All I want to say about CAT 2020 (AIWTSAC 2020)
Introduction
I’ve been dreaming of writing an AIWTSAC for a long time and it feels good to finally start writing it. You’ll have to excuse me if this gets a bit too long.
I’ll start by talking about my family background a bit. I always hear people saying “the American dream” on shows like Shark Tank. I have always felt proud that my parents are an apt example of “the Indian dream”. Came to a city from a rural area, worked very hard and achieved something that is only dreamt of at their homeplace. That being said I have often heard things like “Ab kya beta tum baith ke kama lena bas” or “Papa ka business hai na, fir kaisi baat ka tension”. I know that feels like a normal thing to say, but it feels hurtful after a certain point. I’ve always wanted to find my own career path and I am glad that my parents have supported me through thick and thin. And I realize that taking this path of finding my own identity has been a really great experience.
I’ve struggled in academics for the most part of my school life. That changed a bit after I joined a hostel program in 9th standard. The people around me helped me understand my strengths and weaknesses. 10th standard school topper was a high point in my life. But little did I know, overconfidence was standing just around the corner. Had to settle for an Okayish engineering college after 12th standard.
But to be honest if I hadn’t underachieved in my 12th standard, I would not have taken CAT so seriously. CAT seemed like a chance for redemption to prove that I can really perform under a high-pressure situation. And that’s how the 2.5-year journey started. A journey that I’ll honestly cherish for the rest of my life. A journey that taught me endless life lessons.
The first attempt
I visited a few coaching institutes in 3rd year itself. The first year was really off in terms of efforts put in preparation. I had a misconception that I’ll attend all classes and hence I’ll nail CAT. I attended almost no classes in my final attempt. 😂
Fast forward, last 3 months before CAT’19.
I was too addicted to youtube back then :P. I used to follow a lot of CAT channels, and most of them were not helpful 😅 Some channels suggested, “Itne mocks do aur itne IIM calls lao” or “Itne attempt karo aur itna percentile lao”. These suggestions cost me dearly in my first attempt.
Firstly, I gave a lot of mocks, and I had little to no improvement between both those mocks.
Secondly, I blindly marked answers in VARC in CAT 19. And hence VARC accuracy went for a toss.
Rather than blaming those youtube channels, I blame myself for blindly believing them. From what I’ve understood from my second attempt is that there’s no clear cut funda to ace CAT. You have to do a SWOT analysis, improve on your weaknesses, maintain your strengths, gauge the opportunities and threats all by yourself. No one can give a sure shot plan to you; you have to customize it yourself.
CAT’19
VARC- 82.91 DILR-94.28 QA- 94.73, OA- 93.73
The moment I calculated my CAT score as 113, I knew that I had to retake CAT. It just did not feel like a wholehearted attempt. Had a few SAP calls but decided to not sit for those interviews. Gave the rest of the exams except NMAT. Missed SCMHRD cut off by 0.5 percentile. Thank God, I missed it 😂. If I had converted it that year, that would have been the end of my great CAT journey.
Took a break from CAT prep from December till April
I’ll explain my final attempt journey in a detailed manner so as to help future aspirants. I know some of you would be like “Aur kitne details dega bhai??”. But it won’t do the story any justice without those details.
I was doing a Semester Internship at TATA Motors from January. It was a bit tiring, for the first two months. Lockdown started in March and Interns were told not to come for work henceforth. That was it at TATA Motors. I was handed a 4-month vacation till I join my PPO at Atlas Copco in July. That was the moment I realized “It’s showtime”.
The second and final attempt
The first thing I did was remember the right and wrong decisions I took in my previous attempts. VARC seemed to be lagging behind. Had a discussion with my sister’s friend who had aced CAT earlier. One thing I can say about my sister is that she has one hell of a network. Anyway, he gave me a great idea, CAT was 7 months away and it wouldn’t hurt if I do only VARC for a month and then start the rest of the sections. That was it, next 30 days, 4 RC’s daily and reading for half an hour.
Though I had taken up test series from IMS, TIME and CL. I took only IMS seriously. The rest I took as per my convenience. I was actually excited about each IMS mock I took.
SIMCAT 1–110 (49/20/41) 95.37 %ile … It felt like the only VARC strategy was helping but DILR felt out of touch. My first reaction to my mock score was “Chalo Jidhar choda hai udhar se vaapis shuru”
Worked hard for the next month. Finished half of IMS VARC and DILR material.
SIMCAT 2–112(42/25/45) 93.29%ile.
Continued my daily targets and was close to finishing the material.
Voilà!!
SIMCAT 3–147 (61/44/42) 97.1 %ile
This was a relief. This was a proof that whatever I was trying to do, it was working.
Here I’ll introduce you to a phenomenon I like to call “Delayed result”
I’ve also posted a LinkedIn article which shows the exact phenomenon which happened a few SIMCATs after this
It’s natural to expect immediate results, but that’s just not how it works.
The next few mocks were the same old, but there were a lot of fluctuations.
129–141–120–129–143–143
Meanwhile, my first post on Pagalguy was after the mock in which I scored 120.
You know the feeling when you think about the past you? It’s like what’s wrong with that guy. Take a chill pill! The worse is yet to come.
After that point you can see all my scores on Pagalguy profile. Pagalguy addiction is real :P
Fast Forward, IIM Indore changes the pattern from a 3hr exam to a 2hr one.
Panic land all over study groups.
IMS revises their SIMCATs.
SIMCAT 10 panicked so bad in DILR
Miserable 33.47 %ile in DILR. What’s happening? Naah this was just one mock, I don’t think this is here to stay. Off to the next mock. It just can’t get any worse than this J
SIMCAT 11
DILR — 18.88 %ile !! Not 18 marks, 18 percentile L
Behind the scenes, this guy was questioning everything. Is this it? 1.5 month to CAT and here I am totally messing DILR.
Took a break. No CAT for the next 4–5 day and visited my village. I used to give mock exams on Sunday and all of a sudden, I felt like I should skip this week’s mock as I was feeling pretty helpless. This was an unusual feeling for me because I was always excited about the IMS next mock. Saturday evening I decided to travel 200km back to my house and give the mock exam the next morning. This was the best decision that I made that year.
With not a single minute of preparation in between the score jumped by a huge margin.
My first top 100 in IMS mocks. It felt so great.
The thing is there are 3 ways to interpret what just happened here (in context of a CAT aspirant).
First, just chill score will come through.
Second, this was pure luck.
Third, just persevere and you’ll see the results someday. You can’t know when, in which mock, but they’ll come through.
It’s upto you which one to believe.
Also, there’s no harm in taking a break. I know Ross took it and it worked out pretty well for him at the end XD. But on a serious note, being stuck in a bad place is a common thing to happen in CAT prep. Those 4/5 days of fresh air will provide you the strength to go through the next phase of your preparation.
Anyway, this was my EUREKA moment. By which I mean I’ve found the Pavan I was looking for since the past few months. I knew that if I took this Pavan for the CAT exams, he’ll nail it. This was not overconfidence, but this was the trust that he had in his abilities all along.
Also, please excuse me if calling myself in 3rd person sounds lame. 😂😂
The next mock scores were
85,122,128,119,118.
Here’ a tip few CAT aspirants ask me on various platforms. I was good in QA naturally. I would be able to solve most of the questions in any coaching material. But CAT is not just about solving those questions correctly, it’s also about doing them quickly. I did not touch any QA material till September. Till then I had given lots of mocks and I had a lot of data at my disposal. I analyzed 3 things: -
1.) Generic questions — The kind of questions that come in every other mock. For example, the one’s with A does some work in x days and B does in y days. Find an efficient way to do these questions (without mugging anything, trust me it will bite you back on the D-day)
2.) Strong areas — Give me a CAT logarithms problem and I’ll solve it in my sleep. Most engineers will do the same. 😅 So, for god’s sake don’t solve any logarithms from CAT material if you are so good at it. If some area is moderately strong, try to leverage your strength by solving it in less than a minute. These are freebies, solve 10 of these in first 10 minutes and even if you solve the rest questions with a not so respectable accuracy you’ll sail through. Take these numbers with a pinch of salt.
3.) Weak areas — Solve 50–60 odd questions from each of these areas that’s all I can suggest.
Near D-day
For the last month or so I studied max 1–2 hours a day. Just didn’t want to disturb my mental strength in the last few days. Kept mocks to a minimum. Read Harry Potter for the first time. 😂
On the D-day, went there 1 hour earlier than the reporting time. Asked a Slot-1 friend feedback and pattern. There’s a lot of discussion about this, puchna chahiye ya nahi. Just do what you feel.
VARC was as usual. Attempted 18 and got 12 right. Found 1 RC difficult and left it, great instinct there. Many people were stuck on the same RC.
DILR felt very difficult. Was able to solve only 5 questions in first 25 min (all turned out to be correct). I had this habit of going for easier questions rather than sets.
LR was my safe haven so took up a 6 question LR set which seemed very lengthy. But it turned out to be a moderate level set. Made one silly mistake there and lost 4 marks (considering the negative mark). Hence missed out on a 99 %ile in DILR.
QA seemed a bit trickier than usual because of the number of min-max questions. Attempted 17 got 15 right. Accuracy was my thing in QA. Coincidentally, last year I had the same report card in a 1hr Qa section. 15 Right 2 wrong.
Results
As soon as the answer key and response sheet was out, I called my sister. Pasted my URL on the Cracku thing ( Hat’s off to Cracku btw, great work!)
Saw 106
Started crying 🙈
Sis was like “Kitna?”
Me — 106 with my quavering voice
She thought that’s bad
Sis — Kuch nahi kar lege aur kuch
(This was in Marathi btw; I don’t know how many of you here are comfortable with Marathi. Hence the Hindi version)
Me- Naaa 106 is 99+ pakka 🙈
Sis — Fir ro kyu raha hai pagal!! I thought it’s bad.
Every coaching predicted 99.1–99.5. Cracku was the closest.
Results came in and it was 99.51 actually. Feels good right? When you expect less and you achieve more. I had told my parents that it would be 97+, so 99.51 was a pleasant surprise for them. My scorecard was on their Whatsapp Status that day 😂😂
First one to pursue an MBA in my family. And only the second after my sister to pursue Master’s. This was not an individual achievement. This was their achievement too. My only reaction was “😇”
Journey Post-CAT
I had given a few non-CAT exams and was I was successful in few of them.
SNAP — 99.7029 %ile
NMAT — 251
IIFT — 94 %ile (Don’t remember the exact percentile)
XAT — 94.7 %ile, DM — 58%ile 😂
Let me tell you tell my profile for reference: -
87/78/77 General Mechanical Engineering Male Fresher.
Calls started pouring in and I knew that I had a weak case for BLACKI. I was kind of hoping for L but ironically, I missed L by miles 😅. I would be lying if I say that it didn’t hurt. It hurt like hell. The feeling is amplified by people getting calls at much lower scores. All of a sudden being jealous and hating someone seemed fine.
If you ask me the moment when you’ve been the strongest in the last 2 years, I will point to this moment itself. I was somehow happy for my peers. It felt like I had managed to control the dark side of myself. And that’s what matters right? Each of us has an ugly side, if it gets hold of you, you will lash out after seeing anyone else’s achievement. But if you learn to harvest that negative energy into trying to do good things for yourself, you are one of the smartest people on the planet (that’s what I feel).
Anyway, the calls I had were SPJIMR, MDI, IITB, NITIE, IIM Shillong, SIBM Pune, SCMHRD and CAP IIMs. I had joined a few groups that helped me a lot during my interview preparation.
First was created by me and my dear friend Sachin @SachinAg on pagalguy. I made some great friends there. I might have mentioned all of you here but bohot badi list banegi 😂
Virtual High five to all of you 🙌❤️. We shared Gk notes, we discussed some hot gk topics for hours and most importantly we played AmongUs before the results 😂. These guys were always very supportive, and I hope we all stay in touch.
Second was THEOMI made by Sohum, Rishi and Karan. I’ve heard a lot about students being busy in their first year at a B-school. But taking time out of their personal life to help us was really sweet. I hope I am as helpful to my juniors as they were. The interview with Sohum was the primary source of confidence for me throughout my interviews.
I remember that he used to post a poll on telegram group for the students who want their mock interview to be conducted. I joined the group through the link on pagalguy and marked the poll as interested the same day. I had listened to his “how to tackle tell me about yourself” audio tape that day and had planned my interview answers accordingly. The pi was really interesting, I fumbled a bit on academic questions, but he was really impressed with the way I answered my questions in terms of stories. Being a legend on pagalguy, I was really happy about it and keeping the compliments aside, it really helped me in terms of what to improve and what not to mess up. I remember him telling me to “stick to what you’re saying” for a few questions. Overthinking is a real thing while preparing for interviews. It’s like the popular phrase “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.
Btw virtual high fives 🙌 to all the guys on this group too. Couldn’t have done it without your support.
For the next few days, I went through my engineering books that were lying in a corner for too long and the interviews came pretty soon.
I will attach my interviews which I have posted on quora here
I did not write or post rest of the interviews. If you want, I can give you that on personal chat.
If I had to tell my best interviews then I would most probably say IIM Shillong, MDI Gurgaon and SPJIMR GI1 were best of the lot.
So here are my results
Possible/Fix Converts Category:-
MDI PGDM (30 WL) … Most likely a convert
SJMSOM-IITB, IIM Shillong, SIBM Pune, SCMHRD-Converts
Possible/Fix Rejections Category :-
SPJIMR marketing — Direct Reject ( Man would have loved to be there, GI1 was crisp as hell IMO)
NITIE PGDIM — 770 WL (Interview was not at par with others, kuch jyada hi ops puch liya :P)
Anyway, here I am on a vacation (subtle flex) writing an 8-page journey. This is the most I’ve written all by myself.
I’ve been known as the “CAT guy” at my college for almost 2.5 years now. The transition from this to “the 99.5 guy” had its downsides too. People constantly asking konsa IIM hua 😂😂. But I like think of myself as more of “the guy who did it against the odds”. I remember going through new IIM placement reports late at night and thinking “I’ll be very happy there”, turns out I wanted more. Time changes and with that our aims and ambitions too, but I have learnt through my experiences that however high you aim having your feet stable on the ground really helps.
I’ll update you about which college I am joining soon, till then ciao!
EDIT — Converted MDI Gurgaon on 16th of June …. I don’t think I’ll ever forget this day.
