Roughly only 50% of CAT aspirants appear in these MOCK Cats. So a big part of this Janta do not have good experience of exam kind of environment leading them to score lesser than what they could have scored. Also most of the serious CAT guys do appear in these MOCK Cats, so only the guys who are not so serious do not fall in this category. Hence easily you can make out that
in actual CAT there will be many new students who will perform not so good and this is the reason for increase in %ile.
Now coming back to the MOCK Cats. In these exams at least during last 5-6 tests you should be consistent enough, depending upon institutes you are targeting (Which will be discussed later).
So what should be the strategy in MOCK Cats so that you can come out with flying colors in actual CAT. How to utilize it to its best? As all of us are well aware that CAT is a 150 minutes test in which it will judge your anaylitical, logical & reasoning, Speed reading, calculation and all those stuff through its 3 sections- Quant, Verbal and DI(Data interpretation). Although you may distribute your time in any order and any ratio to these sections but you are expected to do well compared to others in all the three sections and overall too. So how should one go ahead to give his/her best.
There is no universal formula to sail through the entrance for this luctrative MBA course.
First of all I shall start with the strategy on how to utilize the given time frame to get the best output. Since there are common 3 sections for all and only getting a good overall marks (targetting only 1-2 sections) will not solve the purpose, One needs to know what section is his strength and what all are his weak areas.
Suppose a guy is confident enough in quants and fears the Verbal part he must start with quant first. Similarly if any aspirant is scoring well in DI (relative to others) needless to say he must start the war attacking DI first. So what is the moral of the story- you must start with your strongest section first then the weakest one and then at last the third section. Now how will this ensure that you are getting maximum of this. Since a guy is more energetic and concentrated at the beginning compared to the end he can solve the same thing much quicker at the start than at the end. So attempting the first section means targeting the maximum score overall.
Now since your speed will decrease with time you need to attempt your weakest section next so as to clear the sectional cut off and then at the end the third section and since it is not the weakest section you should be able to clear its cut off as well. So this gives you a great overall marks (scoring maximum 4m ur favorite area) and also clearing sectional cut offs. This strategy does not necessarily guarantee you for this but adopting this strategy will take the best out of you on the D day.
Many students think a lot about distribution of time across various sections. To throw light on this, believe me I have tried all the possible permutations and combinations and came out as- distributing equal time for each sections is the best one. If you take out 10 mins extra from your weakest section and give it to the strongest section your overall %ile may increase but this will throw you at the bottom line in your weakest section. Similarly if you take 10 mins from your strongest area your good overall marks will go for a toss. So the balanced way is to cut the cake in equal pieces.
Again it is general thinking that take 5 mins from each section and to give this 15 mins at the end to one of the section, which I personally feel is not a good practice although it might have worked sometime for someone. As during the slog overs you will quickly try to attempt lots of questions across all sections and in that hurry it will be difficult to concentrate on any single section or question. Also once anyone is done with any section it is very difficult to bring back the same flow working later.
Now the only part left is how to be sure of your strongest part, weakest part and the most important question- should everyone follow this like a thumb rule. The answer to it is a big NO.
But yes after analyzing all the exams it is usually considered to be the best way. But what covers a major crowd doesn’t necessarily means that it is true for everyone. To decide on this front only you have the privilege of Mock Tests. To utilize these mock tests to its fullest one should try all the possible ways in first 8-10 Mock Cats . This includes trying all the permutation and combination of order of attempting the sections, to keep the buffer time for last moment and to distribute the time unevenly. Once you are done with this I am sure most of you will come to the same conclusion given by me earlier. But some of you might be more comfortable with some other way.
Whatever it is, try to focus the rest 8-10 mock tests only on this pattern and be comfortable enough on it. Since you have already tried every possible permutation and combination this should be probably the best which you can come up with.
Now comes the most important part i.e. analyzing part. Even though you are appearing in Mock Cats very seriously and studying properly , this is not enough.
For a paper of 2.5 hours you need to give at least 4.5 hours (1.5 each section) to analyze it. The analyzing includes
è Going through each and every question of all the sections
è Look into how many questions you have attempted and how many not
è Were all the questions attempted by you the easiest among all
è What kind of mistakes are you making (calculation, Reading data wrong, wrong guess work, wrong logic or any other)
è Are you distributing the time exactly as decided earlier.
è Are you stuck with any difficult problem and couldn’t give the time to any other easy questions
è Was there any other better method to solve the questions attempted by you.
Once you are done with all these you will notice that there were many avoidable mistakes done by you. The difference between any 75-90 %iler and a 96+ %iler is only that the latter didn’t make those silly mistakes and attempted easier questions.
After analyzing all these for few tests I am sure most of you will be able to increase your score. So the tough part is done and you just need to carry on the same strategy in all the exams like CAT, XAT etc..
Now the next thing which I am going to target is something which you wouldn’t find at many places. Almost all the students have one section as their weak leg, Be it Quant or DI or Verbal. They just wish to clear the cut coffs in that section by giving maximum time or if not than equal time. So this strategy will be handful to only those who are not targeting only IIMs but will be satisfied with the next top 10 institutes also like MDI, IMT, SPJAIN, NITIE, Great LAKE, IMI,XIMB………
For these institutes either sectional cut offs are not there or very low compared to IIMs. So if you are getting your score in 80%ile or 90%ile this may increase your chances of getting calls from above mentioned institutes and I am going to tell how J
As all of us are strong in at least one section, some are in quant, some in Verbal and some in DI so distribute your time like giving 40-45% to your strongest area and 33% to second section and rest to your weakest section.
The less time which you are giving for your weakest section , you have to ensure that you need to select only the sitters kind of question or select one easiest passage(if from verbal) or try to do 5-6 questions from grammar/FJI/Sentence completion whichever you are more confident about.
If it is quant then go for questions from geometry, Progressions, Ratio and proportions, work-time-distance and number theory.
By giving less time, although you have less chances of clearing this sectional cut off but this time which you are giving to your strongest section will give your score a high.
Since in any given time frame you can score more in your favourite section than in weakest section your overall score will increase with some lesser marks in one section.
To clear this funda with stats – suppose you are getting around 92-94%ile in your strongest area, around 90 in your 2nd section and around 85-87%ile in your weakest area and around 93-95%ile overall, after giving your some time from weakest to strongest section you will get comparatively more marks had you given this time to your weakest section. So your new score might look something like this- Strongest section 96-97%ile, 2nd sections 90 (same) and 3rd section – around 80%ile and overall around 95-96%ile. Did you see the difference your 5-10 marks in weakest section may lead you at least 10-15 marks more in another section leading to net more marks than before, hence chances of getting calls from top notch colleges(Non IIMs) will increase.
Now coming to the point how to choose any B –School. As everyone will think at least 10 times before taking admission into any B School, you must know how they are categorized. You will find many MBA aspirants pretty much confused on the standard of college that they ask many people about it – like How good is it ? What is the placement scene ? What kind of professors are there and What all specialization they provide etc….
Among these questions the high priority question will remain the placement statistics of the college. Please be clear that it is not the college who plays major role in average salary but the students and I will give you the reason of the same. Suppose any banking sector company has come for recruitment, will it offer the same to an engineer fresher and any person with work ex of say 4-5 years in banking field ? Will the package be same for and 3 year work ex guy in IT company and any fresher in any IT firm. The answer to these will of course a biiiiiiig No.
Why do you think the colleges prefer work ex guy to some extent ? Obviously for the same reason that their placement figure will be on a higher side and they may advertise much on that. Now some of you might be thinking if this been the case why don’t they take all work ex guy- It is because for B School in INDIA they do not have such pre conditions so they need to take freshers too and also they want the batch to be a mixed one with freshers , work ex ppl, Engineer, B Com etc.. So choosing a balanced line they opt for a mixture of all.
So the question is still there how to select any B School. First of all there is a cluster of colleges like IIMs, SP Jain, MDI, NITIE, XLRI, FMS and JBIMS which I guess almost 99.9% of Junta would be dying to take admission.
Apart from this there are few more colleges which are worth studying and they include- IMT (Ghaziabad), XIMB, IIT-B. IIT-D, IIT-KGP, Great Lakes(Chennai), SIBM, SCMHRD, Narsee monjee, TISS, IIFT. This second cluster of college also falls under the category which “you can not say No”.
To this cluster only those can say no who have very very high dreams and looking forward to study only from IIMs , come what may.
Looking at the competition increasing from last couple of years, I would not say it a bad Idea to look for the next few colleges also, since the number of people appearing is increasing day by day, so you should not leave any college which you will regret later. This type of colleges are- IIT-M, IMI, Tapmi,SIIB, GIM, MICA. This last cluster of colleges are only for those who have good back ground, want a good college, are dying for MBA but not getting any from Top-15. But for this cluster it will be pure personal choice as some can not wait for one more year, some might be satisfied with their environment and placement, or for whatever reason. But considering the present scenario of fight for MBA I must say unless and until you are aiming very very high kind and always on top you should not leave this cluster, provided you can not take chance next year.
One thing which I would like to make clear is that do not go blindly by the placement statistics of any college. Although they are not all false but they are calculated in a manner which will give you a figure much more than what the actual person will get. For example if a person has got two jobs- irrespective of what he has chosen, the one with higher offer will be considered. Few foreign placements are also there, so many colleges consider this also while calculating the average package (that is why they don’t mention it average domestic package) , so it is but obvious that the average package will now be on a higher end. Also the package they take is CTC i.e. cost to company, so this includes all kinds of spending done on employee by employer , be it be insurance, Maximum bonus etc which is not what will come in hand. So the in hand figure may be around 60% of that. So you may decide now how the shown figure is different than the in hand figure.
Now we will discuss the %ile cut off for various colleges including sectional cut off and placement statistics.
CAT :
IIMs- Among all the institutes which come under CAT, IIMs are the most renowned ones. Each IIM has its separate criteria of selection. Like IIM-A has the criteria of 25 %age of sectional marks and 33%age of overall minimum marks as the prerequisite to be called for next round. Among the applicants falling under this category few from top are being called.
Similarly IIMB has its different methodology to shortlist candidates based on their profile. So IIM-B gives weightage to work ex and academics in the process of first shortlist itself and because of this reason only a person with good sectionals , excellent academics and 2+ year of work ex can expect a call even on 96%ile. This is not the case with other IIMs.
Now coming to cut offs of other college-
MDI- 98+ , with sectional 80+
MDI (IB)- 96+ with sectional 75+
SP Jain- Complete profile based call (Even though minimum 85%ile for final selection)
IMT- 96+ (70% weightage to CAT Score)
NITIE- 97.5 + (Only for engineers)
GreatLake- 96+ (min 2 year of work ex, But can be called even without that
With an exceptionally well background).
IMI- 96%ile+
TAPMI- 90+ (Rough estimate)
KJ Somaiya – 91+ (rough estimate)
Good Colleges through XAT :
XLRI : 97.5(around)+ (with high sectional)
Sectional cut off is higher in quant for PGDM course and higher in verbal for HR course. (HR of XLRI is best in asia)
XIMB : 95+ (Since there is 50% reservation for orissa domiciles, this figure varry a lot)
GIM : 90%ile +
SP Jain: same profile based call.
SP Jain looks for several parameter like academics, Extra curricular activity, CAT/XAT score, Versatility, Relevant work experience, Good value system etc. It gives you rating (S- Super, A, B and C). You should get at least one S and not less than B in any of the parameter.
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