A to Z of CAT

A – ‘Aspirant’ is what you will be called....Everyone’s dream: “Ahmedabad”...The benchmark of CAT tests - ‘AimCats’. And ‘Alumni’ are the best people to help out when in doubt.

B – Of course, “Bangalore”: a ‘B-School’ that you all want to have a kick at – a place to be and arguably the best IIM grooming under the leadership of the corporate czar – Mukesh Ambani. ‘BLACKI’ is the coveted call status not many can boast in the country.

C – It starts with ‘Computer Based’ ‘CAT’ and goes all the way upto ‘Calls’ whose number predicts the augmentation of your facebook friend list. And since they are just in the same order: “Calcutta”. - a place to be for finance enthusiasts and a hope for CAT enthusiasts who have faltered in either X, XII or graduation. ‘Confidence’ will get you there. And ‘Communication Skills’ will be tested in GD/PI.

D – Oh! ‘DI’ – a cakewalk for math lovers while a headache for others. ‘Days of CAT’... The whole period (20 or 21 days) seems like an age till your own CAT is done. But ‘Diversity’ is the word you should look for. ‘Dont Know’ is what you will never want to stay in the interview.

E – The foreign and India’s official language – ‘English’ and ‘E’ is dedicated to all those who died in the act of mastering the language.

F – Like boys, every IIM is having a thing for them these days – ‘Female’. And ‘Fun’ it has been preparing for CAT and it all gets better when you make it to one of the coveted institutes. ‘FMS’ is the B-school with the best ROI option and you can find this info in many ‘Forums’ where you will pass your time after the CAT. And in the end, ‘Faculty’ does matter.

G – ‘Girls’ are the ones you will be on the lookout in ‘Group Discussions’ that are forte of some while make others sweat.   

H – ‘High5’ will be the status every fresher vies for but less would be also respectable. And ‘Hard Work’ might help you achieve that.

I – ‘Indore’ has a separate place in the books because of its media loving nature and its long placement season. ‘Indian vs Foreign’ the most debatable topic you can find on forums.

J – ‘Joka’ (IIMC) has been discussed in ‘C’ but this place has a separate place in the world of finance.

K – ‘Kozikhode’ has the most beautiful campus among IIMs and this place is also a homemaker for many students. You will understand when you read the ratio. And the baby IIM ‘Kashipur’ with its own radio station is also welcome in the list.

L – ‘Lucknow’ you know but ‘Landlines’ will be the one you will be calling after the calls. ‘LR’ might give heart attack to some even. ‘List’ is the word you will look for far down the road to a B-school.

M (for boys) – ‘Male’ is the word you are gonna hate when you will see the criteria and ‘Motivation’ is what might be needed during the whole process.

N – ‘Not Selected’ and ‘Not appears in the list’ will become your worst nightmares. And you might curse ‘Normalisation’ any time.

O – ‘Oral skills’ are put to test in the second stages and you definitely need to be ‘Organized’ during the prep.   

P – It all boils down to ‘Percentile’ and ‘Profile’ during the ‘PIs’. Down the ladder you will start hating ‘Puzzles’ because you might have solved too many of them. And how can we miss the ‘Placements’. And our brother ‘Pagalguy’ who has resolved the boundaries between Admission committees and aspirants.   

Q – How can we forget ‘Quant’ after all making some leap with joy while testing others’ wits. ‘Quality’ is what they are looking for and be confident to provide them some.

R – ‘Results’ might help you hear your heartbeats...Plenty of IIMs with ‘Rohtak’, ‘Raipur’ and ‘Ranchi’ and ‘Reasoning’ should be your forte to get there. ‘Rankings’ will be you gauge which school is the best.

S – ‘Shillong’ is one of the few IIMs whose interview process is better than others and cover a range of topics. And a bit of ‘Study’ might help u get past it. ‘Salary’ is on the minds of most of you...

T – ‘Trichy’ I suppose a vibrant and new entrant to the league...”TotalGadha’ notes might help you lay good foundations of your concepts...

U – ‘Udaipur’ is again a baby IIM but has a lot of promise.

V – ‘Vault’ is the store that will help you solve your career doubts.

W – ‘WIMWI’ is the other name for IIMA....’WAT’: the new stage that has arguably replaced GDs in the selection process..

X – Probably the most loved alphabet by math lovers...solve for ‘x’...And, arguably, the most irritating alphabet sometimes...You can surely find it in any CAT exam...

Y – ‘Years’ pass by for some to make their dreams come true...

Z – Tough one...Hell, there is no ‘Z’ to be found...

The MBA Ride: SPJain (Operations)

Reviving the blog, I am posting the entire MBA journey through graphs and stuff. My profile is as below:

CAT'12: 99.20 (QA-97.93 and VA-98.5)
NMAT: 221
CMAT: 63 AIR (First Test)
XAT: Screwed it badly
SNAP: 99.17 (No calls)
Xth: 94.60%
XIIth: 88.50%
Grad (Civil Engineering): 9.35 converted to 88.50%
Experience: 31months as on interviews in Power Sector.

I had a total of 11 interview calls: SPJain (Ops-Profile Based), NMIMS, IIM-Shillong, IIM Lucknow, IIMA, IIMB, FMS, IITB, NITIE, IIM Indore, IIM (New ones: Score was taken from older ones) and MDI.

Starting from SPJain (Ops)-Profile Based:

The two step based interviews and that too involving eliminations does raise the pulse. But a profile based call backed by a good CAT Score has some advantages.

I have always revered SPJain because of its low batch strength and an excellent location.

Missing Individualism

Last month I was having dinner in my mess which caters to nearly 200 people. We were short of rotis so we ordered some and we were quite a number. And the waiter brought a plate full for so many of us. Obviously, we all jumped like a typical Indian mob. Alas, four rotis and two people were left. The other guy took all four. And it is not that no more rotis were to come. I could not understand the sense of insecurity a common Indian was having. Is it that the notion of optimum has still not sunken after nearly seven decades of British rule/scarcity?

Mess is a wonderful place where one can find similar behaviours. If you are sitting in a typical Indian mess and ask someone to pass the jug, the passer will first fill up his half filled glass first and then pass, as if he has discovered a newly found thirst; or is he the victim of the evolutionary indian insecurity deep rooted in our genes which arises from centuries of scarcity? Either way it is excruciating to watch this type of common behaviour.

India obviously is a vibrant and an arriving superpower but the common indian is still a timid individual, rather has a host psychology. We cannot do businesses individually, we are good at tennis doubles and awful at singles. We unite as a team when there is no other option. We like the herds and follow them religiously.

I think an indian individual has an instilled sense of insecurity when he is alone. Maybe it is the feeling, 'united we fail', that serves as a further justification of our failures that none is ready to espouse but everyone knows are inevitable. Whom to blame, huh?


Where is the Indian Individual's conviction? Why are we afraid to take decisions which are crucial to the fulfillment of our own dreams. Why are we so willing to tap the herd psychology and marry stereotypism when, I am sure, we have abundance of individual genius who can surpass the herd and set new benchmarks. Hitting the nail on the head, why do we need someone to protect us (a wall behind)? Maybe it lies in the way we have been brought up, following the stereotypical paths our parents have shown us but the change is needed and the society needs the change. Our country needs embodiments of individualism whom we can look upto and I am unsure whether plenty of them are in line.

Black: The Savior

When the world around us ponders over the corruption and black money, it is important to note why our money becomes black and why, instead of rising asset prices in India, we are not facing an asset bubble in our face.

Well, when Mr. Babu took money from the contractor, he could eventually not deposit it in a bank account. So, he thought to buy a house instead in the name of his wife. The govt. norms would not allow him to buy a house (an asset) quite costly vis-a-vis his income. So he told the seller that I will pay you half black and the rest white. Obviously, the owner was happy. Now, India does not have practice of issuing loans as per the market rate. The Indian Property law is not market driven, as the law should never be. The law can be based on some parameters but it should not be dynamically driven by it. The Indian lawmakers probably saved the day for India.

When the world was having a turmoil, 50-60% of our GDP was finding ways to be spent since the only thing stopping it was the archaic Law of India. If it would have been the other way around, Mr. Babu could have shown a stock purchase, inflated his profits therby making it legitimate and then, on the books, bought the house for an x amount registered in the banks. Bank also knows that Mr. Babu's home costs a lot more than he has shown in papers and in case of a scrutiny, the same can be highlighted.

The transparency would have made the market hands on thereby making the fall more steep. In India, housing price is a localized and customized phenomenon. This saves the day when everything is falling down, because the actual cost is always higher than that in the books. So, all in all, black money becomes a savior when macro-economic situation is not looking fine. And that would not have been possible without the old and beautiful Indian law.

The Sacrificial Generation

In the history of fame and corporation, the foundations of an idea that has revolutionized the dynamics of livelihood has not been given but implemented by a sacrificial generation. It was the generation which had no time to listen to daily chores or live an ordinary life because they were born to give the world, what I call, pumps of a nation. These pumps gave birth to revolutions our nation had never seen before like telecom revolution started by Bharti-Mittal or the power revolution which we will all see in 5 years or soon.

Obviously, they sacrifised a lot. It is said that the idea of insurance was born in a slum where these people hated the whole idea as such but look what it turned out to be. What were they losing? It was nothing except a ordinary life. It is one to know the objective and then sacrifice, a privelege which a socialist setup could never lend, and it is the other to be driven by an idea like you are pushed in Mumbai locals. The choice obviously lies with us.

For, the likes of magnates we see today (Ambanis, Birlas, etc) are not the chosen ones, but they are the lucky administrators who's one sacrificial generation had laid the seeds of implementing many a ideas that can push all the undecisive ones along. This one generation can be called as a mutation in the history of economic evolution. You might be one of these X-men, all that matters is one decision you will never regret taking, whether you wanna push the world or get pulled. Because once on deathbed, like an old warrior, you might wish a death in blood than in your piss.

Get Paid For Being Pregnant

The Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana seems a boost to our population numbers. Every pregnant woman will get a sum of Rs. 4000 over a period of six months. All street vendors would be covered under this. There is no doubt that the maternal aide program thus created will help many but will prove as a headache to human resource deptt.

This seems to be benifitting nearly 18.6 lacs women and would soon turn out be a huge business in places that are poverty stricken. The places where you see threatening eyes when you click your dear friend near a picturesque. It is sad to see places like these and it definitely reminds you of the high Ginni coefficient.

But still the sight of small young girls going to schools is refreshening. But guess what the ministry has given a hidden incentive to only those families having strength of five. Though we need to improve our infant mortality rates and low birth weights, but this is a solution with some externalities that seem far more harmful and I can envisage a viscious circle ahead.

TOSS

That was the first day when I felt that I had been listening to all the crap in the classrooms till yet. It was not about the class, the quality of teaching or the resources. It was the teacher, the most important person in the life of a student. He's our Project Director (PD) and he's got it all. The feeling was the elation that a child experiences when a grandfather/mother recites a story to a kid.

The lecture was a sheer technical story; the experience was pouring out of PD as if he had been immersed in the process of building the largest machines on the planet. The reverse engineering was being done through the very basic science which even a tenth class kid knows. That's when it hit me like a bullet that when we all had been studying for hours no one taught us how to think which is the underlying skill for understanding systematically. Just imagine if our PD would teach a bunch of third class kids for an hour on Sundays. He can produce many PDs like him and our country has no dearth of such people who just fade away from the face of earth by devoting their lives to the only process which they enjoy.

That's where TOSS comes in. These people are eager to contribute and would love to Teach On Saturdays & Sundays. A huge responsibility of educating the young and making them 'really educated' rests on on all the experienced 'corporate teachers'. If we make the point bigger, it might be a Teach Revolution.