This was the last year for Maharashtra management Common Entrance Test (Mah-CET) and also one of the toughest in years as candidates who wrote the exam complained of a lengthy paper and tough logical reasoning and visual reasoning sections. PaGaLGuY spoke to two of the toppers this year, one being from a coaching institute who flaunted a score of 158, the other, Sanket Kothari who got a score of 151. Sanket said that much the Common Admission Test (CAT) prep work helped him get a 99.99 percentile in Mah-CET.

The exact number of top scorers in Mah-CET is unclear at this moment. While, in 2011, 13 candidates crossed the 150 mark in this MBA entrance exam, in 2010, 600 students scored more than 150/200.

Sanket Kothari

Sanket Kothari (21), is thrilled with his score. Currently, he is pursuing his final year engineering in Electronics and Telecommunication from Vivekananda Education Societys Institute of Technology in Chembur, Mumbai. Sanket said that he had not taken any special coaching for Mah-CET. He only borrowed some coaching material for CET from his seniors. I enrolled myself for CAT coaching but did not join any special classes for Mah-CET. CET, I believe is a test of speed and so I focused on the mock tests and analysed where I was wrong and formulated a strategy.”

After CAT, Sanket enrolled for a test series of a coaching class but was not able to concentrate because of the GDPIs happening around January and February across the country. He appeared for quite a few of them. “But, I appeared for all the mock tests and tried to maintain my performance. I believe mock has very high importance for CET as it is a speed test, said Sanket.

He also explained that his CAT preparation has actually helped him in strengthening his basics as well. Verbal Reasoning specially, becomes bit easier in CET if one has already prepared for CAT. The main problem with CET is Visual Reasoning and the time factor as one has to solve 200 questions in 150 minutes instead of 140 minutes for 60 questions. The whole approach to solving a paper needs to change when appearing for CET, he informed.

He also agreed that even as he planned a strategy for Mah-CET, it went all wrong on the day of the exam. The first quantitative aptitude question in the paper was a number series question which he was not able to solve quickly due to nervousness. “I next started with Visual Reasoning and then moved on to Logical Reasoning. But those were concern areas for me anyway, so the strategy which I had planned did not work at all.”

Sanket scored 98.2 percentile in the Common Admission Test (CAT). He has already got through Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad and he is on the wait list of SP Jain Institute of Management & Research. I am waiting for the final results of Indian Institute of Management, Indore, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon and the five new IIMs. However, I would select the best out of the four that includes SP Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), Management Development Institute (MDI) and IIM Indore.

Sankets father is an Account Manager with a small telecommunication company in Mumbai and his mother is a housewife. He lives with his grandparents and his sister who is working as an analyst in a Knowledge Process Outsourcing firm. He is interested in the finance domain. Though, I dont have much knowledge about the domain, I would like to take the decision only in the second year of my MBA. However, I have always dreamt of working with Goldman Sachs, concluded Sanket.