Don’t Let CAT Preparations Subdue Your College Life -By Shivam Jha, 99 Percentile, Converted IIM Indore

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Most people do not emphasize enough on how to balance life with CAT preparations, especially if you are a fresher. And here I'm trying to address very issues. I'll try to explain how to balance CAT prep with your academics (without sacrificing your ECA) and how to make the best out of your final year in college while acing CAT.

As a GEM Fresher candidate, an enormously overrepresented demographic at B-Schools, I was hounded from the beginning by all the people around me. I was told that you need to have an exceptional CAT score and stellar academics to make it through, given how cut-throat the competition is in your pool. And as someone who had 4 backlogs in his first year, this did not feel like an appealing path to tread. This led me to be worried about how my low academic scores in graduation could hamper my chances of getting into my dream B-School. 

I've read plenty of articles offering advice such as 'Do at least 50 questions daily from any chapter', 'Spend hours analyzing your mock performance' etc. even on the Unstop (formerly Dare2Compete) Converse Podcast as well. The truth remains that most students go into CAT preparation, based purely on hearsay, and end up abstaining from all the things they'd have done otherwise - without realizing their true calling.  

Also read: Details About CAT Syllabus 2022 & CAT Exam Pattern- Everything You Need To Know!

A Bedlam of CAT Coaching, Internships and Peer Influence

Out of absolute peer influence (and a bit of FOMO), I jumped on the bandwagon and enrolled myself at a CAT coaching institute in October 2019. Needless to say, I never found myself at comfort in these classes, possibly because of the timely vignettes of the traumatising JEE coaching days with the weekly worksheets, tests and mocks. Or perhaps because I lacked the self-impulse to pursue it passionately. 

At the time I was pursuing Mechanical engineering from the Delhi Technological University. Given my field of study, there weren't many on-campus opportunities for internships in my third year. Besides that, I always wanted to delve into research, particularly on the Operations Management and Statistical Modelling side. So for two whole months, I browsed through the different areas of research, the ongoing projects, and almost all the faculties at the top IIMs.

I got research internship offers from IIM Bangalore and Kozhikode, and I chose to go for IIM Kozhikode, primarily because they were providing on-campus accommodation. The two months that I spent at their absolutely stunning campus were transformative. I was driven by excited accountability and was able to learn and apply a lot in a short duration.

Not only was I working on something I was genuinely interested in, as opposed to a superficial corporate intern, but I also got the opportunity to interact with so many PGP and FPM students, spending nights with them and spectating their first-month shenanigans. Staying on campus and witnessing the B-School life from such proximity gave me a very clear idea of perhaps everything from a viewpoint of an aspirant. 

It was only after this realization that I decided to make an informed decision and began taking the preparation and mocks seriously. I received a placement offer at PwC in August, and after that relief, I resumed engrossing myself in more activities along with the prep - writing, debating, poetry, quizzing, photography, and case competitions - all while improving my grades too.

Also read: Case Study Competitions- Details, Winning Strategies, And More!

How Corporate Competitions Put Things in Perspective

Interestingly, just one week before CAT 2019, I qualified for the National Finals of a Case Competition hosted by XLRI Jamshedpur (Shout out to Unstop (formerly Dare2Compete) because I found out about this there). I had plenty of mocks to attempt, a lot of syllabi to revise, plus my end-semester examinations were starting just a day after CAT. 

Would most people in this scenario choose to spend the next four days traveling from Delhi to Jamshedpur and devote two full days (and nights) working on the case against some of the top teams in the country? 

I did - without any hesitation - for it was always clear that these opportunities are far more worth it in the larger scheme of things. Despite being the only undergraduate team in the Finals, we emerged as the Winners, edging out the teams from IIMs, XLRI, and NITIE. Not only was it absolutely enthralling competing at the postgraduate level but living the XL life for three days and interacting with so many students and DTU alumni there was intensively enriching. 

CAT Prep: How to Ace the Verbal Section

In the CAT 2019, I scored a 99 percentile overall with a 99.90 percentile in VARC. Once again, cracking Verbal was solely due to my regular reading and writing habit and not due to solving numerous RC sets. Here are a few tips from my side: 

1. Just read whatever you get your hands on, but do spend at least a couple of hours reading every day. Everything from newspaper editorials to Aeon essays to The Atlantic articles to good quality Instagram captions - ranging in a wide variety of themes and styles.
   The trick is not to read everything as an RC passage, but to read the exam passage as just another thing you're reading off the internet.

2. Try to gain in-depth insights about the fields you're remotely interested in, but don't force yourself to read something if you find it boring. Instead, identify triggers that interest you, because ultimately it is your level of understanding of a subject that aids comprehension and will help you in GD-PI as well. Familiarity, comfort, ease of reading - all these are offsets - your knowledge will take you through.

3. And I can't stress enough about writing regularly if you want to improve your reading ability and vocab. Even if it is half a page of your diary or just 100 words on a Reddit thread, do write and express yourself as freely as you can. Only once you get in those shoes, you will be able to firmly grasp the portrayal of the ideas in the text from the author's perspective, which is imperative to solving RC questions.
   

Also read: Reading Comprehension For CAT Exam- Intro, Questions, Tips, Resources, And More!

Be Ready, Willing, and Able

I had only applied to the top 6 IIMs, got a call from Indore and converted it. Strikingly, my interview also mostly revolved around debating, extracurriculars, my research at IIM Kozhikode, and my experiences of competing at various B Schools, which distinctively set me apart from other GEM Fresher candidates. 

Post the CAT result as well, I won podium positions at IIM Lucknow, NMIMS, and was the National Finalist at many more. And even besides these things, I was a part of 4 societies through this time, including leading 2 at the apex post and establishing one from scratch. I was participating in Parliamentary Debating Tournaments, Quizzes, and undertaking Consulting Projects - and also taking final year trips with my friends!

Looking back, surely relinquishing some of these things to put in some extra effort in the CAT prep might have made a difference. But there's not an ounce of regret in those decisions cause you can always give the CAT again next year, but you can't go back to being an undergrad and trying out these experiences. At the end of the day, in all honesty, it is these ventures that shape you as a person and condition you for the future - not the hours that you spend stuck to your modules or glued to your screens. 

What each aspirant should understand is that CAT is fundamentally an aptitude test, not a knowledge-based exam. The CAT prep should subconsciously be a part of your routine and not an enforced two-hour portion of your day. You should be reading the newspapers, books, and essays because you WANT to - not because you HAVE to. You need to have the zeal to tackle every DILR set as an acumen challenge - not as an obligatory task that your teacher assigned you to do.

Despite initially joining the CAT coaching as a herd follower, it was only after seizing these opportunities that I figured out that getting an MBA was the right thing for me. The bottom line is that you don’t always need to sacrifice one aspect of your life to succeed in another. If I can do it, perhaps you can too. 

You might also be interested in reading the following:

1. How to Prepare for CAT Exam 2022? CAT Preparation Timetable, Guidance, Tips, And More!
2. MBA For Biology Students? Yes! Here's How Vaibhav Mangla A Life Sciences Student Converted IIM Kozhikode Without Any Coaching
3. CAT Study Plan For Working Professionals By Modit Singla, 99.25 Percentile, IIM Lucknow
4. CAT 2022: Tips To Score Well In Logical Reasoning And Data Interpretation (LRDI) Section