Scoring 98.81 percentile in midst of a buzzing work schedule -By Prachet Prakash from IIM Lucknow

Having his hands full in the Operations department at HPCL (Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited), Prachet still managed to scoop out time for his CAT preparations and cleared it in the second go. A graduate from IIT ISM Dhanbad, Prachet worked as a Chemical Engineer in ABG for six months and HPCL, Vizag Refinery for twenty-nine months. A piano player, a cricket enthusiast and a person who loves Table Tennis, let us latch on to the success story of Bhilai’s Prachet Prakash and appreciate the very diligence in his preparation for CAT. 

Confidence is the cue 

It was 2016 and I was preparing for my GATE. I did not prepare for CAT as such but took the exam just to know what it is about. To my surprise, I managed to get a 96.55 percentile, and this was where my confidence played a vital part. I believed in myself and decided to give this exam a serious attempt sometime later in my career. 

During my school time or undergraduate days, I preferred sticking to a systematic study schedule for myself in an environment that was conducive. So, the challenge came when I was working in HPCL in the Operations department and had to follow shift duties. This was May 2019 and I had already begun preparing for CAT. The task of breaking away from old practices and getting used to studying at odd timings, during lunch breaks, while travelling was too demanding and spiny. 

A competitive environment is the biggest advantage

I was the only one in my group at Vizag who was preparing for CAT. My work schedule was highly unpredictable and therefore, joining offline coaching was never a feasible option for me. Rather, I joined two online coaching institutes, but they too were designed for people with a 9 to 5 job. I missed most of my online classes, and my time constraints frustrated me. However, I somehow managed to revise the concepts during my off-days or night shifts.

The biggest advantage that I feel a coaching institute gives is the peer group you form, the quizzes you take, the assignments you write which surely provide you the necessary drive to prepare for CAT. It is also a time when you do a reality check and realizes where your footing is. Today, I can clearly tell that without this competitive environment, it would have been impossible for me to make it. Friends make it easier to study while sharing smarter ways of learning, better tips to attempt mocks and I was lucky that I made great friends!

Resources that rendered fruits

I found the test series of IMS to be very close and parallel to what actual CAT is. They provide a very detailed analysis of the student’s performance and that helped me a lot to understand the areas where I was weak. Besides this, the resource material provided by the coaching institutes was fairly sufficient and I never needed to refer to any book for more practice.

Strategizing the art of war 

I focused on Quant in the first two months and continued reading articles in my spare time. I took my first mock test, and scored 91, with scores of 37,12,42 in VARC, LRDI, and Quant respectively. I think I could not figure out my mistakes and even after seven mock tests, the highest I could score in LRDI was 19 marks, while my VARC and Quant scores touched 50.

By September, I realized that LRDI was my biggest setback and decided to work on it. But our refinery had a shutdown and I could not get any weekly off for forty days. There was no time I could sufficiently devote to my preparations and I almost gave up. My friends were an asset, who continually motivated me and helped me to pick myself up. So, to make things less complicated, I began watching solutions to basic LRDI problems of the past 4-5 years on YouTube.

It was November when I had devised clear strategies for Quant and VARC, while LRDI was still a work in progress. For VARC, I considered the paper to be of 55 minutes, of which I decided to allot about 45 minutes to Reading Comprehensions, with a target of completing at least five of them. In the next ten minutes, I attempted all the odd-sentence questions. Para-Jumbles were the last thing I attempted. In the last five minutes, I checked all the questions I had marked for later or that I felt were doable.

For Quant, I planned to skim through the paper attempting the sitters on the first go and marking the questions of my interest in the second round. If I had still any time left after completing these, I tried my hands on one or two of the difficult questions. Though this strategy sounds easy, it is too significant to practice it via a lot of sectionals and mock tests. 

For LRDI, I had a talk with myself a few days before taking CAT and decided that I will not keep any fixed strategy for it. Rather, I will look for questions that resemble the ones I have practiced till now, or seem solvable with little calculations involved. 

After a back-breaking toil of about 5 months, I finally managed to give a decent attempt at the CAT paper. Because I attempted 33 questions in VARC, 16 in LRDI, and 24 in Quant, I expected my marks to range between 160-170. But when the results came out, I was enthralled to see that I had the highest accuracy in LRDI, the subject that I feared the most. I got 51,43,58 as my VARC, LRDI, and Quant scores, and a 98.81 percentile. 

Making it to IIM Lucknow 

Being a GEM, I did not expect calls from BLACKI colleges at this percentile, but luckily, I received an interview call from IIM Lucknow. I also received calls from SPJIMR, NITIE, SJMSOM, new IIMs, MDI Gurgaon and NMIMS. From clearing the interview calls by decimal points to eventually getting an admission call, I feel privileged to join IIM Lucknow or as they call it, HeIL.

Words of counsel

Just remember that there will be thousands of reasons for you to give up on your CAT prep, there will be times when you feel that the entire universe is aligned to stop you from going toward your goal, and there will be people to sympathize with you if you fail. But it is always better when people say, “I never knew he/she could manage to do this” rather than “Never mind, it was impossible to do this.” Keep your dreams higher, and keep moving towards the bigger picture of your goal.

This journey is a roller-coaster and is laden with so many ups and downs. It is always better to have someone on the same page, someone who is preparing for the same, someone to listen to your heart and relate to what you are going through. My best wishes to all the aspirants for CAT 2020.

Verdict: I received interview calls from SPJIMR, NITIE, SJMSOM, new IIMs, MDI Gurgaon and NMIMS. I did not appear for interviews of the new IIMs and could only get through the first round of SPJIMR’s interview. I was on the waiting list for SJMSOM while I converted IIM L, NITIE, MDI Gurgaon and NMIMS.

To read more about the success stories of students who cracked CAT, click on the links below:

• From 60.70 to 98.21 percentile: The secret to getting calls from IIMs -By Anubahv Singh from IIM Lucknow - Part 1
• The ABC of CAT preparation and mocks -By Mehendi Basu, 98.54 percentile, IIM Kozhikode
• With these two things you can also score 99+ percentile in CAT -By Aishwarya Nair, 99.82 percentile, IIM Bangalore
• My journey of increasing CAT percentile from 90 to 99 -By Siva Charan Sompalli from NITIE Mumbai
• What is the most inspirational CAT Entrance Success story you ever heard?