NOT a GD/PI experience – Part II

This post and the next (Part III) are unlike the other posts here – they are as serious and grave as an undertaker. And I certainly am not referring to the WWE guy who puts other grown men’s heads between his thighs. My feelings toward these two posts are very similar to my feelings toward the WWE – mild dislike with a healthy dose of “What is the point of it, really?“

Coaching: I did not go for any coaching at any stage for the IIMA/IIMC admits. This fact made me pretty nervous in the run up to CAT and the interviews. The last time I went for coaching, I spent the weekends of XI and XII at one of the best coaching classes in Mumbai, attempting to crack JEE. I eventually ended up with 3k in screening and a 6k-ish rank in Mains. I did pretty badly, in a nutshell. I honestly did not feel like that coaching was any form of value-add 6 years ago, and during CAT/interviews, I was determined to go it alone.

The only reason I put this here is for the record. When I was slogging on my own for the interviews, I rarely came across anyone who said “I didn’t go for coaching at any stage, didn’t order in any standardized reading material and still got an admit“. Reading something along these lines would have been pretty helpful for my morale, and that is the reason I put this up here. However, I met a fair number of people at the interviews, who had come there without any coaching, and have A/C admits. I am sure there is a sizeable number, but people just don’t bother putting it up.

CAT: I consider the CAT a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I already had 2 degrees, so I wasn’t too serious about it. However, it was an examination I was attempting, and I intended to do justice to it. Most people already have a pretty good “speed-accuracy ratio” going for them during AIEEE/JEE, and it takes about a week of CAT-slogging to get rid of 4-engineering-years worth of rust. That was precisely what I did before the CAT. One week of slogging to get all the rust out of my system, and about another week to cover the syllabus. I eventually got a 99.68 percentile. However, it is entirely possible that I fluked a good score and like I read on forums, 8 months of prep and a hundred mocks are required to score well. I really have no idea. Coaching classes seem to send so many people to good MBA places, so I believe it may have been a huge value-add for them. I consider CAT to be a huge pain in the ass, and have no idea what works. Anything I have to say about it is probably not going to help anyone.

Calls: When the scores came out, along with interview calls from only A and C, I was a bit surprised. I assumed 88% and 91% in X and XII in CBSE, along with a cgpa of 8.45 in IIIT-H, as well as a dual degree would get me more calls. It didn’t. Once you have calls from A, B or C, a level of arrogance sets in, and you start looking at the rest of the calls as “practice sessions“. I was worried that I didn’t have any “practice sessions“. I am really embarrassed about this viewpoint and was an arrogant b*stard at the time, but this is ground reality. I mention it however, with a sense of shame, as dealing with this feeling is critical in doing well – you begin to feel a sense of being better than you really are, and think “If I did so well with so little prep for CAT, I will do similarly well in the interviews.“

That is downright unacceptable, and for the next couple of days, it was hard work keeping my feet on the ground. Complacency began to set in. I was basically walking around looking really smug – think Robert Downey Jr in Iron Man 2, only less good-looking. I had a month and a half for my interviews, and wasted about the first week doing absolutely nothing. Finally, reality caught up with me – I had just two shots, against the best in the country, with no coaching, and had to make each one of the interviews count.

TBC… Part III in a few days time.

P.S.: Hover over links.