MBA Entrance Examinations, Determination and ME... :)Disclaimer: All characters/ incidences below are purely real - and any attempt of associating the stuff with fictional mumbo-jumbo will NOT be tolerated. ;).
Acknowledgements: Chandoo's first article. (I always dreamt of writing one just like that - some day :))
Warning: This article is meant for fun-reading, inspiration - and may be of some help only to the average percentilers at CAT and other entrances. If the top scorers and absolutely confident 100 percentilers at CAT think that they need better gyaan, they better look elsewhere 😉 😉
Amidst the myriad questions of 'Why MBA', 'Long-term goals', 'Short-term goals' etc etc - was me - somewhere in July or August 2003 - when we began with Semester 5 in my engineering college. Probably that was the semester, which kicks off Computer Science on the whole - and here I was - dreaming of some other things - like how was my life proceeding, and whether I was evaluating myself properly. Programming certainly wasn't the thing I would be happy doing for the rest of my life 😁 . I believed more in the Howard Roark philosophy - When I have around 50 more years to live, I feel I should be spending them in the way I like - and work in the field I am best at.
Probably it was the Economics and Management subject in Sem 5, which set me thinking in some direction about the same. The ideas inspired me - and I could associate with the subject better - maybe also because the teaching of the faculty rocked. A post-graduation in the field of Management - an MBA, had heard about it long back - even before I had joined my engineering college. Was it the real push for a great career? Was it the thing I would need to build myself to better prospects? I needed to find out. Got some magazines - old IMS magazines (Advancedge) - read more. Inspiring stories, great institutes - yes - maybe I had to get there. This is probably what is real education - real learning.
The Common Admission Test - had heard about this before - but never knew that I would be taking it at any stage in life. I enrolled for the IMS Correspondence package at Goa, and they sent me some average kinda material. One of the days in June 2004 I was sitting listening to an inspiring lecture from a student who had made it to IIML that year - a senior Goan. At the end of the lecture, he had one piece of advice - use this site - its really very helpful. I rubbed my eyes and for a second couldn't understand what he wrote - whatever did that name mean in the world of MBA entrance examinations. Nevertheless I took it down on my book and thought I would sign in right away.
Pagalguy.com. 😃 :)
From then on began a roller coaster ride of studying DI, Verbal and Quant. CAT had leaked just the year before and had come out in a terrible form at the time of the re-test - with a terribly tough Quant section. Hence of course the normal rigmarole which I wasn't aware of, at that stage at least - the coaching classes start putting up mock tests which have difficult Quant sections only. At that time however, IMS was the only institute I was aware of - being the only one in Goa. The additional info would come from PG - for some days I failed to understand why were threads entitled AIMCAT 0503, 0504 etc etc. It really took me some time to know that these were mock cat names - or rather numbers
J. Goa still had to open out in terms of coaching classes and the prepratory environment for MBA preparations.
Sectional tests, Mock tests - I was on a spree - I wasn't scoring great - but well kya mazaa aa raha tha competition - nice fun. Got some TIME mocks, CL mocks xeroxed from my cousin who had taken the test series in Pune. They seemed tougher than the IMS Simcats (except for the godly IMS DI :D). I must have taken around 60 to 70 mocks in those 4 months or so - in the end it was almost every day - with the hope that the max score dwells on D Day. I made many friends in PG - some high-edged mock cat'ers, who would beat the hell out of the others in the percentiles. I would hardly be studying the college stuff at that time - the seventh semester passed away so fast that I hardly came to know. I had only one thought - CAT. Probably that's why what awaited me on that day took its share of fun - and I had my share of misery.
CAT 2004 - Dadar, Mumbai. Goa had been removed as a CAT center that year itself (to my bad luck) - so the trip to Mumbai was necessary. Kept cool on the previous day while revising only very important stuff. What was landlocked in my mind was how I had to answer the paper, my 'strategy', my scoring sections etc. Yes - childish stuff. November 21 2004. IES School at Dadar was crowded (had already been there the previous day). Once I was seated at my place I was simply praying was a 3 section paper like CAT 2003. What came was a 3 section paper - but with a blast of surprises - differential marking for the first time, reduced no of questions (to 123), and well, loads of surprises inside the paper too. What I did in the next 2 hours involved more of praying and less of confident problem solving - yes - I wasn't confident - of each and every question. Even in Verbal, which had been my strongest section. I tackled the markers, the 1 markers and then the 2 markers - in that order. My order was supposed to be verbal/DI/Quant - 40 min for each. I must have taken 45 min for Verbal, then came to DI (my weakest section) and tried to go in for the 2 markers (read as overconfidence
). Unfortunately I attacked that question which was wrong - the infamous hockey set problem of CAT 2004 😉 . Checked it out for some time, cudnt make any sense out of it, and then moved to the one markers - no more
himmat left for the two markers. Managed to solve some of the one-marker sets and then moved to Quant - tried to blast this section, but apparently I ended up 'not' doing it. This section had loads of scoring problems, which I managed to oversee 😁 . The two markers were a piece of cake, but in my spree I didn't even notice it. Managed an attempt of some 75 marks in the paper and came out quite shaky.
The wait till the New Year was long and unbearable - and the result - one of the biggest shocks of my life.
Overall percentile - 85.XX 😞 😞 :(
DI - 84.XX Quant 83.XX Verbal - 77.XX
Contd...
bt a sole call frm iim l :(
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