
- have some thumb rules based on your strategy. I
always…
- read and try to attempt 1-2 liner questions under
any circumstances
- read and try to attempt questions on mensuration
and geometry (you can recognise them easily
because they have accompanying figures)
- read and try to attempt questions on logarithms
and algebra
- start from somewhere in the middle of the section.
Never work sequentially from 1 to 50.
- read and try to attempt sets of questions
- Most importantly, don’t over-compare yourself
with others. If QA is not your strength, don’t even
bother about how much the toppers are scoring in
that section. Just try to clear the cutoffs and leave
it at that. Don’t crib about people attempting 35
questions. Instead, try to beat them using your
strong points.
Data Interpretation
I have only one thing to say about DI – PRACTICE!
Verbal Ability
Well, I have talked about my poor English skills
before. So, I am not the best guy to be commenting
this. I never have been a topper in this area. But
reading a lot surely does help.
The last mile to CAT 2003
August - November, 2003
During this period, I took at least 50 mock tests.
My opinion on different mock tests…
- T.I.M.E. AIMCATs - definitely the best as far as
QA, DI, DS and LR are concerned. This year the VA
and RC questions have been better. But they are
nowhere near what the CAT VA and RC are like.
- IMS SimCATs, ACT, MCTs and FCTs - very good
VA and RC papers. DI and QA are calculation
heavy and sometimes kilometers away from what
the actual CAT tests. But overall, decent papers.
- Career Launcher MockCATs and FLTs - decent
English, QA and DI. Sometimes, brilliant DI. And
no doubt one of the cheapest packages available in
the market. I got some 30 tests for Rs 2,000.
Apart from the above three mock CATs, I
subscribed for Ascent mock CATs,10 papers for
about Rs 900.
I made it a point that I took as many mocks as
possible between August and November. In the
beginning I used to take two mocks a week. In early
September I increased it to three mocks a week and
stuck to it till the end. Now, you might experience
'burnout' at times and if you feel that, you are
probably going too fast and reach your peak
performance before the actual CAT day and that is
not a desirable thing, because you should be
peaking on the CAT day. So if you feel a burnout,
take a full one-week break from mock CATs and
start again. Moreover, don’t take too many mock
tests in a week. At the most 4 mocks a week should
suffice. But again, this is a personal choice and you
should decide based on your performance.
During the final 30 days to CAT, I analysed my old
mock tests once again. During this period I made
optimum use of the Excel sheet that I had
compiled. I also realized that my accuracy was
beginning to going down. So I tried to record all my
errors in a notebook. And this helped me a lot in
cutting down on my mistakes.
[Editor’s note – We should point out that in 2003, the
IIMs found that the CAT 2003 paper held on
November 22 had been leaked and decided to cancel
the paper and hold a retest in February 2004. The
author of this article has decided to skip his
experience with the canceled test and has instead
written only about the retest that happened on
February 15, 2004]
December, 2003 - February, 2004
Throughout December and the first few weeks of
January, I spent time on other exams and on work.
I tried to do some RC preparation and was
successful in improving a bit. After the FMS exam,
I tried to focus on CAT. I did nothing fancy in this
period. It was all the same – mock tests and
analysis.
The D-Day
At last February 15 came, the day of the CAT
retest. I was excited about my results in other
exams (IIFT, JMET and FMS). As usual I started
the paper with the verbal section and solved 36
questions in 35 minutes.
I then moved to QA and tried to maximise my gains
there. It took 40 minutes and in that time I had
read most of the questions and attempted 32.
I then started with the DI section. Contrary to what
people think about CAT 2003, I thought this
section was tough. I could do only 25 questions in
this section.
I did overall 93 attempts in CAT 2003. There were
butterflies in the stomach, but my result turned
out to be better.
And the rest, as they say, was history.
Wish you all the very best in your efforts.
Regards,
Chandoo
Batch of 2004-06
PaGaLGuY Username: Chandoo
CAT 2007 percentile: 99.56
Blog: http://chandoo.org/wp/
Calls: IIM Bangalore, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Indore, IIFT
Delhi, MDI Gurgaon
Final converts: IIFT Delhi, IIM Indore, MDI Gurgaon
At last, I have completed this marathon post. It is
divided into several sub-sections to facilitate easy
reading. Hope it helps all CAT aspirants out there.
CAT 2002 and the Aftermath
During my engineering second year, I decided to
take the CAT. Basically, I didn’t know why I wanted
to go that way. But some reasons I could think of
were,
1. A very decent pay Rs 4-5 lakhs per annum
2. A comfortable life for me and my family
3. The challenge that the CAT poses
4. I was tired of my tryst with technical courses:
first a diploma and then engineering
So, I started looking for information on
management education in India. Soon, I figured out
that I needed to crack the CAT to have any chances
of entering a business school. After some more
investigation, I found that, lots of reading and good
math and calculation skills are necessary for
cracking the CAT. I decided to improve my verbal
ability, communication skills and business
knowledge to considerable levels before I started to
attend CAT coaching classes.
Subscribed to a BusinessWorld 3 year subscription
offer in late second year (of engineering). I also
started reading Reader's Digest, India Today and
other magazines. All the while I also tried to do
reasonably well in my academics.
Come December 2001 and I decided to join a CAT
coaching class. There was not much choice
available in Vizag at that time. So I joined T.I.M.E.
for CAT 2002 coaching. I used to attend those
classes daily from 6am to 8am in the morning and
used to feel proud about doing something extra. In
the first 4 months nothing improved. It was just
classes and some sectional tests. Never ever were
we tested with actual CAT papers. Then came the
summer vacation. I convinced my parents about
staying back in Vizag so that I could attend classes
as well as take some tests. But I had absolutely no
plan and no idea of the amount of work required
for cracking the CAT. Nor was I sure about what
colleges I wanted to apply and what it is that I was
looking for during the whole ordeal. The first two
months were a breeze… well, actually they were the
hottest two months of my life with the summer
peaking at temperatures of 45 degrees. At the end
of the second month, I took my first ever mock CAT
and believe me, it came as a shock. Whatever
practice I had done so far seemed to be useless.
The results also turned out to be bad. At once I
realized the importance of solving more mock tests
and practicing CAT-like questions.
Then the academic session started. Not that I
studied for exams, but we had to do two projects in
the final year, and the pressure was building up. I
have always liked to do my work for myself. So I
started taking my project seriously and by the time
it was September 2002, I had lost my momentum
in mock tests. My ranks in the AIMCATs (mock
CATs offered by T.I.M.E) plummeted below 300 and
settled there. But they never went beyond 500.
Somehow I had a strong feeling that I could crack
the actual CAT if I maintained my AIMCAT ranks
below 500. Apart from CAT, I was also considering
other options such as FMS, IIFT, XLRI, IRMA,
NITIE and JMET. I was desperate to pursue MBA
right after graduation.
Well, at last the D-day arrived and I was sitting in
the CAT 2002 examination hall. As usual, I started
of with the verbal ability section. But since the
verbal section was the weakest link of the chain for
me, I spent a considerable amount of time on that
section and did almost 40 questions. By the time I
was done with it, I was already 50 minutes into the
test.
I quickly rushed to the quantitative ability section.
And if any one of you has seen the CAT 2002 quant
section, you know what I am talking about here.
That section was tough. But quant was always my
strength. So I put a full 40 minutes and attempted
some 27 questions there.
There were only 30 minutes left now and I
proceeded to the smaller DI sets. If you look at the
CAT 2002 DI paper, you would know that there
were 7-8 such sets with 3-5 questions each. Any
given day, one could attempt 30 plus questions
there and easily score above 25. But since I had
managed to mismanage my time, I could only solve
19 questions in 30 minutes. But, I didn’t think it
was that bad, because in the T.I.M.E. AIMCATs 19-
20 questions was always a very good attempt rate.
Little did I realize that T.I.M.E. AIMCATs were very
different from the original CAT.
After the exam I had a feeling that I could get at
least 2-3 IIM calls. All these were illusions and a
result of my poor understanding of the CAT and
lack of overall perspective. I had assumed that I
could get a score above 58, which according to
T.I.M.E. was the predicted cutoff. This was again
was due to my poor analysis of the AIMCATs. I had
not figured out my Accuracy and Strike rates yet.
The Results
They came one after another. First IIM Bangalore,
then Calcutta. Then Ahmedabad, Indore,
Kozhikode and Lucknow, in that order. All of them
had the same message for me - 'Sorry... .'
I was devastated. I could not do anything for a
couple of days. The thought that I was a loser had
consumed me completely. In the mess, I even felt
like I was shameless to be eating food. It was my
first ever major failure in life. And with no job in
hand I was down in the dumps.
By the time it was the last week of April, I had only
one final admission- from the Institute of Rural
Management, Anand (IRMA). I was not sure about
joining it. I told my parents that I want to attempt
the CAT again in 2003 and for that I wanted to stay
back in Vizag. They expressed their difficulty in
supporting me after engineering and suggested that
I should join IRMA. I started applying to companies
frantically for a job. But few seemed to be
interested in hiring a fresher. I started considering
working as a faculty in an engineering college. All
this because, somewhere in my heart I knew that
IRMA was not the place from where I wanted to do
my MBA.
At last, in the first week of May 2003, I got a job
offer through campus placements at my
engineering college. There was decent pay and no
bond. I accepted it immediately and decided to
attempt CAT 2003.
What was wrong with my approach in cracking
CAT 2002?
1. I never worked on the study material given by
the coaching institute
2. My preparation for English was very
haphazard. All I did was read the newspapers,
write unknown words in a book and do some silly
grammar exercises. I never solved practice papers
and I never paid attention to Reading
Comprehension. I did not even know what my
reading speed was like.
3. I never analysed my AIMCAT papers. Whatever
little analysis I did was focused on the quant
section. I never knew what my strengths or
weaknesses were. I paid little attention to my
accuracy and strike rate. My single focus was to
attain a high rank in the AIMCAT.
4. I did not know the difference between a sitter
question and an ordinary question. My approach
had been – start from question 1 and solve till the
50th question.
5. My preparation was completely random. I never
had a proper timetable. Even if I had one, it was
cluttered with non-important non-urgent tasks. I
thought that reading books would help me in
cracking RC in CAT. But more than reading books,
I needed to work on my reading methods.
6. My time management was poor and emotional.
By emotional, I mean that if I felt that I was not
doing a section well, I used to spend some more
time on it to satisfy my ego. This lead to an erratic
and random score pattern. Nothing was consistent
in my mocks. Not just marks, but the number of
mistakes also varied.
7. Lack of overall perspective and competition.
CAT 2003
May - August, 2003
I took a one-week break to adjust myself to the new
workplace I had joined from the campus
placement. In Mid-May 2003, I took a Diagnostic
CAT test offered by one of the coaching institutes
and my scores were reasonable. But I knew that I
needed a systematic approach to crack the CAT.
So, I planned the next 3.5 months for each day.
My work schedule kept me out of home everyday
from 7 am to 7 pm. So, I had 3-4 hours in the night
to study and slog. I categorized the entire CAT
syllabus into four broad areas.
- Logical Reasoning (LR)
- Data Interpretation and Data Sufficiency (DI/DS)
- Quantitative Ability (QA)
- Verbal Ability (VA)
I had identified the important topics in these areas
and decided to give more preference to VA.
For each topic in first three areas I had allotted
one/two days and my aim was to complete that
topic from either the coaching institute study
material or class X textbooks.
During office hours I used to solve problems posted
on CAT 2003 YahooGroups and PaGaLGuY.com.
Mock CATs
The first one was in June end, the AIMCAT 401. At
that time my preparation was only half done and I
had so many topics to complete. But, the
experience from last year helped a lot. I managed to
secure an All India Rank of 60 in that test, even
though my net score was just above 30. But this
kind of thing happens with the first T.I.M.E. mock
CATs. After this mock, I made it a point to record
my mock performances in an Excel sheet. The
columns in each row of the sheet had…
Serial Number
Date and Mock No
Vocabulary
Reading Comprehension
Quant
DI, DS and Logic
Comments
I recorded almost all mock test scores in this sheet.
I also used to write about unknown words,
shortcuts, question numbers, silly mistakes I made
and mistakes in my strategy in that sheet. Before
taking another mock, I used to first go through that
sheet. This helped me in consciously avoiding the
mistakes I had committed in earlier mocks and
fine-tuning my strategy.
Some guidelines for taking mocks
- Stick to the time. If you are taking a two-hour
test, take it for two hours only. Be merciless,
especially if you are taking them in your home.
Don’t let anything disturb you in those two hours.
- Make it a habit of using a watch.
- Have a strategy in mind before you start the test.
Take 2-3 minutes to analyse the paper and say to
yourself something like, “VA is heavy – there are
four RCs, quant has some diagram-based sets of
questions, DI has lengthy sets and some DS
questions, and there is no LR. So let me start with
VA and then move to QA and then finish with DI.”
Once you know the order of sections, set time
limits to each section and stick to them. Never let
your ego surface in those two hours. This is what I
used to do – I used to give time limits of 35 minutes
for each section. And in the end I used to visit the
toughest or easiest section and make up for a good
overall score.
- Most importantly realise that you have to get
most out of the test. Don’t be egoistic and sit on a
problem beyond 2-3 mins. If you get it in 1 minute,
it’s ok. Beyond that, learn to leave problems. Try to
read as many questions as possible and decide
which ones you can solve quickly. This knack of
identifying the ‘sitter’ questions comes from taking
30-40 mocks in a span of three months.
- After the paper, don’t rush to the answer key.
Take a break, relax for sometime and then start
looking at the paper. Try to find out correct
answers without looking at the key. Analyze your
answers and see if there was any faster or better
method to solve the questions. Try to reason out,
why you did not attempt that RC or DI set and
cross check whether that was really as tough as
you thought. Try to estimate your score before
jumping to the answer key. This will help you in
learning about your accuracy. After the analysis is
over, verify your answers with answer key and if
needed, go through the detailed answers. My
mistakes used to mostly surface in the analysis
phase. Checking with the answer key was more
about validating my analysis.
- Always try to share your mock score and analysis
with others. This will give you a better overall
picture and good understanding of your relative
standing. Use PaGaLGuY.com or Yahoogroups for
this purpose. Many people use these groups for
only posting scores. They don’t realize that these
groups are not notice boards. What you should
instead do is to try and analyze the paper and post
that also. With that you are helping no one else but
yourself.
- Always calculate accuracy and speed figures for
individual sections and the overall paper. And try
to maintain a stable figure of speed and accuracy.
If there is an abrupt change in those figures, try to
investigate why the change happened. Ideally, 60
pc speed (attempts) with 80 pc + accuracy will help
you in getting good scores. But speed sometimes
varies with easiness of the paper. Identifying the
trends of speed and accuracy in August or
September will help you to fine tune your strategy
before the D-day. I was a 75 percent speed and 70
percent accuracy person earlier. After some hard
work, I was able to cut down on my speed and
improve my accuracy.
Some guidelines for Individual Sections
Quantitative Ability
I cannot emphasize enough on the need for
identifying sitter questions in this section. Most of
the time, solving 15-20 questions in a 50-question
quant section will give you a percentile of 90 and
above (sometimes, even 99). For me, QA had always
been a strong point. So I used to solve more than
25 quant questions in most mock CATs and get
good percentiles too.
From what I have learned from my preparation…
- Everyone has weak areas in quant. For me they
were probability, permutations and combinations
and I used to leave all questions from those topics.
- Most of the times, solving questions sequentially
from 1-50 will not work.
- It is always better to give a shot to sets of
questions. Something like 'A and B started from P
and Q with 20 and 30 kmph speeds at 10 pm on a
day...' followed by 5 questions. If you know the
concept well, you can crack all the questions in
that set.
- You must know three of the following topics to
have an easy sail through the quant section –
Algebra, Number Theory Mensuration or Geometry.
See the last 3 years’ CAT papers and you will know
what I am talking about.
- Before starting the first mock, try to learn as
many fundamental concepts as possible on QA
topics. Use notes to jot down the unknown
formulas and shortcuts.
- While analyzing the QA Section, try to find out the
sitter (easy) questions that you missed during the
mock. And try to reason out why.
- have some thumb rules based on your strategy. I
always…
- read and try to attempt 1-2 liner questions under
any circumstances
- read and try to attempt questions on mensuration
and geometry (you can recognise them easily
because they have accompanying figures)
- read and try to attempt questions on logarithms
and algebra
- start from somewhere in the middle of the section.
Never work sequentially from 1 to 50.
- read and try to attempt sets of questions
- Most importantly, don’t over-compare yourself
with others. If QA is not your strength, don’t even
bother about how much the toppers are scoring in
that section. Just try to clear the cutoffs and leave
it at that. Don’t crib about people attempting 35
questions. Instead, try to beat them using your
strong points.
Data Interpretation
I have only one thing to say about DI – PRACTICE!
Verbal Ability
Well, I have talked about my poor English skills
before. So, I am not the best guy to be commenting
this. I never have been a topper in this area. But
reading a lot surely does help.
The last mile to CAT 2003
August - November, 2003
During this period, I took at least 50 mock tests.
My opinion on different mock tests…
- T.I.M.E. AIMCATs - definitely the best as far as
QA, DI, DS and LR are concerned. This year the VA
and RC questions have been better. But they are
nowhere near what the CAT VA and RC are like.
- IMS SimCATs, ACT, MCTs and FCTs - very good
VA and RC papers. DI and QA are calculation
heavy and sometimes kilometers away from what
the actual CAT tests. But overall, decent papers.
- Career Launcher MockCATs and FLTs - decent
English, QA and DI. Sometimes, brilliant DI. And
no doubt one of the cheapest packages available in
the market. I got some 30 tests for Rs 2,000.
Apart from the above three mock CATs, I
subscribed for Ascent mock CATs,10 papers for
about Rs 900.
I made it a point that I took as many mocks as
possible between August and November. In the
beginning I used to take two mocks a week. In early
September I increased it to three mocks a week and
stuck to it till the end. Now, you might experience
'burnout' at times and if you feel that, you are
probably going too fast and reach your peak
performance before the actual CAT day and that is
not a desirable thing, because you should be
peaking on the CAT day. So if you feel a burnout,
take a full one-week break from mock CATs and
start again. Moreover, don’t take too many mock
tests in a week. At the most 4 mocks a week should
suffice. But again, this is a personal choice and you
should decide based on your performance.
During the final 30 days to CAT, I analysed my old
mock tests once again. During this period I made
optimum use of the Excel sheet that I had
compiled. I also realized that my accuracy was
beginning to going down. So I tried to record all my
errors in a notebook. And this helped me a lot in
cutting down on my mistakes.
[Editor’s note – We should point out that in 2003, the
IIMs found that the CAT 2003 paper held on
November 22 had been leaked and decided to cancel
the paper and hold a retest in February 2004. The
author of this article has decided to skip his
experience with the canceled test and has instead
written only about the retest that happened on
February 15, 2004]
December, 2003 - February, 2004
Throughout December and the first few weeks of
January, I spent time on other exams and on work.
I tried to do some RC preparation and was
successful in improving a bit. After the FMS exam,
I tried to focus on CAT. I did nothing fancy in this
period. It was all the same – mock tests and
analysis.
The D-Day
At last February 15 came, the day of the CAT
retest. I was excited about my results in other
exams (IIFT, JMET and FMS). As usual I started
the paper with the verbal section and solved 36
questions in 35 minutes.
I then moved to QA and tried to maximise my gains
there. It took 40 minutes and in that time I had
read most of the questions and attempted 32.
I then started with the DI section. Contrary to what
people think about CAT 2003, I thought this
section was tough. I could do only 25 questions in
this section.
I did overall 93 attempts in CAT 2003. There were
butterflies in the stomach, but my result turned
out to be better.
And the rest, as they say, was history.
Wish you all the very best in your efforts.
Regards,
Chandoo
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