About the Author:
Varun Kapoor (IIM Shillong PGP Batch 2020-22)
MA: What inspired you to prepare for CAT/MBA? Please give a small background of your education and career?
Varun: I completed my graduation from Banaras Hindu University in B.com(Hons) in finance in 2020 and have joined IIM Shillong for my MBA. I developed an interest in management in my first year of college and being a fresher I thought upskilling now would be better than later and for that, I believed MBA would be the best for me. I believed an MBA not only develops a person for a professional aspect but also life. Therefore I started my CAT 19 preparation while I was in my second year of college.
MA: How did you begin the preparation, did you have a strategy or plan for the upcoming months before the D-Day?
Varun: I started preparation for CAT 19 while I was in the second year of my college and joined IMS Varanasi to get help in the preparation. Though I had joined the coaching one and a half year before I was not serious for the CAT exam as I was confident for my DILR and QA sections until I gave my first mock and realized that CAT is not only about scoring good marks but also having competence in all the three sections as all the colleges have sectional cutoff too, therefore I changed my strategy accordingly to first attempt the minimum number of questions which I am confident so that I can clear the sectional cutoffs and then go for attempting more for maximization of the score.
MA: Which were your strongest and weakest areas? Did you focus on bettering your strong areas or worked to improve your weaker ones?
Varun: My strongest areas were QA and DILR and the weakest being VA. At first, I focused on QA and DILR as I liked Maths and solving logical problems and thought of scoring maximum marks in these sections to boost my overall score but after giving my first mock I realized that CAT requires competence in all the sections as all the premium institutes have sectional cutoff for admission. So I changed my strategy for the D-day by first solving those questions in each section which I was confident to avoid the problem of sectional cutoff and then attempt more for boosting the total score.
As I was not good at Verbal ability I decided to read a lot on daily basis and started solving a particular number of reading comprehensive sets daily and analyzed that properly by watching the videos of every answer to know what went wrong. One major strategy which I used to solve the Verbal Ability section was the use of elimination technique. Instead of jumping on the right answer I used the elimination method and rejected all the answers until I got the right one and this approach helped me to increase my score in the Verbal Ability section eventually.
MA: Can you share some of your interview experiences at B-Schools?
Varun: I gave 5-6 interviews and all the interview questions can be structured under three heads ie. Academic, HR, and GK questions. As I was a fresher I was tested on my academic knowledge and was grilled on the subjects I had in college. After that, I was asked questions like Why Mba and not M.com or like what is my one Universal Selling Proposition which makes me different from others. At last, were the GK questions to check the mental presence and this type of question was asked in all my interviews like 'When was congress formed', 'Who was the first president of congress','In how many states congress currently have government'.One thing which I want to advice is to be thoroughly prepared with what you are going to say about yourself in the introduction as many questions will be asked on it as well as it is okay if you miss a particular question as it is not possible for every person to answer every question asked in an interview and interviewers to believe that therefore be calm, have a smile, even though you are not able to answer a particular question just try your best and everything will happen in your favor.
MA: Any tips for the CAT 2020 aspirants?
Varun: CAT is a long journey as a person starts his preparation way before the exam and then prepares for an interview and finally gets results in the month of April-May, so one of the most important qualities to bell the CAT is to be optimistic. There will be times when you will score low in mocks and feel low but moving forward and trusting the process that everything will happen in time is very important. Try to be motivated as much as you can as that will help you sail through the high tide of CAT.
The second thing is to take mocks to improve and not to test your knowledge. For me, the CAT journey was a roller coaster ride wherein there was a time when I broke down seeing my mocks score and there were times I just loved taking mocks but one thing was constant throughout my CAT Journey was that I watched various motivational videos of Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps to see how they faced problems in life and tackled it. And at last, I would say that It is not important to win every battle, it's important to win the war and you will win, just trust the process and trust yourself.
All the best to all the aspirants, stay positive, everything will fall in line.
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