Examination Reference An Example/Template

Name: Amarnath

Category: Higher Studies - India

Pursuing Examination/Position/Degree: CAT Examinations

Educational Qualification/Background: B.E

Institution/Organization Name: Delhi College of Engineering

Preparation & Other Details:

I joined a classroom program at Career Launcher in the third year of my college and appeared for its test series. The classroom program started in Nov and continued till April. Between April and the date of the examination, the various online test formats(topic-wise tests, section tests and mock tests) helped a lot in revising the concepts.

In Quantitative Analysis and Data Interpretation sections, the concepts are not very hard to comprehend but require regular practice. In English section, get yourself comfortable with reading comprehensions. The other questions in this section are relativity easier to crack but again require practice for gaining confidence.

If someone ask me whether coaching played an important role and want to know if it is must to join coaching class, I will take a middle route. As mentioned above, there is nothing conceptually very difficult in the CAT syllabus, but requires you to practice so that you are exposed to a variety of questions. I believe a coaching institute is like a check which ensures that you study regularly, which is otherwise difficult to achieve on our own. The study material and the online tests provided by the coaching institutes are of great help during preparation. If you have access to these, it will help you approach the exam in a structured way. Joining or nt joining the coaching classes is a personal choice. If you can be regular with your studies, then you may have a potential to do it without going to the classroom teaching.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say the importance of academic achievements is around 9,whereas extracurricular achievements gets a rating of around 6 in getting admission in a good B School. I used the comprehensive and well-structure material provided by the coaching institutes. Apart from that the only book I found useful was "Puzzles and Teasers" by George J Summers for Logical Reasoning section (interesting book even otherwise)

Some of the Interview Experiences that I would like to share are:

• IIMA : Questions on my work experience – work I do, projects, tools I have used; Questions on an Intellectual Property certification I had; Basic statistics and calculus questions; questions on my technical knowledge (biotechnology) – majorly about latest events in the industry and my opinion on that.
• IIMC: Questions on why I wanted to pursue MBA and how I see the 2-year course helping me in my career; questions on limits, continuity and differentiability and differentiation and integration; questions on extra-curricular activities.
• FMS: Questions on why I wanted to pursue MBA and how I see the 2-year course helping me in my career; Newspaper I follow daily – its editor, which pages interest the most; last new financial term learnt and explain it; CAT percentile; other calls and then the most difficult question – priority order IIM A, IIM C or FMS

One of the questions that bowled me over was during the IIMC interview - The interviewer said that he would quote two points from my CV and asked me to establish a link, frame a question that an interviewer will ask based on these two points (he said that since you might have appeared for many mock interviews, you know what to expect) and then given an unexpected answer to that question.

My two cents worth of advice would be " Get comfortable with reading passages and practice concentrating for long time duration. Do not study too many concepts during the last days. Just practice some tests daily. Analyze tests to identify your weak areas and work on them. Confidence is the key thing. If you are not confident about a certain topic, start from the easiest questions on that topic just to regain confidence and feel happy that you know that topic. Then try and move to more difficult questions. Confidence matters a lot. Competition does not end with CAT, it is just the beginning. Work on your overall profile while or before preparing for CAT"

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