My MBA Journey - Part 2 (Mistakes made and learning from the 1st CAT attempt)

With the goal clear in my mind that I needed to increase my market value :), the next big challenge was to decide on the exam: GMAT or CAT or in other terms whether phoren MBA or desi? Again this proved to be a mammoth task (though realized later that this difficulty was nothing vis-à-vis selecting phoren b-schools and making their applications. After doing my research I decided that I will be taking both the exams as pattern is similar for both CAT and GMAT (again I was wrong :)).

I decided to go for CAT first. By the time I made up mind, it was already August 2007 and I noticed that only 1 day was left to buy the CAT 2007 form. Panicking, I rushed to the nearest bank but to my bad luck the forms had been all sold. Thereafter I rushed to Delhi and finally after 4 long hrs in a queue I won the battle and emerged with the CAT form as if I had won an Olympic gold. Believe me the feeling was unparalleled 

Now the next task was to join a coaching institute for the CAT preparation which was a fairly simple task .There are only 2 reputed coaching centers in Noida and around: TIME and Career Launcher and I joined the test series of one of them (it really doesn’t matter which centre you join. All give you pretty much the same material).

Next 1 month saw me giving a mock-CAT test every Sunday and saw my percentile hovering between 85 and 99.There I made a discovery (and indeed a right one) that CAT is a very treacherous exam and it can ditch you any day. You can score 99+ one day and next day you might end up in 80s.This is in direct contrast with GMAT (which I will discuss in my next blog(s)).

Demoralized that CAT was not my cup of tea and no matter how much I studied I would not get through, I spent my next 2 months only taking tests on Sundays, analyzing the solutions and studying roughly only around 3-4 hrs per week and that too without any enthusiasm .And hence on 3rd Sunday of November 2007 (I went with a free mind) and the result as guessed was positive. I didn’t get through.

One of my biggest mistakes here was that though I discovered the erratic nature of CAT pretty early in my preparation, I interpreted it wrongly. CAT obviously is very unpredictable and no amount of preparation can ensure an IIM call .But there has to be something to Bell The CAT .And indeed , the answer is yes .There are 3 things which are needed and slogging out and burning the midnight oil is definitely not one of them (this I understood only after September 2008 when I started preparing for the CAT the second time).

So the 3 magical (or alteast understood to be so) things needed are:

1)Right aptitude
2)Wise strategy
3)Decent amount of preparation (spanning 3-4 months) to come to terms with the different types of questions in CAT and most importantly to devise a useful and customized strategy.

Yes , this is true in about 4 months of preparation anyone and I repeat anyone could crack the most feared of the MBA exams in the world. And believe me, this I am saying from my experience.

Those who don’t believe me watch out this space for my next post.