Flashback - The Preparation

Woohoo! The most difficult part was done... filling out the application form! (In retrospect, I seem to easily think that what I just finished was the most difficult part. I'm a sucker for milestones! ) Now "all I had to do" was prepare. So I hopped and skipped along into Landmark, got one book for GRE (Kaplan) and one for CAT (a TMH book). (Here's a funny story, I was thinking of also giving the GRE so I could really really decide between doing an MS or an MBA. Ha ha, no? Such an idiot.) With these books tucked under my arm, I swipe my credit card (swish, money that is not mine used by me. The wonders of Mastercard and Visa. And Amex.) to probably make the ONLY futures investment that I followed up on and which paid out BIG for me.

As I was bound to do, the first two weeks I lolled about, reading up how to prepare for CAT, the numerous success stories and the innumerable failures. I told my office that I was going on vacation, and then I put my phone off. I plugged out the internet cable. I stopped short of yanking out my motherboard. And then, as an afterthought, plugged the internet cable back in, and promised not to go to orkut and facebook. Pbbffftt! Yea, like that happened!

The two weeks before CAT was intense. It's very easy to think "Oh, quant and grammar. Easy stuff." WOAH! The TMH book had one "orientation test". Apparently it could say how ready I am, and how much more I needed to prepare. Took the test, and checked the scores. I was shocked at the type of results, apparently I'd get a 50 percentile. Goosebumps here and there, I started checking each answer. The quant appeared to be right reasoning, the verbal was very suspect, very very suspect. But still, the book is always right they say, so I went through the theory. The one good thing this book had... was tips.

Apparently, it's very important to not get into an ego war with the question. The paper-setters have really enjoyed their task. The questions look deceivingly simple, especially in quant. You start it and then you begin wrestling with it. It's a big no-no to keep wrestling. 30 seconds into the question and u know whether you can do it. If you can't, LEAVE it. If you can, another 30 seconds to solve. If you cant finish it, LEAVE it. There are a LOT more questions waiting to be solved. In DI, you look at the sub-questions... if they are something you're familiar with, attempt it.. if not, LEAVE it. The same logic applies: if you're reasonably sure you can do it, then do it, else leave it. Base your action on periodic feedback "Does it look like the time remaining FOR THIS QUESTION is worth continuing to solve it".

Verbal, the book suggested a different approach. It said "Use ONLY 5 minutes to read and comprehend the passage". Then answer. So if the passage looked too long, I left it. I came back to it, if I had time in the section. It took a little practice to get over ego-wars for this one. I mean, its just a few words, you can read the rest of it... yeah, right! So these were the basic guidelines. Personally, I thought the book sucked at Verbal. Maybe I'm not willing to accept my English is bad. But it sure came out a winner, when it came to dishing out punishment. It says in the introduction, that these papers are set along the lines of the old CAT system, 270 questions in 180 minutes (or sometihng like that). IF YOU can crack this or score reasonably well, then you MIGHT get a call from one of the IIMs.

My target was 97 percentile(Apparently, you need atleast 95 to be even remotely considered for the PGSEM course. 97 seemed safe). A call from atleast one IIM means I would have gotten around 98%, that seemed like a good thing. So I figured, yes, now I've read the theory, solved some sample questions. Let's kick some paper-ass! Shudder. Oh, the memories... the horror.

Another priceless tip that the book passes on, is to write the mock CAT (and the previous year question papers) every day AT THE TIME of the actual paper. Apparently, this helps your mind orient and prepare itself for "flogging-time", keeps it ready.. alert! This really helped. I'm sure just thinking "I am in the CAT hall, I am in the CAT hall", getting goosepimples and then writing the paper helped big time. With absolutely no distractions, I wrote three or four mock CATs, got reasonable average scores (put me in the 80 percentile). And then there was just a week left for CAT.

So I spent the first two days just checking up on the basics again, watched some TV too. The next three days I wrote the actual CAT papers of 2005, 2006 and 2007. 2005 and 2007 put me in the 98% percentile, 2006 put me in the 89% percentile. It sucks when you know that your scores will not be very consistent. You get scared all the more. But in my opinion, scared is good. The last day of preparation, I looked over a few fundas, and basically chilled out a bit. Then in the evening, it suddenly hit me that I was going to write the actual test the next day. So panic set in, and I rushed through a couple of RCs and slept at 10 PM. Sleep - very important before an exam. VERY.