Dear Aspirant,
Who doesn't commit mistakes while preparing for CAT. Every successful CAT taker had his/her share of slides and clawed their way back to victory. This week, we are proud to share one such story of one of our own colleagues and IIM C Graduate, Mr.Vaibhav. Here is his essay, direct from his heart:
'As an engineer who was taking CAT in the year 2007- I, like most of my friends and batchmates, was largely convinced that MBA will lead us away from menial and mechanical jobs directly into the board room of top corporates.
The seemingly challenging barrier of cracking CAT added to the attraction of getting into IIMs. When I started my preparation, I was sure that quantitative aptitude and data interpretation sections were not going to be much of a challenge, it will be the verbal abilities section which will play a big role in my final score. Ironically, there was a plot twist waiting to be unfold.
After taking multiple mock tests, it was clear to me that I needed to optimise my speed-accuracy trade off in other two sections, but my VA scores were so unpredictable that I was not able to develop a proper test taking strategy. To improve my VA scores- I first discussed this with few friends who had entered IIMs to understand how they cracked it. From their feedback, my key takeaway was that more than for just clearing CAT- I really need to improve my reading and comprehension skills as this will be a key skill for me during my MBA course- reading about a variety of topics and making sense out of them. Realising this, I started reading intensely about varied topics- topics which I earlier used to consider boring such as Psychology, Political history, and Economics. Slowly I also started developing some interest in these topics and it helped improve my comprehension.
However, I had also made up my mind that there is no point in scoring high in Quant and DI if I can't clear the cut off in English section. In 2007, when I opened the exam paper and glanced through the English section- I could make out that the passages were of a whole new level of difficulty (which, thankfully was the opinion of every CAT taker that year). Determined to give my best to English, I quickly started with DI section which was my default first section to start the paper with. After completing DI, I quickly moved to English section and started reading the passages with great detail. I was determined that I have to clear the cut off in English section and I'll automatically get the calls. However, when I finished with the English section- I realised that I have only 20 minutes left for quant section. I tried to maximise my attempts in quant section and finished the exam.
Here is what I scored - 99.03%ile overall with 99.2%ile in English and 94.7%ile in Quant section. No IIM calls that year (only GD PI call I got was from MDI).
I realised this mistake that I was overburdened by my fear of failing in English section. Next year, I was working in Delhi, and I subscribed to two test series (from two of then leading institutes). From first mock test, I was fearless about attempting the exam and I did well - attempting each question and section with a balanced mind. I kept scoring well in mock tests and I kept improving my reading habits- specially deep diving in psychology. Next year, in CAT 2008, one of the toughest passages was about Søren Kierkegaard- I had read a lot about him and immediately I remembered a fine quote from him - "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." I kept my mind balanced, trying to live my life forwardly without any anxiety of analysing it in the moment. I scored 99.99 percentile in with 99+ percentile in every section. That's all folks.'
Hope that would have given you some real time ideas and directions, if you required any. All the very best, Cheers!
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