The Common Admission Test (CAT) 2021, which is the gateway to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and other MBA colleges is scheduled to be held on November 28. Those who clear the entrance exam followed by written aptitude test (WAT), group discussion (GD), and personal interview (PI) are eligible for admission to top B-schools including IIMs.
This year the IIMs have done away with the minimum marks criteria. Students who have not obtained 50% marks in their graduate degree were still allowed to apply for the MBA entrance exam. The exam will be of two-hour duration and will be conducted online. The marking scheme for the examination will reward the candidate with three marks for each correct answer, however, one mark will be deducted for each wrong answer. The subjective section has no negative marking.
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With just a few days left for the exams, here are some tips from the previous years’ toppers to help current aspirants ace the entrance exam:
Sai Praneeth Reddy
Sai Praneeth Reddy from Anantapur, who secured 100 percentile in CAT 2017. He used to practice mock tests every day from 9 am to 12 pm. He went to give the management entrance after completing his graduation in BTech from IIT Madras. He later went on to join IIM Ahmedabad.
“I realised that I can excel in the technical field but there are areas where you have to get your work done by others. For which you need to have team management skills and there is no other better place to learn those skills than IIM in India,” Reddy told News18.com. He was among the 20 candidates who had scored 100 Percentile in CAT 2017.
Dhananjay Kumar Prasad
Prasad cracked the IIT entrance in 2021 after serving 12 years in the Indian Navy as a technical officer. He had also got a job offer from Amazon but the 34-year-old put the job on hold to pursue his MBA dream. He is currently pursuing an MBAEx programme of IIM Calcutta. For his preparations, he ordered the study material online as well as joined GMAT Club. He prepared for CAT along with his job at the Navy.
“I started with 4-5 hours of study after my office hours. The toughest part of the preparation was time management. I could not keep the routine because other than the daily office hours, I had to help my wife in her business which was at the budding stage in 2019. I used to go to the market, travel to various locations in the country to establish the supply chain for the business,” he said.
Yash Avadesh Gandhi
After fighting cerebral palsy, dyslexia, and dysarthria, Mumbai-based Gandhi cracked CAT 2019 with 92.5 per cent marks. For his written exam, he needed a writer as he had difficulty writing. “I face problems with numbers. So, I had to put in extra effort, particularly in the quantitative ability section. It was tough, but not impossible,” he said.
He began his preparations in 2018 when he was in the second year of his graduation. It was his parents who kept him motivated with the preparations. “I told him that he has the capability to do anything and should not stop making an effort. After this, Yash started all over again,” his mother Jignasha said.
He went to join IIM Lucknow. He also received interview calls from IIM Kozhikode and Indore but went on to the Lucknow branch as it ranked higher. He also did his graduation from Mithibai College in Mumbai with accounting and finance.
IIM aspirants must know that CAT is not the only way to get admission to the institutes. Candidates can also appear for the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), Joint Integrated Program in Management Aptitude Test (JIPMAT), Integrated Program in Management (IPM), and other online courses to pursue their dream of joining an IIM.
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