All I Wanted To Speak About CAT 2019 Edition – AIWTSAC 2019

[bazinga19 (Sheldon Cooper)]

 

" मौत आनी है आएगी एक दिन 

  जान जानी है जाएगी एक दिन 

  ऐसी बातों से क्या घबराना 

  यहाँ कल क्या हो किसने जाना  "

Why MBA? I think this is a question I place right next to few other trick questions such as will India become a 5 trillion economy or does it make sense to right swipe her? The real answer might make me sad but the possibility of a successful end result is enticing enough. 

I started this journey in the third year of college enrolling in the TIME Weekend batch at Pilani. And tbh I felt sad for the teachers. Spending weekends in Pilani is like throwing up while making out. It ruins any happiness you might have had before it.

But I did enjoy the classes. They were such a positive respite from the otherwise sadist teaching pedagogy at BITS Pilani. I attended all the classes for this which was a new experience since given the 0% attendance policy at my college I didn’t bother going out in the scorching heat. 

Then came the first mock test. I wasn’t entirely acquainted with every concept, yet ended up scoring above 99 %ile. And there is a weird satisfaction in outperforming without much preparation. But this didn’t last long as the next mock hit me hard and my scores plummeted. I got somewhere around 70 percentile and a single digit score in DILR. DILR has somehow always been an arch nemesis.

In July I had to go to Mumbai for my internship so CAT prep took a backseat. That time in Mumbai still remains one of the most memorable experience of my life. I met this amazing group of people. My mentor Sagar, whom I started with calling sir and by next day referred to as BC. Bipin, with whom I had a fight in my first week itself in the office in plain sight of everyone, despite him being my manager and by the end we used to share stories at his house over drinks. Ranjitha, for all the outings, the mails we exchanged and the bond we shared. And Suman, for being a great friend and a confidante.

Mid Internship I relocated to Delhi. I shared my flat with Saurabh Borse and Nitin Mankani. It’s amazing how we didn’t know each other much before that but ended up becoming great friends. Borse was in the same team as I and I am extremely grateful for he used to do assignments given to both of us due to my sheer disinterest in coding (I exited codenation test to watch Juve vs Inter. The two goals by Ronaldo deemed my decision correct). He’s by far the best friend I got in a work setting. I honestly felt guilty every time he helped me with so much only to be crushed by my hands at FIFA xD. He did all the presentations and reports for our college submissions too, so I could devote time to CAT prep ‘among other things’ :P . And I haven’t really thanked him enough for that.

My mock scores meanwhile continued to play “boobs on the bus”, yet I tried to gain at least something from each of them. A few mocks later I figured I might just be able to do it. But the time was less and I should better manage it. I used to wake up at 4, give a mock, prepare for a few hours, go to office, read articles, solve puzzles. I took a leave and reached home 10 days before CAT. Gave as many mocks as I could along with past year papers and I thought it should be done. 

CAT 2018: The exam went fine. But I was scared about my DILR scores.

I rejoined my internship in Delhi the next day. At the last day of my internship I got offered a PPO. I had pretty much assumed I wouldn’t be getting one and hence had skipped the office the last day spending it with a fair lady. In fact, it was her who opened my offer letter before me, which in hindsight is probably why the job sucked so much. Jokes aside, she was the only friend I had in that company, and I thank her for being around, for our frequent pub visits, late night hangouts at CCD and for making me understand why one shouldn’t defecate where one eats.

I have a terrible hatred for my college. So much so that I completed my graduation in 7 semesters because I couldn’t spend another. As a kid I often used to wonder why would people murder someone. After knowing a few of my profs there I totally get the idea now. Sure, it’s not something I’ll do but if someone does, I will totally understand why. Remember the feeling you get when you accidentally get your sleeves wet while washing hands, imagine three years of it. That sums up college for me. Anyways, the thoughts and efforts most of us put in choosing UG is equivalent to the one we put in reading terms and conditions. I didn’t even go to my convocation. The only tangible assets I gained there are two best friends – Mudit and Aayushmaan. And it’s humbling how much of my shit they have gone through just because I like seeking attention.

I completed my graduation in Dec 18 and joined the job in Feb 19. The plan was to give the interviews and convert a college in the meantime hence I didn’t really care much about the work. The work was getting tremendously frustrating and the frequency of my phone calls to Mudit had increased. He has been someone to whom I have always ranted about anything and everything. From getting 2 marks out of 90 in mid sem exam to bad dates and everything in between. I have had days when waking up in the morning was like resuming a shitty movie you decided to quit watching. Or days when you feel like you can hear the video game combat music but can’t spot any enemy. 

I gave the interviews quite unprepared, though based on the questions I was asked no preparation would have helped. There is no way I am supposed to know how many high courts are there in India or why does Ashok Chakra have 24 spokes. In fact, I quoted white collar at FMS interview when I was asked where do I see myself later in life – “surrounded by people I care about and not having to worry about money”. Damn you Neal Caffrey. 

I missed partying with my brother and his friends because I had the FMS interview. Hell, I missed a goa trip with all bookings done because I had my MDI interview in between.

All this while I did experience certain ups and downs. But none was as big a heartbreak as compared to the one I got when I saw my manager Raveena bursting with joy upon converting IIM B. It sucked. Even though I had a slightly better percentile here I was with absolutely 0 converts sulking. And that’s when I realised that success stories are like pen clicks. You hate them unless you are the one making them.

I did say some mean words to her, in my mind. And this is funny because she was one of the few people who kept in touch. She was the only one from my work life to message me a day before CAT 19 wishing me luck and has helped me throughout this interview season. I guess certain things don’t require understanding, all they require is perception.

CAT 18: 99.1(99.83/76.29/98.86)

Calls – MDI, SP Jain, FMS, IIM S; Converts – None 

I had decided to give CAT again and this time with everything. It wasn’t to get into any specific college. It was to prove to me that I can do it. That I can set a target for myself and make bold decisions along the way and achieve it. Next week I left for a family trip and after few discussions with my brother, I wrote my resignation letter on a houseboat in the backwaters. My manager was kind enough to take me to lunch and discuss about the reasons. But I was already convinced about my decision. I spent my last day in Delhi at Mudit’s home, trying to find open bars in Greater Noida and convincing his brother to not do engineering, both unsuccessfully.

I came back home and decided to give everything I could. It’s one thing to fail it’s another to fail yourself. I didn’t expect to make friends here though it’s my hometown. But what great friends I made. I met this amazing girl in my coaching who has kind of been my go-to contact in the city and my support system throughout. A true friend indeed. Prajapati, Rahul Joshi, and a few others. Then I met a few at Varanasi Toastmasters – Aditya (baabaaaa), Utsav Bhaiya (the wise one), Vishesh (punctual?) and Ritu (Idk, she doesn’t drink or eat chicken). I also consider one of my IMS mentors Abhinav Sir more of a friend based on the equation we have. The reason I am mentioning these people is because it's important to acknowledge the influence they have had on me.

My first mock of the season was a disaster of sorts. I performed decent but not so good. And was mocked by my mentors, albeit in a constructive way. And maybe I am saying this because I was in a regular class at IMS, but I do consider the attention and focus given by IMS mentors at least at my centre much much more and helpful than the guidance I ever got at TIME. The next mock I was 2nd. And then there was this fear that in the next mock I would suck again. And here’s the thing. What you want may or may not happen, but what you expect almost always happens. I scored less than 100 in it.

But I think after a series of mocks I finally found my rhythm. And that’s when I was introduced to PG. Met this amazing group of people ready to help me with the doubts I had. It’s worth noting how despite being competitor nobody here has ever failed in guiding someone to the best of his ability. @MohitMehar, @ Bhimana, @Arsene96 , @FranklyCAT, @Vc98 , @ IIM_Groot, @onepoorGEM, @sanchit3008, @Sn96  and a few others. I am thankful to all of them for helping me at one point or other. A big shout out here to Bhimana whom I have never met but based on my interactions with him, I can only assume him, with his down to earth demeanour and calibre, to be one hell of a person.

With the passage of mocks I was pretty confident about my performance. But there is always fear. I filled all the forms I could get my hands on – CAT, XAT, IIFT, SNAP, MICAT, CMAT. Couldn’t give MICAT as the centre was in a different city.

CAT 19: Verbal had always been my strong suit. The paper went really well this time.

I calculated my marks and was pretty happy with how I had performed. Next exam was IIFT. Then SNAP.  XAT was a mere formality after the CAT results. 

Final Results

CAT – 99.87(99.81/98.13/99.59)

SNAP – 99.9066

IIFT – 99.91

XAT – 99.953 

CMAT – 99.94

The interview season for me was an opportunity to get back to my old ways. A party was mandatory after every interview. How the interview went was irrelevant in this decision. For my first interview of SIBM, I stayed with Rishabh at his flat in Pune. We made shots at home and all I remember other than an awesome interview is gulping shots while listening to someone’s relationship trouble. Kids xD

My SP Jain interview was in Bangalore. Met my best friend from school, Sajal, after like 3-4 years, and Bhanu. It’s funny how despite that long a time nothing ever changes the dynamics between school friends. I also got to spend time with my cousins, who have been a few of the constants in my life.

For the next few interviews, I stayed with a senior from my college, Umang Bhaiya. My hatred for my college would have been a thousand times more were it not for my friends and seniors that I have. He was kind enough to let me stay while also arranging for all my meals and alcohol too. He was also kind enough to exit a party early (2 AM) for I had my IIM L interview the next day morning (technically, same day). Yes, I was hungover during the interview.

I, for one, believe that MBA interviews are as random as it can get. They are like the plot of a Salman Khan film, except they are also unpredictable. But it is what it is. You can call the game rigged but you’ll play nonetheless. 

This past year was never about getting into a B school. It was to be able to make a deal with yourself and finally hold up your end of the bargain. If anything, it has taught me that things are quite uncertain. You can make a lot of efforts and yet fail to clear the cut off, you can spend a night with someone, be naïve to think that it will last and get to know about their engagement after six months of it, or feel something really good about someone, imagine you together and not even get to a first date even after a year, or make a detailed itinerary of going to Italy and Spain and watching CR7 play and be this close to booking the tickets, yet end up not going out of your own house door for 2 months. You can plan all the way you want but it seldom works that way. And the sad part is that you got to do it anyway to find out. Think about it, someone’s probably thought of a huge scientific breakthrough, realized how stupid it was, and went to bed. And he’ll probably crib about someone else living the life he dreamt.

Yes, you will be disappointed at times. Yes, you will see people getting ahead of you with half your efforts and possibly intellect. But for a generation who wouldn’t play on someone else’s controller settings, I think we put an awful effort on seeking approval from other people. 

I did convert almost all my calls – XLRI (BM and HRM), IIFT, MDI, IIM I, SIBM, would probably convert L, and FMS (6 waitlisted). Rejects from C and SPJ. Would decide where to go whenever I do. 

But this was never about a college. I don’t think whether your decision was good or bad depends on the outcome. Smoking kills you, but the actual “act” of smoking is a very healthy practice - leave a stressful environment, go outside for five minutes and take deep breaths. And nothing can work perfectly anyway. Cinderella’s supposedly perfectly-fitting shoe fell off, didn’t they? Then there is the undue importance given to struggle. Not taking the easy way out. Frankly, the easy way is like playing Pornhub jingle in public, everyone knows what it is but nobody will acknowledge. I think struggle is more like a bass player, you will not enjoy it solo but would definitely miss it if it wasn’t there.

I am happy things worked out as they did. I do feel somewhere I got lucky and things fell in place. The premise would still have been the same, but a different ending had that not been the case. This is definitely not big a deal. It’s just an exam. But it’s never really just a game when you are winning, is it? There is nothing better than getting your thoughts proven and validated. And that’s what this whole thing has been about.

It was hard, but that’s what made it so special. Also, title of my sex tape xD

P.S. if this article in any way motivates you, makes you want to try harder or just so much as makes you smile, please donate how much ever you can at: pages.razorpay.com/ifiorg?code=IFI1009

It’s an initiative to help immigrants travel back to their home states. Do check it out and share it.

[ramkikkr (Ramki96)]

Being able to write an AIWTSAC, a medium that has inspired countless people, including me to succeed in this exam is itself a very big thing for me. So, here goes my journey.

My dream of going to an IIM started way back in 2012 when I was in Class 9. A senior in my future undergrad department, someone whom I had known for long and whom I consider my role model, had got admission into IIMK. Back then, I did not know what an IIM even meant. But the thought of being a manager was attractive at that point.

2013: Like countless students every year, I also took science after 10th and wanted to pursue engineering from an IIT, especially IIT KGP since I am from Bengal. I still don't have an explanation for why we try to run after brands and tags like IIT and IIM, but for me, probably for many others, getting a seat at an IIT or an IIM is a way to prove that you are among the best and society will look up to you, not to forget the fact that these are the leading institutes in their discipline and offer the best education in the country. 

I toiled hard for the next two years, probably the toughest years of my life (as for any science student). But, two years later, I failed miserably. I got stressed out before IIT JEE and my dream was shattered in 6 hours. I had been a topper all my life and that failure hit me hard. I was depressed and wanted to give another attempt, but I had already lost a year to some age rule for admissions in school and hence, was already late by a year. I scored ~310 in BITSAT but did not get any department in the first round. By then WBJEE results were out and I finally decided to join Jadavpur University in the Production Engineering department. I was not happy initially, but I put a lot of effort to forget my JEE debacle by studying hard. This effort helped and I stared coming first in my department every semester. My department was unique given that we had a lot of management subjects in our curriculum. I enjoyed studying them more than my technology subjects and my dream to do an MBA after graduation got reinvigorated.

I joined the CL classroom program when I was in 3rd year and did classes diligently and practiced hard. After two months, I gave my first mock and had a score of around 120, which I considered decent for a start. I also joined Pagalguy around the same time. I was motivated by the scores of @abckl_123, who with his insane mock scores, gave me the motivation to improve.

I was good at English right from my school days and hence, VARC was a section I never fretted much about. Being an engineer, QA was also something that I was confident in solving. I also took up mocks of IMS and my scores consistently kept improving and I was consistently scoring 160s by September 2018 and thought that IIM ABC was achievable. I also had a campus offer from a Big 4 firm and things seemed good. LRDI, though, was my Achilles heel and is still my weakness. Anyway, I tried to maximize my scores in VARC and QA to make up for this.

25th November 2018-

I always had a habit of doing well in mocks early in the morning and did not have much practice in the afternoon slot. But after I got my admit card, I tried to negate this by giving a lot of mocks around that period of the day. My center, unfortunately, was around 45 km from my place, and the travel exhausted me before my exam. But I was still confident of scoring 99.7+. The start was better than expected. VARC seemed to be much easier and I did decently well. In LRDI, I had planned that I would complete 4 sets somehow, but I managed to do only 3.5 sets. However, I was looking forward to QA to make up for this. But it was Joka which made the paper that year and QA turned to be difficult. I could solve some 12 questions in the first half an hour, but I had a brain fade moment in the second half and could hardly solve 2-3 more questions.

I knew my dream that year was over after the exam. I started preparing for XAT immediately, but DM killed me there as well.

2018 results:

CAT:

VARC 99.83

LRDI 95.29

QA 95.97 

OA: 99.18

XAT: 96.xx

I got calls from IIMs K, I, S, FMS, and CAP.

I had decided that I would join FMS only, in case I converted it that year, else give a skip. I however prepared diligently for the interviews and ironically, converted all, except FMS. I had scored around 12/15 in my FMS interview, but since my CAT score was not that high, the red building of dreams remained a dream.

I graduated a month later with a gold medal and decided to take some time off and went to Sikkim for ten days. That trip helped me reset my priorities and I came back refreshed. I decided to apply to another management consulting company off-campus in Pune, my dream job back at college, and cracked it. I went out of my house and my city, Kolkata for the first time in life and it turned out to be a new experience for me. I spent my initial few months getting adjusted to working and learning stuff. Things were pretty interesting. But that failure in QA hurt me a lot. I registered with TIME and IMS for mocks this time around and started practicing from Arun Sharma. After a few days, I started giving mocks. But the scores were low compared to what I had in the mocks last year. I scored an occasional 160+ in mocks and never had a top 10 rank, something which I managed to get 3-4 times in the last season. I found the QA level in mocks much tougher and struggled to score. I even went very close to 100 once or twice, my lowest in two years. But then I started analyzing mocks with increased vigor, found that I was really weak in Geometry and started doubling my efforts there. I solved 1-2 LRDI sets every day and also did some light reading. Office around that time also started getting hectic, but I somehow tried to get some time every morning and continue my practice. I started virtual group study sessions with two of my college friends working in Delhi and Bangalore. We analyzed mocks and tried to find shortcuts and alternative approaches to mocks we gave every week, but scores never went up. I had a target of 75+ each in VARC and QA, and around 45 in LRDI and continued working on it irrespective of results.

It was around this time that I was added to the PG DT. I found my role model @abckl_12 to be a mentor in that group and my hunger for high scores increased. I interacted with people like @EricR, @Arsene96, @ashwinhari, among others. That group came as a boon for me. It was a group for discussion, not just about CAT, but about anything under the sun, literally. I woke up to messages from that group and went to sleep after going through messages from that group. It had become a part of my life. I stuck to my targets and kept on working. Just before November, my scores in QA also started crossing 50s for the first time in the season. I gave TIME sectionals and tried to build on my improving scores. I was confident that I could do well this year, but it was somewhat less compared to the previous year. To improve my confidence, I gave the 2017 CAT paper as a mock and scored some 234 marks, my highest ever. But this was a familiar paper and hence, high marks in this do not show the level of practice. Still, this gave a boost to my confidence.

24th November 2019

Luckily, I had a morning slot this time around. I had gone to my uncle's place two days back and started for the center, some 10 km only this time, around 6 am. The morning air was refreshing and I went with a free mind this time around as I knew CAT was more about being able to keep calm and not take too much pressure.

The center I was allotted to had some technical issues and hence we could start only around 9:10. I had a look at the overall VARC question paper before starting as was my practice and found all passages to be way difficult compared to previous CATs. For the first 15 minutes, I went from passage to passage unable to crack even one and took time. Finally, I settled on one and then went with the flow. I took one set at a time and tried to solve a few from each, not my usual strategy, but much needed given the paper difficulty level. VA luckily was easy and it took me less than 15 minutes to complete it. Overall I completed around 32/34 questions but was clueless about the accuracy.

LRDI: My target again was 4 sets, but my consulting experience helped me deal with this section much better. I could solve 4 sets this time around and I was happy with my attempt.

QA: The questions looked easy, but last year's memories came back to haunt me and I could not do a single question in the first 15 minutes, much like VARC. I took a minute from the laptop, murmured some song which soothed my nerves and restarted. God was with me for the next 45 minutes. I could attempt 28 questions, with the last 6 questions attempted in the last 5 minutes. But I had the habit of doing silly mistakes and came out of the center confused about my performance.

I kept refreshing PG and the DT group to remember QA and LRDI questions and jotting down answers and collating them. To my surprise answers for 27/28 questions, I had attempted in QA matched with others and I could match 15/16 answers in LRDI as well. The Cracku answer keys also starting coming out and it predicted 40+ for LRDI and 80 in QA (did not focus on the VA scores predicted as last year almost all institutes did not have their initial answer keys matched to the official key) and finally, QA turned out to be the strength that I thought it would be.

Two days later, the official answer key was out. I was in the office during that time and took a meeting room to check the scores. VARC was the only jittery section. I had wanted 180+ as that would get me a C call at least. Out of the first 5 questions, 3 turned out to be wrong and I thought that the dream was over for a second time. But VA proved to be a game-changer and I ended up scoring 67 in VARC, 45 in LRDI, and 80 in QA. OA 192, much much above what I had expected. I was in tears and called my parents immediately. That was the proudest moment of my life. I had proved myself finally. I still remember every moment of that day. 

People in DT started coming out with their scores. DT had nailed it and we had a 100 percentiler decided in @ashwinhari. Everyone was happy.

It was during this time that I interacted much more with people in the DT. Each one was amazing in his/her field. As @ashwinhari spoke about in his AIWTSAC, that group is a dream (aptly named dream team) and I am super proud to be a part of that team. @abhisheknambiar, @jbk.hcyju, @ashwinhari, @Arsene96, @SmileyKRK, @Bhavnish123, @Ezio06, @harleenv,@vinod718313, @karanD, @kifilshah, @Manish15597, @Mehulaggg, @Parag1208, @theprk(and some others as well, don't have their PG handle names :P), each one is a legend and I learned a lot from them and still continue to learn every day. The seniors in that group are some of the best and most generous people one can ever find. Their real-life experiences during and post-MBA along with the guidance they gave is what makes DT the best place to be in. The group is an important reason for whatever I could achieve in the last six months.

The next two months went in speculating about score vs percentile and slot difficulty debates related to scaling (as it turned out slot 2 was tougher than slot 1, my bad).

Even though scores were out and I was happy with my CAT performance, I knew the journey to the dream had just started I had a less than 90 score in 12 and knew that I needed 99.85 to get an A call. I was however happy that Joka would not fail me and it didn't.

On 4th January 2020, CAT results were out. 

VARC 99.35

LRDI 96.59 (This will remain my weakness)

QA 99.9 (the game-changer!)

OA- 99.86

Much more than expected. I had crossed the barrier for A as well.

XAT also went well this year and I ended up with 99.653 and a BM call. 

I got interview calls from IIMs A, C, L, I apart from XL and FMS, and got started with the next phase.

I spent the next two months preparing hard for my interviews and giving mock interviews very seriously every weekend as I had my two most important interviews, A and C right at the start of the interview season.

21st February 2020, Mumbai. I had the dream interview of my life at IIM Ahmedabad and I could answer most of what was asked. Two days later, the IIM C interview also turned out to be good and I thought I should be able to convert at least one of the two.

Cut to 8th May 2020. The result day. I was eagerly anticipating this day for quite long and when the result came around 1 pm and showed a convert against my name, it was a moment I can never forget. 7 other people from the DT had converted as well and it was an amazing day.

I also converted C and was in a huge dilemma for quite some time on A Vs C, a dilemma I was happy to be in. After a week-long interaction with many people, I finally decided to join IIM Ahmedabad, my abode for the next two years.

The journey is more important than the destination and the CAT journey for me was and will be a memorable one, a journey that has been about expecting the unexpected at the most unexpected of times. A year I was super confident about performing turned out to be not so good and a year when I did not have any expectations was when I could achieve success. Thank you Pagalguy for being my companion in this amazing journey. It's been a memorable one.

[curry612]

A friend of mine told me that a few people were posting their stories on this forum, and I gasped why didn't I do this earlier, coming back for the last time just to pen this down. So, here it is.

The beginning: I began my CAT journey right after my graduation in 2018, may end. The love of my life wanted to pursue an MBA since she was facing troubles getting placed through the college placements and was dejected after facing rejections from everywhere. 

I still remember, my first AIMCAT score was of merely 78 and I was wondering if taking up the sole decision of CAT was even right in the first place, just because of my love. She scored 130 around and was pretty happy to be ranked in the merit list, while I was hiding my face and lied to her about performing better. It was only then I realised the wrongs in my preparation which was only mock taking, and no analysis at all and I promised myself not to take any mock before I was done with atleast 60% of the syllabus and meanwhile started solving doubts on pagalguy from my old account and there used to be dedicated group of people who used to help me while solving and during this phase to keep up my calm. I still have the screenshots of their conversation with me, so I can finally thank them all for being there for me when I needed them the most.

@DreamerIIMC- He was always the most active guy in the group in those days, posting doubts and asking curious yet insightful questions was his norm. And he pretty much stuck to it till October maybe and sent me a link of countless free premium prep material comprising of all the mock links and solutions and Books from his email. It was so much pleasure interacting with him.

@onepoorGEM- I remember speaking to him over in a direct message once when I scored abysmally low in my DILR and he cheered me up stating even he scored badly in it, even lower than me. It was a motivational booster and stress buster as well. Thank you for being there.

@Vishiac- He solved countless, countless QA doubts of mine, I remember pasting each question of IMS online module to him in which I had doubts, and he used to respond maybe an hour later, but he solved all of them for me everyday and used to assist me in the "approach" to solve them. I remember sending him a zip file once and he solved all 16-20 of them for me within 20 minutes.

@vishnuanuraag- Another buddy of mine who used to be online every now and then and you had a benefit of just speaking to him about your stress and life in general from mock scores to everything. Basically my chai time buddy.

@1000Dafa- He was there when I needed him the most. I think he knew what I needed. I remember the day he commented on my post when I was crying about my mock scores and panicking that they will never shoot high and he motivated me to start solving from certain chapters for QA and was always there for QA doubts. We even used to challenge each other for a set of 5-7 questions and solving them at pace and posting the answers in the message. The winner used to get "1" karma/like on his post.

@mayur_arora- The DILR god. Period. When I was scoring even 160s, there always used to be a section for me which hindered me crossing that benchmark 190, DILR. I never maxed out of this section and it was only him, who taught me how to go about it and the set selection approach, and the way to practice them being 3 hours sectionals. The secret sauce, yes 3 hours sectionals, not 3 hour mocks.

And last but not the least, the Boss @scrabbler. Enough said. He has answers to all the questions, all. Whether you are struggling in life or feeling low, or your certain areas lacking be it Geometry or Logarithms, or ParaJumbles in VARC section, if you are under his mentoring and still not able to breach your targets, you are certainly doing things wrong, listen to him, always.

As you might have seen, my prep buddy circle was limited, and constrained because I didn't wanted to pollute my mind with unnecessary people and stuff, I texted plenty of people during my journey and finally narrowed down to these 7/8. I did face pretty harsh months, months when I felt like crying, months when I gave up, but these people heard me and motivated me whenever I needed that little dosage. You need people around you who will be there to even answer your text or phone at 4am, not the others who will stick around only when you are scoring high. And even my love herself was struggling with job and preparation on the other hand, but still she managed to speak to me over phone for 3 hours everyday to cheer me up.

This is not a post about how a strategy might work or not for you, I am sure by now thousands might have been posted here, this is about how the journey is beautiful when you have the right set of people around you who wouldn't want you in their life for just scores, but rather a thing called human empathy. 

Steph Curry 30,

CAT '19- 99.94; XAT'20- 99.7; Joining IIM Lucknow Batch 2020-2022.

[onepoorgem (Chhatridhaari Bunty)]

Note: This isn't a story of a journey into one of the top 15 B-Schools.  

Like all stories with happy(?) endings, this starts with a setback. 

April 18, 2019: IIFT Results are out. My best call of the season. PDF appears. 

Ctrl + F: *Name* 0/0 Results (IIFT Delhi list)

IIFT Kolkata List : Same result. 

I had converted SIBM Pune a month back and had not submitted its fee, not opting to join it at all. The new IIM results were due too. But perhaps I'm getting way too ahead of myself. Let's start from the starting.

Beginnings

To say that MBA was a lifelong goal would be false. Like 95% of people here, it was not the first thing on my mind when I passed out of college in 2016. So much so that I didn't even appear for CAT 2016. I had been fairly good with numbers throughout my life, hailing from a small town in Bihar with a pretty strict dad who had his own affinity for numbers. That's how I got it. I had been okayish with the aptitude part and lesser said about my English during school days, the better. It all started to change when the college began but nothing like higher studies was on my radar, definitely not MBA. At the beginning of 2017 though, I decided to join a couple of good friends of mine as they started to prep for Management Entrance Exams. Nothing fancy, no test series even. Just 4 Arun Sharma books and I deemed myself ready enough to take the test. It took 3 hours of collective public humiliation in a nationwide test to get me back to senses. I basically paid INR 2000 for 3 hours of sweating, panting, uneasiness, breathlessness and bruised mental agony that was CAT 2017. Hadn't filled any other exams that season. Maybe I did but definitely didn't appear for them.

Results came. 82 or such pathetic percentile. The only silver lining was a 99 percentile in QA. The other two sections,however were single digits or lower double digit scores. 

"Chaltaa hai." I said to myself. 

2018 

By this time, I had spent around 8 months in Hyderabad and was gearing up for a pretty special role in a new project for my company. I had also extensively started gathering info about MBA and everything that came under it: IIMs, XLs, IIFTs, SP Jains, MDIs and the rest of the lot. And of course, the exams needed to crack these. My plan for the next few months was set: Focus on the job, and the management career. Everything else was secondary at this stage. I didn't once visit my hometown in 2018 and hence didn't get to meet my parents that year at all. Needless to say, the enthusiasm with which the prep started faded away in typical engineering fashion. After long 65-hour weeks, I preferred watching Suits and Supernatural during weekends over handing my ass to TIME. Missed a string of AIMCATs, gave up on practicing at all, barely did anything on week nights: Disaster. Deciding to do something and actually doing it, there's a lot of difference. 

A very good college friend of mine was meanwhile climbing up the ranks in AIMCATs while I wasted my life away. One fine rainy evening in July end, he called me up and gave a nice little pep talk about how to go through with the prep in the remaining time. More than that, he berated me for being complacent all these months. Must say, this did wonders. A relatively relaxed work schedule also helped and I decided to get back into the game. 4 months would give me a lot of time to build upon a decent foundation that I already had. I went back to the modules and books and articles and whatnot. It didn't show immediate improvement (Note to the future aspirants: It never will) but I wasn't counting on that either.

Filled up all the forms this year. NMAT was the first one. Knocked it out of the park. 221 was the score so didn't exactly do as well as I thought but it'd be enough for a conversion (Those were the days I used to be an aspirant who thought decent marks above cutoff = direct conversion). This result came a week before CAT so a big morale booster it was. My percentiles had refused to leave the third gear and I was consistently stuck in 90-95 range in AIMCATs with mediocrity writ large across the first two sections (If you're reading this, you know what those sections are). I needed a miracle to happen on November 25th, 2018. But miracles don't happen with a lot of people in this country. 

CAT 2018 and the rest of the season

I drew second slot second year in a row. Anxious faces of first slot folks greeted me at the center. "Very tough QA bro" was the common response. I had enough confidence to get past it anyway but the silver lining was that most of the reviews for LRDI were satisfactory. "Much easier than the previous year." 2 PM IST. A weird VARC welcomed me to the second essay. Easy-ish but yeah, not that much. Tricky VA and a couple of insightful RCs were enough to rattle me. Then came the LRDI section and unsurprisingly, took me by the storm. Normally, people struggle with one section. I was not normal and for a year had been struggling with two. Somehow managed to complete 3 sets and grinned like an idiot for this "achievement" the last five minutes of the section. And then came the infamous QA section of CAT 2018. Joka, you beauty. I totally understood the anxiety after slot 1. There were no low-hanging fruits and the questions tested your basics and patience. The answers were not easy to arrive at but very much gettable. I answered 24 questions and was fairly confident of a 100% accuracy there. 

Keys came in a week later, results a month after that. 130 Raw. Scaled to 129.xx in the end. 96.48 with another 99+ in QA. 

Cherry on the cake was 80+ in the other two sections as well. Didn't expect it at all. The CAP would give me an opportunity, so would some other colleges. Not a great percentile by any means but I dunno why I was satisfied with it. Perhaps after I had given up on the prep, a good-ish score brought with it some relief.

IIFT 2018: Great paper for me that year. That scorecard is framed and hung on my bedroom wall. 99.32 percentile. 

SNAP 2018: Right next to the IIFT scorecard remains hung my highest numerical percentile, ever. A whopping 99.77 percentile.

XAT 2019: A fairly easy QA section and a few lucky "Akkad Bakkad" moments in DM section got me over the cutoffs for HR, but not BM. 96.97 overall, slightly above CAT.

Interviews came and went in a jiffy. This is where I realized that entrance exams are just one, though significant, yet insignificant part of MBA journey(New aspirants, please take a note. A good entrance exam score is fine but does mean absolutely jacks**t if you don't crack your interview rounds. And that goes for all exams and colleges). I went in half prepped for ALL of my calls. I was counting on my regular reading of newspapers and only that. Few mock PIs and GD sessions at IMS Hyderabad was all that I had to show for my efforts. NMIMS went well which drove me into over-confidence zone. IMT went well too. Then I was slaughtered brutally in my biggest call of the season: IIFT. SIBM followed 3 days later and was the start of healing process. Aced the interview. CAP did go well though not so much. XL HR was weird and I didn't know what to expect out of it. Then the results started to flow in. 

NMIMS selected me, IIFT rejected me, not even waitlisted. SIBM was converted after initial movement and the cocky me didn't even submit the fee for it. XL HR did come in with a convertible waitlist but that would be converted very, very late plus I wasn't really sure of a career in HR at that point in time. Converted a few baby IIMs as well. Now at this point, my personal life was changing pretty rapidly. Deaths of two people very, very close to me occurred in the same week as the IIFT reject. I started to think about yet another, final try. 

I shut off any unnecessary connection to anyone and took a 3-week vacation to the north. Came back rejuvenated, having made up my mind about a repeat. 

May 2019 - CAT 2019 

My goals were pretty clear by now. Improve LRDI and VARC. QA would follow suit anyway. 99.5+ would fetch me LKS, MDI and IITs with decent chances of conversion (That again!). I talked to my manager about my situation and unsurprisingly, he agreed to help me in every way possible. Past couple of years had made us closer friends than some hierarchical titles would suggest. I reduced my office hours, and started to work on my weaknesses. A lot of reading followed and as did lots of LRDI practice. No bad week was allowed and yet, some personal commitments needed for me to divide my time. Starting August though, all that disturbance and white noise was cancelled. There remained one focus - CAT. I took a three-month vacation for the exam and gave it my everything. Sure about not repeating it again (and praying for it), results started to show in VARC, not in LRDI. I remained on my targets but somehow it wouldn't budge. 

NMAT came interrupting again. 229 this time. Good, good. In November, i was eating and sleeping LRDI sets and did show occasional improvement in mocks. By the time CAT arrived at my doorsteps, by my estimation I had solved 300 good quality LRDI sets. 1000 overall, if you count basic and too advanced. Somehow, it didn't get reflected in my AIMCAT or SIMCAT scores. 

CAT 2019

Difficult VARC was the ominous sign. Managed to battle it out yet was left shaken thoroughly. My fate was sealed. LRDI although easier, comes directly after VARC and it didn't even register upon me for the first 20 minutes. My worst fears had manifested themselves at the worst possible time and date. Somehow managed a couple of sets in what will most likely be the easiest LRDI section CAT will ever throw at its beloved aspirants. QA didn't matter, I knew it in my heart. No way LRDI would let me cross 80 this time. Or even 75 which will rob me of even Shillong and Kozhikode (Haan theek hai, tab inkaa nhi pataa thaa). The past 3 years danced in front of my eyes. This was no time to be thinking all that. After 10 minutes, I started to solve QA. Was satisfied with it at the end but overall, I knew that this wouldn't be a happy ending. 

Other Exams - 2019 season

CAT keys came out soon and yup, a grand total of 20 in LRDI confirmed that my hopes with CAT were all done and dusted. IIFT ....... up big time with its weird question paper but more than that, it was myself that screwed it up. No GK cutoff and a lack of substantial score meant my promise of salvation for my interview disaster the previous year would never come true. 94.59; no calls coz GK. SNAP came and went and I did okayish but somehow the spirit had been affected deeply after CAT. New year came, brought with it the CAT results. I was in Vizag for the XAT exam when various WA groups beeped. The moment was here. I had to be practical. There was no hope and yet....

VARC 98.xx LRDI 75 QA 99.xx Overall 98.67

Gone. KO'ed. 3 out of 4 scores were in excess of 98 and yet this was almost meaningless as far as grander scheme of things went. Thankfully, life's taught me to deal with things much harder than this and I quietly walked back to my hotel room for the XAT exam prep next day. A weird DM and even weirder DM answer key meant the last shot at redemption was gone. A miserable XAT DM sectional score forced me to erase the college from my memory.

I was in a condition much worse than last year's. No CAP, IIFT or XL calls. All I had were SIBM, SCMHRD, NMIMS, MICA and IIM Shillong. MDI Gurgaon did call me for a PI which I couldn't attend due to unavoidable personal reasons. "Chuck it. One final crack at whatever I get. Let's fight this."

"It ain't much, but it's honest work." was the meme I had in mind when I took a look at my list of interviews lined up. Won't consider MDI as it never came to fruition at all.  

Aced NMIMS totally after a disastrous Case Discussion. Luckily, PI turned into a battle of two cricket fanboys: Myself and the 55-year old interviewer. Near-Perfect SCMHRD and SIBM interviews followed, IIM Shillong humiliated me for (the lack of) my technical knowledge and MICA thought  I was more suited for an HR role than a marketing one. 

COVID crashed the world around me, MBA expectations did the rest. As I served up the remainder of my notice period at a job i had come to enjoy because of people I worked with, interviews started getting cancelled and results started to pour in. NMIMS was converted, as expected. Both SIBM and SCMHRD had assured me of converts with just a bit of waiting game to be played. Shillong said a big no and MICA quashed all my efforts to get into Ahmedabad one way or the other with a direct reject, wishing me all the luck for an HR career. 

Verdict: People start with big goals. Everyone should. Many a times, that's not how life works out. It's real, practical and painfully funny. I'd always remember the past 3 years. I turned from a man who was unsure of anything in his life to a person who people looked up to for inspiration. Pagalguy, an educational platform connected me to bunch of like-minded individuals. Too many to name and too less of space to thank them all. No matter where  I go, the lessons would remain. Was this my goal? No. Am I happy? I'd say, yeah. If in 10 years' time, I can read this and smile - I'd say, yeah. I am happy. Hell, after 3 arduous years and a top 20 B-School later, I'd say I got my fair share. Sometimes, it's okay to relax, accept, move on and make peace with what you have. I leave the city of Hyderabad today and incidentally convert the best call I had this season on my way to the airport. Sign of good things to come? You never know. 

Destination for the next 2 years: SIBM Pune / SCMHRD Pune (Will see). 

CAT 2019: 98.67

SNAP 2019: 99.55

IIFT 2019: 94.59

NMAT 2019: 229 (Score) / 99 (Percentile)

XAT 2020: Zindaa hun yaar, kaafi hai.

Final Converts: SIBM Pune, SCMHRD Pune, NMIMS Mumbai

Will Most Likely Convert: DMS, IIT Delhi

Rejects: Aap woh baat kyun puchte hain, jo bataane ke qaabil nhi. 

Rejects, Seriously: LRDI (2017-19), IIM Shillong, MICA.

Special Thanks: No journey is fun without companions. I've been lucky enough to have had quite a few great, great minds alongside me in this long, long ride. Not mentioning them would be a crime. @IIM_Groot , @Utkarsh7511, @MissChanandlerBong, @Monica20 @Alucard_24 , @Ttior, @Deep.ak, @VinayHirani1 , @Sanchit3008, @DilipMishra15 , @RishabNayyar , @TanujA3, @Sherlock221bED , @Razorfist, @DanielBryan , @LegendKiller , @Sn96 , @Galadriel53, @AmanakaAditya, @Arsene96 , @MohitMehar, @Bazinga19 ,@VarshithR7, @Pressi98, @SouljaBoy.

I'm pretty sure I missed out on a LOT of names. It's not intentional. You all mean A LOT to me. I love you guys more than IIM K hates engineers. If that doesn't tell you something, I don't know what will :p ;) :) 

Time to say goodbye and thank you to the most beloved platform I have ever been a part of. I'd be appearing sporadically to help people out and the DM would always be open but the old days of just hanging out here all day are just over, I'd say. All the best for your career, everyone. May the force be with you all.

One Poor Gem,

Signing Off. 

[human01_pgy_user]

  

THE journey of failures.......

Before going through my post, please forgive me for my grammar, vocab, etc. This post is mainly for those who are still in this competitive race.

The seed..

ok, so where do I start. the journey began in 2016 in august with myself getting placed in a good company. life was pretty much chilled out in the final year. And with boredom comes the idea to do something different. so I ended up taking an interest in upsc civil services examination. My plan was to attack on this exam with full force and so ended up not joining my placement job. 

My master plan was divided into months with continuous track of progress using test series. But in real life master plan kaha kaam karte hai. In 2017 I was bedridden for about 3 months. This broke my spirit and plan went to the trash.

In 2018 when I gave my 1st attempt, before going for the paper I knew mera nhi hona. So, this time apart from the test series, I also joined leading online coaching. (apne se nhi hora to kya hua, coaching mai barabar ho jaega). 

On 2nd  2019 June, gave my second attempt, and alas dint make the general category cutoff.

The result

so, here I was dejected with a tag of failure. From 2017 I failed in every exam from Rbi grade b to 3-4 bank exams (pressure aaja tha to bank ka bhi bhar deta tha). I also went for 2 companies interviews and was also conference out in airforce.

Due to a load of study, I kept my social life close to zero. deactivated all social media accounts except WhatsApp. so, here I was standing at the crossroads with a tag of looser which I myself gave to myself . How on planet  earth are you gonna carck exam if you aren't able to clear prelims cutoff (1st stage of the exam) (ab bhai ittne mocks, exam sab mai fail kya natak hai)

After failing straight away for 2 years I had 3 options

1)continue for upsc cse 

2)go for a private job search in Bangalore

3)MBA time

So I went for a combo of 1 and 3 and as Rambo divided myself to prepare for both exams. On 21 June I enrolled for time coaching online basic test series  (jisme sabse kam rupee dena padta hai).

gave a mock test from home got a score in the 90s was very happy, June mai hi itta araha hai to Nov tak to ho jaega ( but things doesn't go as you think)

chase the CAT

I gave all small tests on the portal, the one which has 15 questions over 3 months. ( from mid juy or so). The main problem was my varc. I continuously scored 9 correct 6 wrong. LRDI fluctuated and quants was good except the probability part.

In aimcats, my score varied between 130s (max) to 76(min, not taken seriously). I was not getting a good score over here too my percentile never crossed more than 98.5

Now here comes a comedy, If you fail in one aspect like aptitude exam its ok, but in all(in whatever field ), highly demotivating. I tried very hard for varc but marks aa hi nhi rahe the. I still remember my last aimcat, which was about 7 or 10 days before 23rd Nov the cat day. I tanked it, from the test centre straight away went for samosa. Thought of all sorts of shitty ideas a student can think(batane layak bhi nhi hai).

After last aimcat ,the aimcat analysis comes on time portal, mine was full of red marks in few lrdi and many varcs indicating percentile was lower than 85 or 80, I don't remember completely.

I consoled my self and said If this is how your journey gonna end so be it, face it, but if I am gonna die, I will die a hero's death. when 7 days were remaining, 

I analyzed only varc past year papers, mock tests etc for about 4 times. came to the conclusion that inference is what they are asking for, not speed read as said by many online gurus. 

On 23rd Nov, I had slot 2 , called my friend who gave in slot 1. he said quant was easy. lrdi moderate. varc tough. This gave me a rough idea for my self-satisfaction.

During my paper, I solved but also made guess and wrote random numbering in 2 sequences based varc question. Cat ended, on night I got a call from a friend, fms bhara kya. I was like varc to nikalna hi nhi hai kya karuga 1000-1500 deke. , but usne call kiya isliye bhar diya.

I booked a date for Nmat on 25th Nov, thinking that I will be prepared as per my cat exam schedule. But no, I was tired,still went for nmat gave it. The next big thing was IIft, but 1-2 days before iift, cat answer-key came. My mind was blown seeing my varc score (I checked for 4 hours straight). only 3 questions which had -ve marking and I marked, were wrong. rest all correct.

I lost it, I wasn't able to understand that how my raw score could be 174 .looks like I will get calls from major iims yolos

Due to this on IIFT day, I was not at all in any mood to solve the paper, cherry on the cake being few questions which were wrong and I am sure I wasted my time over  there. overall, I tanked my iift. snap came I watched youtube videos and made a strategy & executed it.

The next big thing was XAT .I was 100% sure that the IIM will display our percentiles 1 day before xat so that good students get overexcited and dont do good in xat.I even posted this on pg. You will find it at the end of this post.

The same thing happened but I was prepared. Xat went good (dont ask me how they gave marks for dm) and then the journey went on a more continuous road.

In this whole journey, the 3 scenes that motivated me were

1) avengers end game trailer- the black widows speech-Even if there's a small chance, we owe this to everyone, not in this room.

2) game of thrones when Dothraki with fire in their swords attacked the white walkers' army

3)the smile of Kane Williamson after world cup loss

Results will come and go, the main thing I want to convey fellow aspirants is, that it is all about your mindset, if you think you can you can, if you think you cant ,you never will. Many people come and say you are smart intelligent don't listen to them, many come and say how come, people, like ous can compete, you have unrealistic aspirations, don't listen to them either. Have faith in yourself and accept whatever results you receive. But make sure in this race of competition you don't get trapped so much that your mental health and relations with close people take a bad hit.

Talking of results here they are

profile- gem fresher (Nit)

cat-99.66(IIM C touch and go)

xat-99.785

snap-99.6

nmat-99

iift-96.6

calls-IIM (I,S,Caps),xlri-bm,spjain,mdi,nitie,iit-d,sjmsom,sibm,iift,nmims,imtG,fms

rejects-iim S, spjain,nitie,iift,fms

waiting as of now and may be converted-XL,IITs

converted-IIM-I,SIBM,NMIMS,IMT-G,MDI 

The journey is not over yet, nor it is supposed to end like this. But yes this MBA season was my 1st and last attempt. To all those who feel demotivated, lost ,humiliated etc. I hope this post act as a supporting light during the journey.

                                For when all is lost, all is found.

I wanted to thank each and every one individually, who helped me on this platform but I am bad in remembering names. so, thank you ALL aka pg community.

Aaj mood accha tha isiliye likh diya :)

[sherlock221bed (Praveen Dwivedi)]

 

"The chase to taste the kiss of bliss

That made my heart tingle"

2017

It was a peaceful, cool evening in the hot city of Jaipur when Shreyans and I saw our first mock scores at the TIME Jaipur center and it hit us pretty clearly that it ain't a peace of cake. Quant and dilr were 99+ but I had scored a 24 in VARC. That's where my chase began. Like everyone preparing around me, I also bought the Norman Lewis, RC100, TIME vocab cue cards, and a hundred other things to improve my varc. Soon came the college placements, and I was fortune enough to get placed in early September and resumed my CAT prep. DILR was a like a companion to me and I rarely screwed that section but varc continued to be my nemesis. Mock scores that season were like a roller coaster ride for me. I had my share of 99+ percentiles but often varc or some other section used to drag my score down. Also I had my hostel room at such a location that it was always so noisy that it was hell for me to give any kind of mock that season. Anyhow, came the D day - 26th November 2017. I got morning slot and I hated waking up early. Somehow got 2-3 hours of sleep. Exam begins...... VARC was pleasing to read given the horror we all faced during AIMCAT VARCs that season and as usual I had no idea how that section went for me. DILR.... my oh my, I won't forget this section my entire life. My strongest section all season and I was struggling to even attempt more than 3 sets, adding to that pressure my system got abruptly shut down 4 times during that 1 hour and I guess I lost potentially a few questions to the rush and fear. I was shit scared but somehow managed to attempt QA to the fullest of my abilities. Shreyans had a similar horrific experience in the second slot, but still people knew by then that DILR was there to kill them.

Later that night we were sitting at Hostel-4 canteen (our most visited spot in campus) and we knew in our hearts that we have screwed up. Drinking that chai and eating cheese maggi we managed to still have some hopes. But we gave XAT eventually in autopilot mode.

Results - 

CAT17 - 98.31 (86/95/99.5) turns out varc was the real culprit indeed | XAT18 - 99.331

Converts - MDI Gurgaon; Rejects - XL HR & BM. 

There comes a time in everyone's life when one can't see things clearly or take a decision rationally. This was it for me. I couldn't decide about MDI and then listened to my heart and decided to give CAT again. I don't know why I took that decision, but my heart said so and I couldn't refuse.

Bangalore (August 2018) -

I stared my job in Capgemini in August and took a very expensive PG room (23k/month for one room) and shared it with my college buddy. I don't know why stayed there for a year to put a hole in our pockets. Maybe we were just too lazy to move or something else, I just can't justify this stupidity. Meanwhile Shreyans joined FMS and told me all about his experiences there and I couldn't wait to give CAT again. I started preparing mid August this time. Remember my experience with noise in my previous attempt, guess what now I had noisy neighbours and again I had to cover my ears for the entire varc section. This time I properly did my homework on varc and treated it as another quant section and it did wonders for me. I was very happy with my scores this season. I was constantly in top 50 and occasional top 20 made my journey beautiful. I even scored a couple of 200+ and felt better than ever.

Then came a wave of disasters..... Firstly, I realized how quickly can one lose his peace of mind when your family is in trouble and you can't even visit them. Secondly, I decided to meet the girl with whom I shouldn't have. We had a history and I realized a very important lesson that you can't beat destiny. We are puny human beings in a grand scheme of events and the mistakes I did years ago came to haunt me. I couldn't comprehend the overwhelming pace of emotions I was going through. It was too much for me. 

I was in no mindset to appear for CAT and only a select few people know that I actually went for CAT18. I was surprised by the result I got - 97.51%ile in CAT. I wasn't even expecting to cross 90. One of the worst times I had to face, but as fate would have it. CAT19 was eventually decided.

2019 -

I started playing DOTA for a change and to do something just for the sake of it. This game has shaped my last year entirely. It's a sick mental game and you can't leave it after a point. Till date I have an average of more than 4 hours of DOTA daily over a period of one year and that includes the time period of CAT19, interviews, job, shifting and what not. I owe so much to this game. 

Eventually my college buddy too went to FMS and now I shifted to a flat at a walking distance from my company. In Bangalore this is golden luck, people would kill for it. 

Remember my problem with noise, well chapter 3 this time I had 24/7 construction going on nearby. This time it was so unbearable that I had to buy ear plugs, that too of different varieties. Even that didn't work properly against the constant drilling. 

Now comes the part where I actually grow..... I again met the girl I mentioned above and this time decided to deal with my emotions properly. Although they were still overwhelming for me, but this chapter needed closure and I was just looking for an answer. Along with the other issues that I was facing this became my new normal.

Came September I left all those things behind me and started prep. This season could have been better. Compared to last season I wasn't even scoring at par. I didn't perform that good but still I continued. I was lucky to have very little burden on the job front. 

Came the D-day. This time I had the second slot! I was very happy after a better sleep but when that dreaded VARC section came and time progressed, I knew it was screwed. After that I attempted the colonization passage...... final nail in the coffin. Then came DILR, it was a weird section for me considering the low difficult level, I performed poorly again... made many mistakes. Came the quant section, again pretty easy compared to last year's joka fever. Here I made some of the silliest mistakes of my life. I won't bore you with them but the people who know about them are probably laughing reading this right now. And it eventually cost me a joka call and an FMS admit.

Well anyway, this year has already made me a different person and I didn't feel too bad and continued playing DOTA :) Came XAT, I performed probably the best I could. But then the answers keys spoiled the fun for me, still I was so lucky to get a decent score and clear the cut-offs for DM and VA by a whisker. 

Results - 

 CAT19- 99.61 (96/99.4/99.3) | XAT20 - 99.722  

Then started the interview season. I was searching for a group to prepare for the same but I don't know what happened at that fortunate day that I decided to post (8th January 2020) on PG urging people to join a WhatsApp group that I had created for the same. Well the rest is history, I met amazing people there and I can simply call them my second family, if not exaggerating too much. 

  

Intresting Interview Experiences -

I had limited interviews this season thanks to K's diversity criteria, and well FMS chapter was just sad for most of the people having it's call. Coming to the interview season, my best interview was probably cap and I got waitlisted in that XD. My worst interview was IIT B, and I got straight in. Surprisingly my GD topic in XL BM was on Greta Thunberg and my PI went completely on my views about a plethora of different things (From student activism to Hitler and rize of Nazi party. From Congress pre-independence to student activism). They covered it all, and I don't know why I mentioned these two terms to explain a certain aspect - "Feminism" and "Feminazism" and never expected that I would make to XL this year, at least in the first list, but I eventually did. So expect the unexpected. Final count -

 Converts - XL BM, IIT Bombay | Rejects - FMS, cap 

These last 2 years have changed me entirely. I have learnt so much about myself, life that it just feels apt to start a new chapter now. For which I will probably be joining XL BM soon....

 Thanks to all those people who my made my last 5 months a dream run -  

@IIM_Groot @onepoorGEM @Alucard_24 @Gandalf.the.White@DilipMishra15 @aman1111 @legend_killer11 @DanielBryan @Sn96 @MissChanandlerBong @TanujA3 @Razorfist @Monica20 @Galadriel53

 And the ones who were there during the mocks - - 

@FranklyCAT @madscorer @chinmay.nerkar @Racist @hathiappa @anandnayak @jaskaran97 @Praharsh_Hathi3 @ashwinhari @Arsene96 @mayur_arora @arshsahay100 @abckl_123 @ORAKAL and many more which I missed

And our beloved - @scrabbler

Sherlocked

Signing off..... 

[berlin (Adi)]

It was one fine evening of December 2016. I had just come out of a local game zone and I saw an advertisement of TIME for CAT Preparation. They had just opened in my city and I didn't know what came to me but I went in for inquiry and its then director who was was an alumni of IIM C gave me complete information about cat and gave me the belief that I too can get into an IIM. I joined TIME in 2017, I was then in 5th semester of my engineering and most of my classmates were from commerce background. They were really really weak in mathematics, and since I was doing pretty well when compared to them. I got this fake air of superiority in my head. I was prepping for cat18 and so I believed I had enough time to work on my skills. Due to this lack of urgency, I ended up wasting a year hence. Then came July 2018 I gave my first mock and scored 78. After 4-5 more mocks and effort put, I started scoring around 100. Just when I had decided to be a bit more serious about cat, bang I got 3 backlogs in engineering out of nowhere. I couldn't even understand why. My first reaction was ...... cat I need to complete my graduation in time so I stopped preparing in October mid and went all out for engineering gratefully I cleared 9 subjects with good grades and even though I was out of touch with the syllabus. I ended up scoring 119(percentile-94.63) in cat-2018 thanks to VARC converted IMT Ghaziabad in the first list but decided to drop. I was serious about cat19 more than anything but in July I got this really great job offer and since there were so much to learn I got distracted and the next thing I knew it was October. Still, I tried the best I could, put in a lot more effort and by the end of the season I started scoring around 150-160 in the mocks. Then came the D-Day I was given slot 2 and then I did something which I shouldn't have. I asked a review of morning slot to a friend of mine which messed up my mindset and then I screwed up DILR and VARC big time which I always did well. Final score- 139 Percentile- 97.61 Calls- MDI, NITIE, L-ABM, DFS, CAP, IRMA(I don't know why I applied for it but so far that's the only convert I have). Yes I know what you are thinking, this isn't a success story but one day I'll surely share something good and believe me it wouldn't be a rant but rather a journey to success.😉 CAT'19 might not given me my dream B-School but it gave me something more important, it gave me lifelong friends. Even though many of them are going ahead, they've promised me that they would always be there for me which I could've never dreamt of. Coming to the journey from here on, I won't be preparing for CAT'20 due to some personal reasons. I also need some time to work on my profile as I've realized that there is a lot more I improve upon. But for me CAT'22 it'll be. And the goal will always be the Red Building of dreams-FMS.

[sra1007]

Hey what is the best online coaching for cat?

I'm thinking to take byjus 

Anyone can suggest whether its best to go to byjus?

[pranay2596]

  

It all started on 2nd May 2016. My 4th-semester exams at NIT Surat had just ended. It was summer vacation time. I was happy as it was my birthday. But something better happened on that very day. I got a call from a Ph.D. student at IIM Ahmedabad. Yes! It was an interview call for an Internship that I had applied on April 15, 2016. On the next Monday, I gave my interview at IIM Ahmedabad for that Internship position. 

After a week, I started my 2-month long internship at IIM Ahmedabad under the guidance of that same Ph.D. student. I was working in a group of six people there with many other RAs [Our group pic is attached with the post]. We worked in the F8 room (Computer Center). I have beautiful memories of the time that I spent on campus: Our group meetings in wing 6 & 9 (Up the Harward stairs), a large span of the beautiful loan in front of Vikram Sarabhai Library, Ice-cream at Amul, Chai at Tapari, Pasta on the new campus and a sophisticated underground, connecting the old and the new campus, with each pillar inside it depicting interesting facts about the campus! Man, it was a lovely time!

This was the time when I dreamt of doing an MBA. Not only just an MBA but particularly at IIM Ahmedabad. I was fascinated with the idea of doing an MBA at IIM A as I came to know that it is the best in India. I told my colleagues there that I would crack CAT 2017 in my final year and would join IIM Ahmedabad in 2018. With that promise, I returned to my college in July after completing my internship.

I started my preparation for CAT after returning to college. It was a casual preparation, not a dedicated one. Few months before CAT 2017, I started preparing for it with much more seriousness. On the D day, I messed up my VARC section.

CAT 2017: 95.4%le [VARC – 73.xx only]

No call from any old IIMs. I also screwed the XAT exam in all the sections. Still, I didn’t feel sad as I soon got a job in Tata Hitachi. So I was relaxed. I decided to give CAT again in 2018 with the job.

It was the 30th of June 2018. I was at Kharagpur railway station with my friend to join the Tata Hitachi Kharagpur plant as GET. Suddenly, I thought of the MS Dhoni movie looking at Kharagpur Jn. Board on the platform. Lol! I thought Kharagpur could be my game-changer as well. I could crack CAT and get into IIM Ahmedabad. Only little then I realized how wrong I was. Nonetheless, I joined the Tata Hitachi Kharagpur plant with 22 other GETs. We all were staying in a hostel. We were going to have training until January 2019. So I had more than enough free time for CAT 2018 preparation. At the beginning of my job, I did manage to study well, but later I couldn’t resist my urge to the fun that the rest of the GETs were having! Late night dance party in Vamsi’s (host of our every party) room, taking a walk on the beautiful campus of the company at night, planning various trips (but executed only a few), roaming in IIT Kgp on weekends, partying in Kolkata and the list goes on. Again, I tried hard to manage my focus on the study but eventually couldn’t resist my urge. With half mind, I wrote CAT 2018 in Kolkata.

CAT 2018: 94.98%le 

After giving CAT I wasn’t much excited realizing my performance in the exam, but the CAT result made me dejected. I scored lesser than my last year's performance. How could it be even possible? Lots of thoughts came into my mind. Maybe I don’t deserve an old IIM at all, forget about IIM Ahmedabad! But a twist came in my story.

To my surprise, I got a call from IIM Indore and IIFT (99.845%le) (I didn’t want to go for new/baby IIMs, so I never considered them). How did I score such a high percentile in IIFT? Even today I don’t have an answer for that. It was just a bit of pure gold luck! Now, even IIM Indore and IIFT looked as beautiful as what once IIM Ahmedabad had been to me. I was pretty much convinced that I could get no better calls than what I was having at that time. I prepared for the interview well. But alas! I was waitlisted in both, which didn’t convert later.

I was at my lowest point at that time. I started from IIM Ahmedabad and was more than happy to go for Indore and IIFT D/K, but now it seemed I lacked the skill needed for getting into a B school. First I couldn’t score well in CAT two times in a row, and then when I got 2 decent calls I couldn’t convert any of them.

 

Meanwhile, my honeymoon period at Tata Hitachi was over. Training got completed in January 2019 and then I was posted in Tata Hitachi Hyderabad branch as Assistant Manager, Sales & Marketing. Soon I came under tremendous pressure for my sales figure. The job was asking too much of me, and I started hating my job badly. Here I was in Hyderabad in the scorching month of May, looking at both the rejection of B schools and a job that I had started hating. Somehow I couldn’t muster up the courage to start my preparation again for CAT 2019. I needed to contemplate all choices that I made, my approach, my lifestyle everything. And then I realized my biggest drawback is lack of dedication and the procrastination. In simple English it’s called laziness. Yeah, I was too lazy to get out of my comfort zone all the time. And due to that, now I was in a mess. I decided to improve myself.

First of all, I decided to finish my book. Well, I forgot the ‘book’ part of my story. Let me take my story a little back. After the completion of my internship at IIM Ahmedabad (2016), I started writing a novel. There were different reasons behind it, but I won’t go in detail as it might require another post:) I almost finished my novel in the next 2.5 years by 2018. But after getting a job at Tata Hitachi, I became lazy and didn’t care to finish it. To put it in perspective, I had almost written 85,000 words worth novel by 2018 but was lazy enough to give it a last final touch as I was in a comfort zone in 2018. Everything seemed settled at that time, so I was just enjoying my time.

Now back to the present story. I started working on my book again in May 2019. CAT preparation was also going parallelly along with my Sales job. To improve my dedication, I joined a library (paying Rs 1200 per month) so that I can get a quiet atmosphere as my PG was filled with over-enthusiastic people. In the morning, I would go for the job, then in the evening from Job I would go to Library in Ameerpet and then at night, I would return to my PG in Prakashnagar at around 11 pm. It was not a strict schedule as I did take leaves from the study many times in between! I finished my novel in August. As I didn’t have time to roam around traditional publishers, I self -published the e-book version of it on kindle just to get few brownie points in the interviews. I decided that I would go for traditional paperback publishing after getting into a B School. 

After completion of my Book, now my full focus was on CAT 2019. I started giving mocks as well. This time, my target was any old IIM, IIFT, XLRI, IIT B, MDI, SPJIMR, NITIE basically any decent college as I desperately wanted to leave my job. No specific college was in my mind. That ship had already sailed. My job was getting heavy on me, but I managed to keep cool all the time trying to forget the last 2 CAT results.

Finally, D day came: 24/11/2019. I had been listening to ‘Ashayein’ and ‘Lakshya’ song repeatedly since the start of November month. It always gave me goose-bumps. On the day before the CAT, I played SRK’s famous Chak-de-India ‘90-minute’ speech to make my lazy mind realize the importance of 180 minutes on the next day. I tried my best to create a positive vibe for the D day as this time I desperately wanted to score better to leave my job.

CAT 2019: 99.51%le (98.16/ 91.00/ 99.85)

I managed to get a decent score. I was happy as on the very same day I got the IIM L call. It was a dream call for me as at best I expected IIM K call only at my score. Poorly then I knew that IIM K was way out of my reach at that score. I had already ruled out ABC from the picture.

At the same time, my friend Mohit, who was studying at the University of Pennsylvania, came back to India for a short vacation. I along with few other friends arranged a trip to Mumbai and Ellora caves. On the last day of our trip, we visited Elephanta caves. It was evening time and we were on a boat returning from caves to Gateway of India. In the midway, I saw a message on a FB group that IIM B had declared its shortlists. I just casually tried to check. The moment I logged in, I saw a congratulation message and then the page disappeared. I couldn’t properly see whether I had got a call or not. When I again tried to log in, I lost internet connectivity. Here I was in the middle of the sea with a plethora of anxiety. I was not at all expecting a B call, but congratulation message made me confused. The next couple of minutes were one of the most difficult minutes of my life. At last, after a few minutes, my net signal popped up again. I checked. Woahhhh! I had been shortlisted for IIM Bangalore. 

I was so happy that I along with my friends tried to enter the Taj hotel for dinner after reaching Gateway of India. I wanted to have the best dinner that night. But the security guard didn’t allow us to say it was full and we needed to book it well in advance. Well, still I was dancing in my head. A call from holy trinity!

Soon after I returned to Hyderabad, I had the privilege of meeting @Arsene96 in person at his PG room. He monitored our group GD and then gave valuable feedback to me on how I could improve my communication skills. It was just before IIFT interviews. After meeting him, I realized the kind of people I would be competing at IIM B interviews. So I started putting my best effort into interview preparation and improvement in communication skills. 

Well, I could write a lot on how I approached my B interview, but I believe it’s already been a long write-up. Fast forward to D day (10 march, 2020), my Bangalore interview didn’t go well. In fact, I was in tears on my way back home. I don’t know how, but in the end, I did manage to get a decent waitlist at IIM B and today (11 june, 2020) I have converted IIM Bangalore in the second list! 

I dreamt of getting into IIM Ahmedabad and ended up getting into IIM Bangalore. Do I regret not getting into IIM A? Well, really not much. Considering the kind of shit-hole I was inside in the last year at this time, I’ve come a long way. I’ve improved a lot. 

Now before going to IIM B, I am going to use this time trying to get my novel a decent publisher for paperback publication. I am aiming to get my novel published within a year. My IIM tag might help me, at least I hope so. Even if I don’t get it done, I will still be happy for my effort and dedication in this work. Writing a novel of 90,000 words demanded a great deal of dedication from me and I’m happy for my effort. At least, my friends and family will read it! As anything, if this journey has taught me is the importance of patience and dedication. If you have them, sooner or later your time will surely come!

It will be cruel of me if I sign off before thanking 2 people who helped me immensely in my journey to IIM Bangalore. Jainam, who is not only my best & childhood friend but also a life-coach, has immensely helped me during my cat preparation. He helped me get on track whenever I was feeling low during last 3 years of my CAT journey. Priyank, who guided me for all B School profile forms and SOPs including the important IIM B SOP. I can’t finish my story without thanking them. I wasn’t much active here on pagalguy (I regret it badly today), so don’t have many friends here. But I’m hoping to meet all PG legends during and post MBA life.

To all people reading or skipping this, wishing you the best of luck for your life. May the force be with you!  

[trader-007 (Lost Hope)]

Probably for me, my CAT journey started in 3rd year of my Engineering, as I was supposed to join my family business. My cousin recently graduated from IIM Indore & rejected a job offer from Goldman to start his own business (a manufacturing unit) and it turned out successful. My father wanted me to do the same :p I joined a coaching institute in Nov'16 but was never serious for it. Came Jun'17, CAT was approaching fast and I became a bit serious about it. Quant was my strong hand, verbal the weak (A typical engineer thing ?). I scored in range of 110-120 in mocks but could manage only 20-25 in verbal. One day, I suddenly scored 60+ marks in verbal in a mock & got 99+ percentile. I made a false assumption that verbal is more of luck based and I don't need to worry about it. Came the D-day, mine was Slot 2 and I was pretty excited for it tbh. I got a heads-up that DILR is one of the most difficult in history of CAT and rest is easy. After the exam, I had a neutral feeling about it and didn't see answer keys, hoped for verbal cutoff to clear. CAT 2017 - OA 92.82 (QA 99.31 DILR 89.94 VA 47.07) Came the results & bubble blew away very hard on me. Didn't give SNAP, couldn't clear GK cutoff in IIFT and verbal cutoff in XAT. Dream of doing an MBA (it wasn't actually) was shattered. I got a campus placement in Axxela Advisory (startup in financial markets) and joined the same in Jul'18. I started trading in European Interest rate markets. Coming to office at 11:30 am, I rarely left before 11pm or 12am depending on positions. Although the job nature was pretty tense & involving, I enjoyed it and started liking the job. I became sceptical of CAT as wanted to become a Trader instead. Belonging to a business background, my father had different expectations out of me & wanted me to take over business after MBA. Even though not sure about it, I purchased SIMCAT's and gave mere 7-8 mocks to sum up the whole preparation. Came the D-day, I booked an Ola from salt lake to belgharia (my exam center). The driver stopped somewhere in Dum-dum, still 12-13 kms to my center, and asked me to get off stating he has some personal work. I requested him multiple times to not to do so, but he didn't listen. I got off from cab cursing him. I requested another booking on both Uber Ola, but literally no one was accepting it and I started walking towards my center and walked for next 25 min when someone accepted booking. I reached center at 2:10 pm, sweating badly and exam was to start in another 20 min. After exam, I knew that I screwed my verbal again. CAT'18 - OA 90.51 (QA 98.43 DILR 92.22 VA 53.41) It was literally waste of an attempt and I couldn't gather courage to tell this result to my parents. Soon, XAT came and I scored 96.5 percentile and got an XLRI-BM call, my only call of the season. Joined IMS for gdpi sessions, soon came the most important day of my life till date. After the process, I had a mixed feelings about it. Came results and it was a Direct Reject (obviously :/) owing to my percentile maybe. I was completely shattered and thought maybe this is not my cup of tea. In Jul'19, I gathered courage to appear for CAT one last time. I purchased TIME, IMS & CL test series and spent most of my time giving and analysing mocks. I started reading Aeon regularly and gave a lot of verbal sectional tests. Came the D-day, Mine was Slot 2 again, for the third time. My first passage was British Colonialism and I spent 10-12 minutes on that RC and couldn't solve even 1 ques confidently. Horrors of past started flashing in front of my eyes, however I moved on and left that passage. After tense 3 hours, I had mixed feelings about it and knew it could have been better. Gave IIFT, couldn't clear GK cutoff again and aced SNAP. CAT'19 - OA 98.19 (QA 98.53 DILR 98.47 VA 89.09) SNAP'19 - OA 99.49 Being a GEM, I knew this result won't grab me Holy Trinity, but atleast I had a chance at some of top-20 colleges and I was pretty happy about it. Soon came XAT and I performed very poorly in verbal again, got only 3.2 marks in it, overall was around 24 marks. People were talking verbal cutoff to drop from 9-10 marks to 6-7 marks this time and in any way, I didn't had a chance. I wrote off XLRI, my only chance at a top 5. Soon calls stated to pour in, and I got call from SPJMIR. I was on cloud 9 and thought this is my chance at a top tier college. I was sitting on last bench in a gdpi session of TIME when XLRI calls were out. I knew that I had no chance, still I checked the portal and logged in. "Congratulations" was the only word I saw, and my heart stopped pumping. I paused for a minute, couldn't believe. There were tears in my eyes and I came out of that session. But soon, I realised that I've only got 96.74 percentile, which might not be sufficient for conversion. Calls : IMT, IMI, XIMB, VGSOM, CAP, SIBM P, SJMSOM, SPJIMR, MDI, XLRI-BM, IIM K PGP Finance. Fast forward to results, I was rejected at SPJIMR. Converted IMT, IMI, XIMB, VGSOM but didn't paid fees for any. I was waitlisted at SIBM P, which seemed to be my best option which I would convert. Other results were delayed due to lockdown and I made up my mind to go to SIBM P if I convert. My father was not convinced with it, and with no pressure, encouraged me to go again if I think I can do better. Everything has a limit and I thought that this has to stop. I convinced them SIBM P being a good college with many opportunities & I'll work hard there. On May 20, XLRI results came at 12:28 am. I checked half heartedly knowing that it's almost impossible to convert XLRI BM at 96.7 percentile.. Post logging in, I saw "Congratulations" and couldn't believe my eyes. I jumped in excitement and woke up my parents telling that I finally did it. Converts : IMT, IMI, XIMB, VGSOM, MDI PGPIM, SIBM P, SJMSOM, IIM K PGP Finance, XLRI BM. To all those who feel demotivated or lost, I hope this post gives you some motivation that every single one of you can do it if right efforts are put in. Signing off...

[akshatjain93]

My CAT journey (A Father's Day Special) 

Hang on tight since this is gonna be long read. I assure if you end up reading till the end, your emotions will go for a swing. 

https://theakshatjain.blogspot.com/2020/06/all-i-want-to-say-about-cat.html 

[altairjain]

“The cowards never started and the weak died along the way, that leaves us ladies and gentleman, us.” -Phil Knight. This one line probably describes my entire journey, from deciding to do an MBA, quitting my job to prepare for management entrance examinations and then going through the entire interview process. A little academic background about me. My school years were spent at DPS Faridabad. I had a 9.6 GPA in 10th, 91.6% in 12th, 4536 AIR in JEE mains 2013 and 4833 AIR in JEE advanced 2013. After careful consideration, I joined IIIT Hyderabad to pursue B.Tech in Electronics and Communication. After graduating, I joined DBS Bank in the payment engine team, where I worked for 2 years. Post graduation, I did have at the back of mind that I wanted to pursue another degree but I wasn’t sure whether to go for an MS or an MBA. In June, 2018, Google contacted me asking if I’m interested in working for their payments team in Hyderabad and wanted to interview me for the same. I agreed given that it was my dream company. My parents, however, wanted me to pursue another degree and asked me to give CAT with a proper preparation. After registering for CAT 2018, I dedicated all my time for the google prep and didn’t spend much time on CAT. Giving interviews spanning across 3 months, my final interview was on 26th November 2018, the day after the CAT. My CAT 2018 preparation was close to zero and it showed in the result. (OA: 93.69, VARC: 83.22, LRDI: 95.92, QA: 93.74) I cleared my google interviews but was rejected by the hiring committee. After working for another year, I felt that this was not what I wanted to do for the next ten years. I didn’t want to become a human API. Each human is an API of something he or she is an expert in. Being an expert in a particular topic in software development meant going into a small niche and that didn’t excite me. So that ruled out going for an MS. But did that mean I wanted to pursue an MBA? To decide that, I began by thinking of what I wanted to do in the next ten years. I started mapping different road maps to that goal and MBA was a common denominator in almost all those paths. So opting for an MBA was an easy decision post that. After deciding that I wanted to do an MBA, the next question was whether I should quit my job to prepare or not. My work at the company was in one of the most important teams where we couldn’t afford a downtime of even a minute, after all we were processing all the payments. I felt that I wouldn’t be able to do justice to my preparation alongside my job and if I got a low percentile, I would have blamed it on my job. So I decided to take the plunge, quit my job and came back home for preparation. I sat down and did a reality check before starting. With my academic background, my graduation score of 54.7% and 2 years of work experience, I told my parents clearly that IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta were ruled out before preparation and that I am aiming for everything after these three. I did believe in my capabilities that I can score 99+ percentile without coaching but I needed a framework for my preparation, that’s why I decided to join Career Launcher’s weekend program. During the weekdays I would self-study and on weekends I would get a refresher of that week's topics and get my doubts solved. Also traveling to and from the CL centre took about two hours during which I listened to different podcasts, usually business news from around the world. I gave a single full-length mock test in my entire preparation, a fact that surprises most people! After the first day of my coaching, I came back and gave my first and only full length mock and got a score of 108. That would have roughly translated to 94 percentile in the actual CAT. I analyzed the mock for two days and noted down every strength and weakness I had. The Quants section was easy for me, Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation were not tough but I was not managing my time well in that section, and Verbal was a disaster. In August, I made sure I had a target score in mind(not percentile! that’s useless during preparation). Based on previous years' stats, I felt that a score of 180 is a decent score and would get me a percentile of 99.5+ and that’s where I concentrated all my energy at. 60 marks in each section looked achievable to me. To prepare for Verbal, I read books. That’s it. Lots and lots of novels. My friends recommended interesting books and I consumed them devotedly. I solved a couple of reading comprehension from time to time but I read a lot. After a point, even the verbal section started to feel like a section to test your logical abilities. For Logical reasoning, I solved questions of variable difficulty every day. I wanted to get so comfortable that if given enough time, I could solve all the questions without spending more than 10 minutes on each set. That translates to solving the entire LRDI section in about 80 minutes. But the final CAT paper gives us only 60 minutes, so I modified my preparation strategy when I was about a month away from the final exam. I would pick up a LRDI sectional test, spend around 5 minutes to identify which six sets out of the eight available would I want to solve and then focus all my energy on those. If I’m able to solve five of those, 60 marks in that section are guaranteed. Again, I always had that figure of 180 in mind, 60 marks per section. Quants didn’t require too much preparation and I solved a sectional test every alternate day. I gave a lot of hourly sectional tests. I knew I had to master each section and a combined 3 hour paper won’t be any different for me. During the preparation, I felt I had close to 3-4 hours daily to pursue anything that I liked. I also wanted to show my parents that only studying the entire day (like I did for engineering) isn’t any better than distributing your time properly among multiple activities. My parents were supportive of this decision. I joined a gym to get some physical activity done and started taking night classes for those interested in programming and wanted to crack interviews at top software companies. (I love teaching, I believe that if you have actually understood a concept, you can explain it to anyone.) My schedule was fixed in the month of November so that the final cat day felt no different. I had an afternoon slot for the exam and I made sure I studied daily during that time slot to ensure that my brain is active in that period. On the final day, the last Sunday of November 2019, I went to give an aptitude test which was no different than the various sectional tests I had been giving during the preparation. I didn’t have a decent start to the paper. The RCs were making my mind go a little hazy. I jumped to the grammar portion and started attempting them, slowly building my confidence. I had one thing clear in my mind that I had to make sure to get 20 questions correct out of the 30 odd questions and I’m done with every section. Post that the RCs didn’t seem too tough. I had so much fun solving the LRDI section. My strategy worked perfectly. I was able to identify the doable sets and sailed through the section. Quants followed a similar story. I was able to solve 20 odd questions quickly and attempted 4-5 more to cover up for my verbal section. My attempt was for about 180-183 marks. The biggest learning during my preparation and while giving CAT was, IT'S OKAY TO GIVE UP ON SOME QUESTIONS. There are plenty more to answer. The ability to identify those questions(that you find difficult, the questions aren’t tough but everyone has their own forte) and not attempting them in the least time possible is what will give you an edge over others. The test in itself is pretty simple. After the exam, I didn’t calculate the score. I don’t understand why people do that. I don’t like discussing the paper with others post the exam either. I don’t know why, it just is. Like I said, I don’t like checking my score and I didn’t want to check my percentile either. I felt, irrespective of what score I got, I’ll have to wait for my calls and will prepare for those. So instead, why don’t I just start the preparation. Me knowing my percentile won’t change my calls. My picture didn’t come in the newspaper so my percentile wasn’t 100. Then I got a call from IIM Lucknow so my percentile was above 99. Hehe. But my parents were very anxious the entire time, and in hindsight this was a very selfish move from my side. They had invested their energy and emotions in my preparation as well and they deserved to know the actual result. My brother told me to not be scared and just check the result. We opened and there it was, 99.66. Freakin 99.66! Out of all the students that gave the paper, this translates to a rank in the top 800. Before giving the paper, I knew my capabilities and I knew I can get a percentile that translates to a rank under 1000. (OA: 99.66 , VA: 95.86, LRDI: 99.35, QA: 99.59) Calls: FMS, IIM Lucknow, MDI Gurgaon Now that I had a few calls from some colleges, I started preparing for the interview phase. I joined the PDP program  at CL to get to know what was required from my side. Not only did I educate myself of what was next, I also got to know myself in a much better way. My mentor was Shivku sir and after getting to know my story, we started developing a framework that would help me answer most of my interview questions. While preparing, the first half of the day was dedicated solely to that day's news. Only reading wasn’t enough. I read it, understood it, researched more about it and wrote it down. The second half of the day was for business blogs, reading material necessary for the WATs and the GDs and perfecting answers to questions that are usually asked in interviews. All my interviews went smoothly. Barring a few hiccups in every interview, I was able to set the overall tone for each one. Luckily all my interviews were done before the lockdown. And given that I had been at home for quite some time, I was used to a quarantine. The nerve wrecking part was that all the results that I was waiting for were scheduled for end of May. Got a reject from IIM Lucknow. I opened the screen for the MDI result and there it was. PGPM offered. I fell down on my knees and cried with joy. My hardwork had not gone to waste. I ran to hug my parents, who felt they could finally move on from my extremely log CGPA. Though, I doubt they will. :')). Given my bachelors CGPA, this wasn’t surprising, but with the amount of the hard work I had put in and the result that I got, I’m really happy. I can’t wait to start my journey at MDI and try to achieve the vision I have set for myself. 

Resources: There were a couple of newsletters that I read to understand the business world. Finshots, is probably the best thing right now in the market. It explains business stories in an excellent way. Another newsletter I read was Morning Brew. They cover international business news and explain them in a simple yet informative way. 

Also, a couple of books that I read: Parliamental, Shoe Dog, Predictably Irrational, Day to Day economics,The Young and the Restless, AI Superpowers, The hard thing about hard things, So you want to know about Economics, Lethal White,Career of Evil, The Silkworm, The cuckoo’s calling, When breath becomes air, Death on the Nile, The Kite runner, Born a crime. 

Pointers for future aspirants: 

1. I know everyone preaches to practise daily but make sure you do the right kind of practise. Value quality over quantity any day. 

2. This is a postgraduate degree. You are sort of choosing the next 30-40 professional years of your life. Make sure you are doing it for the correct reasons. Be very frank with yourself as to why you want to do an MBA. And keep reminding that to yourself if you ever feel the need for a motivation booster. 

3. Do some physical exercise if you can. It helps in refreshing you physically and mentally. 

4. Learn the difference between efficiency and effectiveness and decide what you want to be, efficient or effective.

5. When you want to learn how to drive, you first get comfortable with the car, drive around in your locality and then you take it out on a highway. Same is with your preparation. Set the right short term goals to achieve the bigger one. 

NOTE: I joined PG very recently and haven’t contributed much to the forum as of now. The AIWTSAC section really fascinated me so I just wanted to share my story and save everything going in my head for the past few months in writing.

[Update]: I had cleared the waitlist of FMS and am now a part of the red building of dreams! :)

[s98js98j]

If anyone is looking for TIME online course for CAT, login credentials, please DM. Original price : 28k . giving away for 24k. unused n negotiable. 

[gtoutr]

"121 marks" the screen read

I hurriedly called my best friend to enquire about his score in the first AIMCAT ,After the obvious mandatory hesistation from him...I realised that I was city rank 1 ,in my first ever mock.The feeling was too good.

"122" marks.

This was the last mock of the season,the score was same but feelings were completely the opposite.The city rank was still 1...but you know deep down that,this is not what you had envisioned.Ì call it my complacency.

The D-day(one):

As I made my way out of the exam centre,I saw my dad sitting in the car,trying to read my face. "I screwed the DILR section" is all I could say.

I was now a final year engineering student who had skipped campus placements ..and more importantly had royally choked up on the D-day. Taking a drop was an option.I have been a risk taker always. But,before that I had one last chance in Maharashtra MBA CET.I couldnt take more than 7 mocks for it,owing to my final year college workload. I anyway took the exam and scored 99.06%ile.Not enough for JBIMS..but this was an OK score,atleast you can talk about it with your relatives.

Drop year:

I took my first mock in june end.I worked really hard on my DILR section.Revised quants concepts.Worked on my mindset.The result? -never scored less than 96%ile in any of my mocks. I was happy. 

with a "150" in my last aimcat,the josh was really high.

The D-day(two):

The DILR section starts,

20 mins gone -one set down.

45 mins gone-two and a half sets down

the last 10 mins: The pressure was mounting,I really wanted to solve more than 3 sets. I fortunately could spot a very direct DILR set(which was supposed to be solved first).I dont know what happened at that very moment,but I FROZE,I couldnt move my hands to pick my pen.I sat quietly on my seat doing nothing for the last 10 minutes. It goes without saying that quants section was ruined too.

XAT: scored 97.57%ile....but couldnt clear the Decision making sectional cutoff.Did not apply to IMT Gaziabad.

THE LAST STAND: 

On feb 1,I receive a call from my tutor about my MBACET preparations,I told him that I wont be taking the exam this year.He was upset and literally forced me to start taking mocks.I had no hopes,I was so devastate after everything that I did not care about the exam or the result .My only routine was to:

Getup--take mock--analyse for 20 minutes.Thats it.

35 Mocks and a "nothing to loose ,I dont care" attitude later:

142 marks-99.97 %ile

I couldnt stop crying that day :)  Never ever give up. Its all in the head. 

I want to thank @Arsene96  @IIM_Groot  @onepoorGEM @Sn96 @Sherlock221bED  and other wonderful people of this forum..for all the inspiration and support.I remember being very happy matching your scores in mocks last year.The way in which people here, add humour to their struggle is very monumental in every aspirant's journey. It kept us all going.

Its funny,how people who you have never even talked with, become a part of your journey. Thanks PG 

 

  

[perucyka1 (Tanjiro Kamado)]

  

Disclaimer: It is long and might contain a lot of irrelevant information. Also, it is not a journey of making into top 20 B-schools.

A tale of arrogance, ignorance and failure.

Background: I belonged to a lower middle-class family and we struggled to makes our ends meet. Regardless, I always studied in the best schools in town. During my 10th, I was least bothered and couldn’t understand any the fuss around the term ‘board’ exams. I spent the better half of the prep leave playing video games and studying a day before the exam. In the end, I scored 9.2/10 which sounded pretty good to me and family. I was satisfied and so were they.

Moving on, I chose to pursue science as it seemed the best option at the time. I again enrolled the best coaching institute to ace JEE and enter a prestigious B-school. These years were the time when I arrogance got the better of me. Studying in coaching made a sense of being elite in my school. I started thinking that I knew better than my school teachers and relied on shortcuts without learning any basics. 

End result: Scored 72.4% in boards with 111 marks in JEE. 

At this point of time, my gaming addiction had transformed into something useful. I was trading in-game items to make some pocket money. This gave me a hint that I would like to be in the business field in the future. Nobody in my family knew that I was doing the trading and I had saved ~50k (which was a huge amount for me) at the time.

It was 2015 and I had a taken admission in a decent engineering college in Mumbai. I still was more focused on making money rather than studying. I passed my exams with terrible marks. Then an incident occurred which changed my life for the better. My old ass gaming PC which my parents bought me in 10th gave up. We couldn’t afford a new one. I finally had the courage to tell my mom that I had saved up the money and I wanted to use that. My mom told my dad and we had a wonderful conversation that night. He encouraged me to set up a proper business and work on it along with my engineering. I did just that. I passed all my exams with terrible grades and spent time on growing the business. This made me realise that I knew nothing and I decided that I want to pursue an MBA after my engineering.

In April 2018, I went to IMS to enquire about the classes. They evaluated my profile and told me ABC was out of the picture and for other IIMs I would require extraordinary marks. I told myself that I shouldn’t worry about it and I started preparing. At this point, I read about MDI and it became my dream destination for the very fact that it would give me a chance to get out the shackles of mediocrity. Anyway, moving on. My arrogance had reached another level now. I saw my friends preparing for GRE and I was easily able to solve their queries and my business was doing well. I was on cloud 9. I didn’t bother with mocks. I gave a few and scored around 85-90%ile. I started inventing excuses that it will scale up and it will result in close to 95%ile in CAT.

With half assed prep, I entered the exam hall. I did the best I could.

Result: I scored a measly 91%ile.

The other exams had similar results. I had calls from NMIMS and XLRI HR.

I had already decided to skip XL as I don’t want to pursue HR. But NMIMS interview bought me to ground. The minds I met there wiped the arrogant smile off my face. I couldn’t answer simple questions in the interview. When the panelist asked me, what did I expect to learn from my MBA, I said CREATIVITY. Yes, I did that. 

This made the end result obvious; I was at terrible merit rank. 

This bought me to the ground, the single interview experience showed me that I knew nothing. I had achieved nothing. I didn’t stand nowhere as compared to other aspirants. I had resolved that I was going to try again giving it my best. I passed out of engineering in May 2019 with 6.75 CGPA(59.93%) . I started my CAT 19 journey in June 2019. 

I studied the mistakes I made last year. I started from scratch. I started reading to improve my verbal skills. I started solving sudokus. I solved quants anytime I got. I had a job offer from Infosys which I declined (mistake) and kept on working on prep. 

Mock 1: 95 marks. I knew that I had to buckle up. With just few months, I couldn’t take it lightly.

With regular mocks and analysis, I started scoring between 95-98%ile in mocks with occasional 99+.

I started exploring ways to clear my mind. With the business, the time available was limited. 

Anyway, I did the best I could. On the D-day, I was calm. I had already accepted that whatever happens, happens. 

I scored 98.77%ile. Similar scores in other exams.

Calls: CAP, MDI, NITIE, SIBM, SCMHRD, NMIMS, IIFT, XLRI (BM and HR).

I had cleared the first step; I had received a call from my dream institute. I started working on GD, WAT and PI prep.

My first interview was IIFT. I couldn’t speak in GD. The interviewer told me I was talking bullshit and rejected every argument I made. I told myself that I will learn from it and move on. The interviews followed without breaks after then. NMIMS, SCMHRD, SIBM, CAP, all of them were within couple of weeks. I learnt from my past failures and improved.

I knew that the real deal was going to start now. This was just prep for my MDI interview. I wanted to get in anyhow. I worked so hard for it. The interview was online, I answered everything. The interview revolved around my video game business. I was happy but at the same time I had no idea how to evaluate it. I skipped NITIE and XL HR. I messed up XL BM.

Verdict:

Rejects/Unrealistic WL: IIFT, XLRI, SIBM, CAP

Waitlist: MDI (63)

Converts: NMIMS and SCMHRD.

Anyway, I know I have failed. I couldn’t make it to MDI. The only reason to write this here is to get over it. Yes, I failed but I will try and make the best of it at SCMHRD. I would love to give it another try but I can’t. 

CAT has transformed me as a person and I am grateful. I couldn’t the bear the person I was couple of years ago. It has made me humble. It has made me resilient. 

It is now time to put in extra efforts and excel in my MBA journey. Thank you for sticking around and reading my tale of failures.

Please ignore mistakes of any sort; grammatical or otherwise.

[manikandan466]

what percentile required to get into IIMs,IITs according to my profile 10th--- 93% ( TN state board) 12th--- 91%(Tn state board) UG---77.50(non-engineer,B.Sc(agriculture) No work experience OBC NC

[breakpointerer]

All I wanted to speak about my practice and my failures before I achieved something

https://breakpointerersgrandslam.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-breakpointerers-grand-slam.html

[deep.ak]

  

PS- IT IS NOT A JOURNEY OF A 99 PERCENTILER IN CAT.

How did I realise I wanted to do a MBA, well it was more about elimination of choices, If I would be honest. I did not really enjoy my Engineering subjects, except a few. So, GATE and GRE were out of consideration. I did my research, and MBA was 1 thing which seemed interesting, and not needing to study any technical subjects for CAT was a plus (Not GMAT, did not want to study abroad). Come January 2016(3rd Year of Engineering), I enrolled in TIME for their classroom programme. Initial couple of months were about knowing the syllabus and pattern (Yes I was Lazy). This was the when I came to know about Pagalguy (One of the faculties actually told us to stay away from it, don’t even know why).Then came the end- semesters, meaning I did not study anything related to CAT till May. After that, my internship started, I started prepping side by side, Things started falling in place, the mock scores started touching 110-120s and in one of the mocks in early August I crossed the 150 barrier, as happy as I was, but QA was not really working out for me (2 years later I realised it was the STRATEGY part which was missing). And then the placements began, and not being from a tier-1 college (probably not even tier-2), It was important to get that 1 Job. Luckily I got into the 1st IT company that visited. And then a month later an automobile and a few manufacturing companies were lined up. I got rejected in the automobile one, but then I somehow cracked the next manufacturing company, and now I had 2 Job offers. The next few days were all about party and party (People not from premier Undergrad colleges would relate better), and I took just 1 more mock before CAT. No surprise, I tanked CAT. 

CAT 2016- 93.02 Percentile (Obviously No calls)

I joined the company in June 2017. And the first few months were, like they say, the honeymoon period. I started very late for CAT Prep because I wanted a bit more Work-ex(did not intend to join that term), I filled the form for CAT, but could not take CAT as my grandmother passed away few days before CAT, and I had to there till 3 days before CAT. I requested for extending leave so that I could take CAT, but I realised I had my leaves reduced by one rather. That’s when I realised life is going to get tough ahead.

CAT 2017- Skipped.

All this while, one good thing happened. I started knowing things about Operations and Supply Chain and probably one reason why I want to do an MBA (2 years late I guess). I started prepping for CAT around June, things were going fine till August. In August, I was sent away to a different remote location for 15 days. I came back and we had to change our accommodation, which took another few days to get everything in place. The erratic shift routine and long work hours had started taking a toll on me (I remember being so tired one day, I slept at 12 in the night after my shift, waking up after 6, to realise it was not am but pm XD). I started my prep again and I was sent again to another place for some work. This is where I made a huge mistake, I lost momentum, and did not get really back to preparation till last few days of October (For second time, I had repeated the mistake). I knew I had not taken enough mocks, I went on with the prep till CAT, took just two more mocks. The lack of mocks showed, I was slow and sluggish. I panicked and was never in control. The result-

CAT 2018- 93.30 Percentile

I did better in XAT 2019, got XL HR call (did not clear QA cut-off for BM). Also had VGSOM call through CAT. Got Waitlisted in VGSOM and rejected in XLRI. All this was followed with conversations with my parents and I realising that CAT 2019 was to be my last attempt to get into a B-School due to certain personal reasons. After thinking a lot, taking advice from many (most suggesting against it), I decided to quit my job after completing 2 years. So, here I was in July 2019, without knowing what was ahead of me. I knew I could not repeat my mistakes from the previous attempts (And thinking have I done another one in a quest to write-off the previous ones).

One Last Time

August 2019 was the month of getting the things in place and getting mock ready. Around this time I started being more active on Pagalguy. I used to see people posting their mock scores, I started doing the same. I was hitting the 130s-140s slowly. I kept taking mocks, analysing my mistakes and slowly getting my strategy in place. In Early October, I was hit with a wave of low mock scores, but this is where PG kept me motivated. Last few mocks saw scores from 130s to 160s. Just a few days before CAT, I had my NMAT score in hand, it was 221 which meant I was almost sure of one call at least. For the 1st time ever, I had afternoon slot for CAT (for a change). 

D-DAY- VARC gave me a head-ache. After the exam I felt as if I might not score more than 40. In LRDI, I attempted 16 questions, but in one set I got lost in the data in between, I took a 30 second break to calm myself, then it struck to me, I could cross check with the options and the set seemed to fall in place then(I took a gamble). QA felt relatively easier. I attempted 27 questions, felt that accuracy must be decent.

The response sheet was out after a few days but I just could not check. IIFT followed, did not go well for me. And I finally decided to check my score. I uploaded my response sheet and then the score I could see, 154 it was. I was happy that all is not over, but as I started checking the sectionals, I saw a 55 in VARC, 48 in LRDI (100% Accuracy after that VARC, Man, I was proud of myself) and 51 in QA. I checked the answers and I was laughing at my mistakes in QA (I had 9 incorrect answers, RIP Accuracy XD). I let it go for then, did fine in SNAP. 

Meanwhile the percentiles were out.

CAT 2019- 98.95 Percentile (Scaled Score of 156.69)

XAT followed next and I would rather not talk about it L. Scored a 99 in NMAT and 98.77 in SNAP.

Calls started coming in, I had filled lot of forms, so had quite a few Interviews lined up. But the first one being the most important one, IIM Lucknow in Kolkata on 7th February. On 1st February, I left home for one last mock PI, but could go only couple of kilometres away as I met with an accident. I was happy after I realised I did not break any bones but travelling was going to be tough now, given that in a week’s time I had 4 interviews lined up in 3 cities in 4 consecutive days. The first one being the most important one, IIM Lucknow in Kolkata on 7th February. When I left the room of Taj Bengal after the PI, I was sweating, I was bashed, humiliated and not even given a chance to put forward my points. I knew I was sure of getting a reject there (Not the start I needed). I had a flight to catch as I had as SCMHRD and SIBM interviews lined up for the next 2 days and NMIMS the day after that. All the three went fine. Next I had SPJIMR and CAP interviews on 14th and 19th Feb. SPJIMR, I felt it went okay (Got the Pendrive :P) and in CAP, I was the last one to go, and they seemed least interested to take a PI. SJMSOM went pretty fine and MDI was average. This is when corona struck us all, and I had online PIs for NITIE and IIM Shillong. IIT Delhi scrapped their PI.

Converts- IIM Shillong, MDI PGPIM, NMIMS, SCMHRD, All CAP IIMs, XIMB

Waitlists- IIM Lucknow, SPJIMR, SIBM, IIT Delhi

Rejects- SJMSOM

Joining- NITIE

From having given up of to converting NITIE (one of my dream colleges) barely in the 3rd Waitlist, from getting straight rejected after a (What I thought) decent interview, to getting waitlisted or selected even after ordinary interviews, the whole journey has been a rollercoaster. For someone interested in Operations and Supply Chain, nothing better could have happened than getting into NITIE (Atleast, I hope). When I look back, I have done more wrongs than rights may be, but I have kept and will keep learning. I hope.

And Pagalguy has always been one place which kept me motivated and happy at many a times. I still remember reading AIWTSACs of CAT 18 multiple times and trying to draw out motivation from those. Looking at scores of mock Gods and wanting to reach there and the memes which would make me smile. I would also mention a few friends whom I met quite a few people through this forum and they have been a vital part of the last 6-7 months of my journey- @IIM_Groot , @onepoorGEM, @VinayHirani1, @Utkarsh7511 , @sanchit3008, @TanujA3, @Sherlock221bED. There were ups and downs, from fruitful discussions, to the most random chitchat, and bashing certain B-Schools for whatever reasons, I have had the most amazing conversations with you guys. And special thanks to all the guys from the mock season and after who have helped me knowingly or unknowingly, can’t take names because there would be many.

For Humans of PG, my DM is always open for you guys in case you need any help. 

Cheers. 

(Kindly Ignore grammatical errors, If any)

[nucleotides (D NA)]

 #AIWTSAC

I joined PG after everything was postponed in March and became active recently. I haven’t interacted with anyone much but being here helped deal with the anxiety of delayed online interviews and results. So this is all I want to say about CAT. (Spoiler alert, there’s a happy ending). 

PS. Few details are kept fuzzy for anonymity purpose.

CAT 2018-

I was a final year student and gave it because everyone was doing it. My only goal was to get a decent percentile that I wouldn’t mind telling people. At the time, that meant above 90 %ile for me.

I studied geometry for 10 days, gave zero mocks and ended up scoring 91%ile overall. Most of it was because of verbal (96 %ile), while DILR was below cutoff (70 %ile). Quant was somewhere in between.

Because of the DILR score, the only call I had was MICA, which I had filled because back then I was interested in Mass Communication. I was waitlisted there which didn’t convert in the end.

I joined a one year mass communication diploma and decided to give CAT 2019 only in August 2019.

I joined coaching and started preparing in the second week of August. Mine was the very last batch started, so late, that I heard other batch students saying, “Sir, aren’t they sad that their syllabus will finish in November?” and even the teachers saying to other batches, “That batch shouldn’t have been started at all, their syllabus itself will finish in November.” (These were two separate instances). This fueled my motivation to study and I attended extra classes in batches where the syllabus was far ahead, and completed the syllabus by October last week roughly. At one point I was attending coaching six days a week.

I gave my first mock after the first introductory class and scored 86. Over the course of my preparation, I gave around 8 mocks maybe and the highest I scored was around 118/120, I think. VARC was my strongest suit primarily because I have been reading novels for the longest time. With my CAT 18 performance and it generally being a more unpredictable section, DILR was the section I was most scared of. My quant score was improving as I covered more topics in coaching.

This time around, I was only focused on getting the best CAT score I could. I didn’t have a  dream college as such, the closest thing to it being FMS and that too only because I saw it on my way to college for years and the few days I spent researching to fill its form. IIM’s were an abstract concept to me while FMS felt more real. 

On the CAT day, my system glitched- the exam wouldn’t start and when it did, navigation between questions was requiring multiple clicks. I was shifted to a different system twice. Although much time wasn’t lost in this shifting, coupled with the difficult VARC in slot 1, it messed with my headspace. I remember thinking- ‘VARC was supposed to be my strong suit, with that gone, what could I do in the rest of the sections. FMS and the whole CAT attempt gone to trash.’ Not a very good mental space to be in during an exam. I didn’t even touch one of the RC’s and maximized my attempts on VA with 27/28 final attempts. (Last time, I had attempted all 34). As the three hours progressed, I got a hold of myself and did as well as I could in DILR and Quant. After the exam, I had angry tears in my eyes and I cursed my CAT center a lot.

When the answer key came, my raw score was 140. With the disaster I had thought my exam to be, this was a pleasant surprise. Coincidentally, I had scored the exact same marks in VARC as CAT 18, although accuracy was much higher. I started looking up shortlist criteria for the top IIM’s only after this and realized A, B, C were never going to call me at this score/percentile and my 9/9/7 profile, so I started hoping for L, K, I shortlists. I did get calls from all IIM’s except ABC.

I gave other exams as well and did reasonably well in some and not in others. The other good calls I had were SPJIMR and XL-HR. The FMS call didn’t come and in hindsight, it was for the best as at my percentile, it wouldn’t have converted anyway and would have added two more months of misery.

Ths GD/WAT-PI stage from preparation to the actual process was nerve wracking. Interviews have historically not been something I am good at and this season also, they ranged from being average to a downright shit show.

The anxiety grew as the wait for results increased. I had even started solving maths questions and LR sets to deal with it.

As results started coming in, I was rejected or given a high enough merit rank from all my calls to be called a reject except for a waitlist in IIM K and a tier 2 BSchool.

My waitlist number at K was such that everyone I told it to said, you’ll easily sail through. I am a bit of a skeptic by nature and like to be realistic in my expectations- preparing for the worst and hoping for the best kind of thing. But this time I did not follow my own ideology and believed in my head before I had the convert in hand. The waitlist movement crushed that. The zero movement in the second waitlist list was heartbreaking. I started mentally preparing myself and planning for CAT 2020 or the possibility of joining the tier 2 B-School which I converted after some waitlist movement there (something I didn’t want to do). I even gave a free mock and unfollowed all the IIMK insta pages I had foolishly followed beforehand.

Eventually though, waitlist movement happened in K and I converted my call. So, that’s my happy ending- I will be joining IIM Kozhikode, class of 2020-2022.

Here are my learnings and advice for the CAT exam-

> Read long articles and novels, not just to increase reading speed but to get habituated to long passages. Most people I know who have VARC as their weak area are ones who get bored just by looking at the long paragraphs and lose interest and motivation to solve the RC’s.

> The headspace you are in on D-Day matters a lot. Prepare yourself for the worst glitches to happen and count yourself lucky if they don’t.

> Attend GD’s at your coaching institute if you are enrolled in one, irrespective of your calls having GD’s or not. Attending GD’s during GDPI prep had three fold benefits for me- increase in knowledge about current affairs/important topics; improvement in speaking skills; feedback. It depends a lot on the moderator whether all these are gained or not. Judge if the GD’s you attend are helping you get such benefits and then decide to continue attending or not.

> Most importantly, don't compare your level of preparation and where you are in your CAT journey with others'. Strive to be better than YOU were before.

That is all I wanted to say about CAT. Best of luck to everyone giving CAT 2020 or joining a B-school this year!

[hellohi9 (R 09)]

To say that MBA has always been a dream for me would be a lie. It never was until the year 2018. 

Lets do this. 93/95/67 (Economics) | General | Female 33 months work ex 

You & Your Truth. 

2016- I will not be a mere cog in the wheels of capitalism. I am made for something bigger. 

2017- In denial. Chasing false dreams and passions. Hustling in a startup.

2018- Realization 

2019- Redemption

School was a breeze: I loved Mathematics & English since I was a kid. I loved studying. In 11th, I decided to go against the norm of choosing Non-Medical, despite having great scores and scholarship. I knew deep down, engineering is not what I want to do. Rebelled and took commerce. 

GRADUATION Economics- Achilles’ heel. This was the start of all the troubles. I soon realized the subject is too pure for my distracting mind. Lost interest in it, became a part of the last 20% of the batch. Graduation became all about surviving after that. Hence, the low scores. 

2016- For the sake of rebelling, decided to go for Journalism post undergrad. Still, gave CAT without any preparation. Scored 87 percentile. 

2017- Year of rejections 

I attempted every examination for Journalism but did not get into any of the top colleges. I received a mail from the old college id that there is an opening in a start up for Business Analyst. I joined it with a heavy heart. This was not what I had envisioned for myself. I was under the impression that this was temporary, and ache din aane wale hai. 

2018- Year of Realizations and coming out of Denial 

Life had become stagnant. I realized I was putting to waste all the years of hard work. I needed a change. Competition breaks complacency. I decided to give CAT with coaching and with a job. Result- 87 percentile again, no good calls.

2019- Self-study. Quit work in October. Gave myself 45 days to prepare. I decided to give CAT just for the sake of giving it. After previous failures, I set NMAT, SNAP and XAT as my main targets. Did not stress about CAT but prepared, nonetheless. Result- 96.9 percentile Calls- IIM LKIS, CAP IIMs, IIM Rohtak 

GD/PI Preparation 

Mistake- Joined coaching but it did not help me much. It was very basic.

Staying true to my nature, I prepared myself in a chaotic manner- from anything to everything.

K Interview Experience

Unfortunately, first PI I had was of Kozhikode. This was the first BLACKIS interview I was giving. I was second in line. The girl who went before me came out flustered. She dashed to the lift without giving us a feedback and at that moment I knew something will go wrong. I had heard about stress interviews, how to tackle them, what to do, what not to do, how to divert. Let me tell you honestly, none of the hacks work when you are inside that room in front of the panel. No tricks, tips, lies, fabrications work. Only you and your truth. In those 15 minutes, I was asked about 10 different personalities, a few from Economics and a few from Politics. I froze after the first question which was “Who is Brinda Karat?”. My confidence took a fall and everything went downhill. One of the panelists said and I quote him verbatim, “You did not prepare for this interview.” After this disastrous interview, I had CAP 2 days later. It went well, the environment was relaxed, the conversation flowed, and I was confident of a convert. 

L Interview experience 

My CL mentor advised me to prepare academics well as L interview is based on your undergrad subject. I studied more economics preparing for my Interview than I did in those 3 years. Unfortunately, shortcuts rarely work in academics, you need to know the basics, concepts and why’s and how’s. Saw my panelist face from WAT, googled the faculty, he was a PhD in Economics. I laughed and knew what was about to come. Pure grilling on economics from someone who loved the subject enough to do a PhD, of someone who did not respect the subject enough in undergrad and barely survived. Result: His face resembled the face of K’s panelist and I could read the expression on his face, “You did not prepare for this interview.” 

I Interview experience

After striking out K & L, I knew Indore is my last chance of a BLACKI convert. I studied hard. Current affairs and work ex were my strengths. I knew if the interview remained on these areas, I would excel easily. Economics was my Achilles’ heel. Still, I learned the concepts and prepared 3 years’ worth of Micro and Macroeconomics concepts. The interview exceeded my expectations, it went great. Current affairs, academics, work ex- all questions were answered well. I was confident of a convert.

Result: Converted Indore. 

Gently rejected in Kozhikode. An embarrassing WL at L, S 

My advice to all aspirants 

1. There are no hacks so don’t go searching for them.

2. Your journey is different from other’s.

3. Take away only what you think will work for you and discard the rest.

4. Never settle for less. You know your calibre and worth.

5. Trust your instincts. In the end, what matters is you and your truth. Trust me, everything will be laid bare in your CAT journey.