Are you a working executive and preparing for CAT also? If yes, you are most likely to get admission in a top B-schools provided you score a high percentile in CAT.
For working executives, however, the factors like ‘Time Management’ and ‘getting the academic rigor back’ remain huge challenging areas while they prepare for CAT and other MBA entrance exams like XAT, IIFT entrance, NMAT etc. When they start preparation for CAT, it becomes a bit difficult for them to take both - work and preparation, simultaneously. While their profession consumes a lot of time and energy, the CAT preparation is equally demanding and requires a lot of concentration along with regular study schedules.
Work-Ex a great advantage
But, the fact remains that work experience brings you an edge over other aspirants and increases your selection possibilities at IIMs, FMS, JBIMS, SPJIMR, MDI and others top B-schools which offer weightage to candidates on their years of work experience. The admission data from top B-schools suggests that working executives comprise 80 per cent or more share of the total students in top management institutes.
Sample this admission data for 2012-14 batch from two IIMs:
- In the batch of 381 students in IIM Ahmedabad, 286 have 1-3 years of work experience.
- At IIM Lucknow, out of the batch of 414 students, 301 students has more than 1 years of work experience
So, how do you take advantage of your work experience to prepare for CAT? How do you balance your work and study hours? What do you do to bring back academic rigor in your life again while preparing for CAT?
In this article, we bring you success mantras from working executives who successfully cracked CAT. These CAT toppers were working also during their CAT preparations, yet they scored high CAT percentile and secured admissions to top B-schools in India.
Manage your Time
Rohit Anand Garg cracked CAT 2012 with an overall 99.16 percentile and secured admission to IIM Raipur. Mr Garg worked for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for 34 months after his Engineering degree. On his time management during CAT prep, he says, “I was a working professional while preparing for CAT. In order to balance my work commitments and CAT preparation, I designed a schedule to devote minimum 30 hours per week to my preparation assigning appropriate weightage to all the sections. I devoted 2-3 hours daily after work and 7-8 hours on weekends to meet my targets. I believe an average of 4-6 hours a day of serious efforts would surely help a student to bell the CAT.”
Anusha Subramanian of IIM Bangalore, another working executive scored 99.80 percentile in CAT 2011 with sectional percentiles of 95.09 in quantitative ability & data interpretation and 99.99 in verbal ability, says “Since I was working hectic hours, I didn’t get too much time to prepare for CAT on weekdays. I tried to put in about 10 to 12 hours a week focussing specifically on time management in mock tests and maintaining a good accuracy level.”
Parag Poddar scored 99.65 percentile in CAT 2011 and after a stint with the industry, he now plans to own a start-up venture which will cater to the needs of the society. He used to prepare mostly on weekends and took tests every Tuesday and Saturday. On other weekdays, he used to analyze the paper and focused on brushing up his weak areas. Regular feedback from friends and perseverance helped him to cope up with the hectic schedule.
Siddhant Gupta, who scored 98.67 percentile in CAT 2011, prepared a specific time table to manage his time. He said, “Systematic preparation of timetable (that is divided on the basis of units/chapters/subjects) should be done rather than spending time unnecessarily on them. Figure out the most productive time of your day and plan study hours accordingly. Study with a fresh mind and take regular gaps so that you can retain what you have studied. Study sessions of shorter durations with high concentration level help a lot.”
Get your academic rigor back!
Due to work pressure at their work place and high involvement in their office assignments, working executives variably lose track of their academic background. They also feel it difficult to devote time for study and concentrate on the same as they did during their student life.
Yet, top B-schools are filled with working executives which indicates their success ratio is much higher than the freshers applying for MBA admissions. So, how do you score high CAT percentile despite losing interest in study.
You first need to get determined and be firm with your preparation schedule if you wish to score high percentile in CAT exams. Many of your peers, have done it in the past and are now a part of Top B schools including IIMs while many have gained successful advancements in their career.
To crack CAT and score high percentile, you need to be thorough with the concepts of different topics in Quantitative Techniques, Verbal Ability, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning. According to CAT toppers, consistency in preparation is key to your success.
Debjit Nag, who scored 99.97 %ile in CAT 2012 with the sectional cutoffs of 99.82 percentile in QA-DI and 99.79 percentile in VA-LR, says that, for improvement, there is no other way than practice. He started reading a lot to improve his VA skills and gradually things got better. According to him, the regular mock test and analysis-based preparation helps a lot.
Sharing his preparation strategy, Parag Poddar says, “The syllabus for CAT revolves around basic aptitude and is concentrated around mathematics and aptitude preparations done during Class VIII to Class XII. I started with brushing up basic concepts and formulae for each chapter and supplemented my preparation by taking chapter-wise mock tests.”
For the verbal ability section, he concentrated more on reading speed and comprehensions. He started reading newspapers to increase his knowledge and gain speed in reading and interest in various subjects. Online tests and surfing articles regularly made him adept to the habit of reading from computer and helped him concentrate better during his tests. He shares his success mantra, “Regular tests and analysis is the best way to identify one’s weakness and improve on them.”
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