This is how you can get into IIMs, IITs, MDI, and other tier-I colleges -By Tanay Kankane, 99.52 percentile, IIM Lucknow

Meet Tanay, a student of the upcoming batch of IIM Lucknow. He managed his job and CAT preparations rigorously and ultimately came out with flying colors by scoring 99.52 percentile in CAT 2019. So, here is an anecdote of his CAT experience which will very beautifully tell you how you can get into IIMs, IITs, FMS, IIFT and other tier-I colleges. Let’s pour in without any delay.

My CAT percentile was 99.52, which was approximately a score of 171 and it took 2 serious attempts. It took me around 3.5 months of preparation. I previously worked in Tata Motors R&D as a Senior Manager and I left that job to work for a much smaller firm near my hometown to gain much valuable experience of working in a startup and also prepare alongside for CAT.

Is coaching necessary to get into IIMs?

If you think that to get into IIMs or other premiere institutes, coaching is the only key, then that’s not the picture. I didn't take coaching. I didn't feel it was necessary. However, I do recommend it if someone is really struggling and need guidance. I took a lot of mock test series from different coaching institutes to accustom myself with variety and surprises. It also helped me to develop a wide range of ideas of different ways a question setter can test aptitude. 

I found mocks very useful. I took TIME, IMS, and CL mock. For VA/RC preparation, I took Word-Pandit mocks as well. Just keep practicing and learning where you are going wrong, what you need to focus, and how are you going to do it. There are plenty of resources on the internet these days to help you out.

Just an analysis will not work...

Most of the time people misjudge what their real strengths and weaknesses are. I think figuring that out wins half the battle for you. So since I cleared JEE, I thought I can deal with Quant and DILR pretty well. And I knew that my weak area was the Reading Comprehension (VA-RC section).

I was not habituated to read a lot since childhood and that created a roadblock for me as I was reading passages too slowly and my comprehension skills were poor. So I analyzed very particularly what I need to work on so I could hit the hammer on the right spot with limited time. I started reading articles on various topics to familiarize myself, how to strategically break a long passage into a set of important ideas and ignoring the not-so-useful part, understanding how the question setter develops a particular question and how he/she tries to trick you with confusing options, etc.  

Initially, I started out with the most generic plan - focusing on weakness most of the time and practicing other things side-by-side. I started focusing more on verbal for probably 1.5 months and kept giving mocks. It really shook me when I realized I was messing up my DILR section since I consistently failed to score high (which I expected I would improve with time). 

Instead, go for a reality-check and put your strategy to test

Eventually, I realized later that I was wrong when I thought DILR was my strength. 

To crack CAT, you need to be pretty good in at least two subjects. Now with the less time left, I needed to optimize my efforts. So here's what I understood - every learning curve or score curve in mocks is kind of steep in the beginning and it slowly starts to flatten or saturate after which you will have to put in considerable effort to increase your score even by a mark. 

So I decided to put only a certain amount of effort into the VARC section, only to get a decent percentile or average marks. And I started to practice DILR as well to make sure I get some above-average percentile here. Once in a while, like 4-5 hrs in a week, I would give some time to Quant to make sure I am doing pretty well in it as that was the only section that would shoot up my score. So with the limited time I had, the number of hours I gave to subjects was in order: VARC > DILR >> Quant.   

Who said the journey to get into IIMs is easy?

I want to warn all the aspirants that the preparation journey to get into IIMs would not be easy at all. Also, there will be a lot of ups and downs. Don't get too overconfident during the highs and too disheartened during the lows. Just to give you the morale boost, let me tell you that I couldn't score more than 90 percentile in any of the mock for the first two months. But I kept believing and pushing myself. And I ended up scoring 99.5+ on the D-day! 

The practice is very important to score well. But don't just blindly practice, keep a note of all the important learning and keep revising them over and over again. 

• For Quant, I used to make notes of all the unique and different questions that I never saw before. This way after a certain period, there was no question in mock that I wasn't familiar with. 
• For VARC, I used to make a list of all the strategies that I needed to follow while solving questions, all the traps that I discovered, all the important words for vocabulary that I saw for the first time, etc. 
• For DILR, I bookmarked all the questions on the test portal that introduced me to some new ideas to solve the puzzles. 

So I believe in making a lot of notes. And when I went through them before exams, it gave me the confidence as I remembered thousands of questions where I failed and learned. I know it would seem a tedious task at first but trust me this journey to get into IIMs or any other premiere college will be worth in the end.

Verdict:  I got a call from IIM Lucknow and all other new IIMs. Apart from it, I had calls from FMS, SPJIMR, MDI, IIFT, all IITs, SIBM Pune, and NMIMS. I converted all of them except FMS and IIFT and will be joining the PGP program in IIM Lucknow

Anything can happen. Just keep believing!