CAT 2014

I know it is too long to read, so read it at your own risk!  ?

The journey started almost 8-9 months back, with me planning
to write CAT one last time. With FMS as the only target in my head (couldn’t
trust A B C anymore after they didn’t shortlist me even for interview despite
scoring 99.90 in CAT 2013), I went on with the preparation with a goal to just
score enough to secure the college admission. The job was not satisfactory
anymore and the family was also pushing me to try one last time (though they
had some higher targets in their mind!).

My preparation mostly relied on few books that I had along
with googling for some questions and eventually the Pagalguy question bank.
Never took any coaching, or mocks for any of my three CAT papers, one reason to
miss the spotlight and to be frank, the one reason that I could focus more on
preparation.

A week before the CAT, I had to rush to home for some urgent
work and returned just the day before the paper. CAT centre was an overnight
journey, left in night to reach there in the morning. Went through the paper,
looked like I was out of practice. Tried easier questions first, especially in quant’s
and then moved for tough ones and at last verbal. Quant took away almost 65-70
minutes and I was mostly satisfied and finally left the centre with a feeling
that I might get something around 99.5 (relying on past experience).

From there, it felt like decades before the results were
out, I started coming on PG more frequently, saw people doing analysis, tried
my hand too, made a graph to calculate percentile (I know it sounds funny, but
you guys don’t need any explanation for this). Slowly I came to realize that I
might get better than my expectation. Anyway, long story short, let’s skip to
the day of the result.

I was among lucky few who could access the result within the
first 10 minutes, and to my surprise, it was much more than I could bear. I had
excelled in the part I considered myself really weak in, the VA with 99.92 in
the section, my QA took a marginal dip from 99.94 last year to 99.86 this year,
but it was the overall percentile that made me more hopeful, that may be this
time I would get a call from the big three.

The calls came eventually, from L, A, B (Marginally in my
opinion), C (Again marginally in) and K. Checked last year records and decided
my preference as A>C>B>FMS>L (FMS due to ROI thingy) and hence
decided to skip K interview. IIM-L I would attend just for an experience as it
was the first interview I would ever face (Jan 22), followed by the biggest one
(A on Jan 25) followed by my marriage on Jan 29 (Yes! You read it right! ? ).

L went okay, A was pretty smooth with questions mostly on
work ex and AWT (Philip Hughes cricket bouncer case). Went home, got married,
returned back to attend B (the worst experience, was sure of not getting in).
Then came JOKA, interview was weird, with questions like innovative methods to
cheat in exam etc etc. Was never sure if I did good or bad!! FMS list came, was
sure of converting, and so just chilled during the interview and it went pretty
smooth with a cool smiling panel and extempore topic “I love my tie!” ?

Finally with the results pouring in, my first result (B) was
obviously a reject, as expected. Next day, sitting in my office I kept on
checking C website, and eventually left for home at 5:50pm. On my way, I got a
call from a friend, who converted ISB and IIM-B and he told me -“Dude! You made
it to A!” and I was like-“Yaar result kab aaya!”. With my internet pack
outdated, I called my better half and within a minute she was already shouting
on phone-“Yes!!” Well, that was it. The whole evening went over phone with
calls to relatives, friends etc. And now today I got the JOKA results.

Finally for the people, who couldn’t get in, or were
marginally left out, I would just like to say one thing-“It’s just the time
testing you, don’t lose hope and come better prepared next year! They can stop
you once, may be twice, but not forever, if you have the will, you will move
forward! All the best everyone!” ? ?