Hitchhiker’s Guide to cracking the WIMWI — Section I
Welcome to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to cracking the WIMWI, a comprehensive cookbook meant for MBA aspirants in India. In this guide, I share the story of my MBA preparation experience in detail and summarise the learnings I received in the form of concise tips that will help you crack the B-School of your dreams, the way I did!
The iPhone kept on my desk chimed as I pushed the last piece of code for the day onto the git repo.
*Whatsapp Notification from Shreyas*
It chimed half a dozen more times and I saw an influx of new messages in the notification tray. I opened the chat window and found pictures of a myriad of quirky objects Shreyas came across in the shops around Amsterdam, followed by a text, “Look here Gupta, these could come in real handy for you :P”. I have to admit those were some seriously bizarre kinds of stuff you don’t come across in India very often. He shared some more snaps from his Euro trip, which included some spectacular stills from Iceland and a photo of a Tesla, captioned, “My ride for the night!”. Indeed, my dorky dear roommate from college was making the best out of his Foreign Exchange program at IIM Bangalore.
Those pictures had me intrigued for a short period but eventually aggravated the blues I was having that day. It was just yesterday that I returned from a Goa trip with Sharanya for her birthday. I was supposed to be brimming with boisterous energy but on the contrary, I was pumping with discontent. I had become too comfy with my almost surreal, clear sailing Bangalore life. I had an easy-going Tech job at a great company(which is India’s first unicorn by the way) that cut me a decent paycheck at the end of every month. My weekends were spent with either my girlfriend or my gang, which I called the ‘Wolfpack’, a truly awesome bunch of unique personas. More often than not, I found myself outdoors and it would be an understatement if I said I partied only on the weekends.
Indeed, things were bliss in Bangalore but it was then that I began soul searching. Three of my greatest buddies from college, who had been in Bangalore with me, had left for their higher studies already. Shreyas was enjoying Europe all set for the high-end Consulting role he bagged in IIM Bangalore. Tejas was suffering from success on becoming a WIMWIAN that very year, followed by Sumant who recently departed for pursuing a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
I asked myself, “Is this it? Is this the career path I plan to tread on? Is this the end of my aspirations?”. When I imagined myself coding through the day some 7 years down the line, I felt an ache! This was not who I wanted to be. I needed to go higher and I needed to go swiftly as I had already hit the 2-year mark of my work experience. So it was decided that night. I had to break out from this cushy life and begin walking on embers. I was going for an MBA.
Hence, the first tip in this guide, which is actually applicable to anyone who wishes to move higher up in life is:
Tip #1 — Escape the Comfort Zone.
When you talk about MBA in India, the very next word that comes to mind, which is also the most dreaded word in the dictionary of an MBA aspirant, is ‘CAT’. Sounds cute, might reveal its claws later.
Hence, the first thing I did the next morning before leaving for work was purchased the IMS SimCAT mock test series. The chrome browser in my MacBook recorded numerous quora pages and youtube videos around CAT preparation that day. The intense research produced the following results:
1) The syllabus of CAT is confined to the X standard mathematics,
2) CAT coaching has become a flourishing business in India, and
3) The nominal prep duration for CAT varies between 4 to 6 months.
Consequently, I began reconciling the facts and augmenting them to my current scenario. I had already cracked IIT-JEE, one of the toughest competitive examinations in the world. Getting coached for a petty CAT exam was beyond my pride. So far so good, but the third data point was where the shoe pinched. September was about to conclude, and I barely had 2 months to face the feline.
I was snapped out of my musing upon hearing the sound of an office chair rolling towards me and a half-smiling face appeared on my nigh side.
“Yo bitch! The manager’s out already. Time to roll”, hissed Samuarth and giggled in his usual dramatic style.
So, we took off for his place on my scooty and ordered Rajma Chawal from the Bowl Company, which was Samuarth’s favourite.
“I’m planning to start the CAT prep now. But the thing is, I’m already late for the party. CAT is barely two months away, and I haven’t even solved a single question as of today. It seems like I’m about to fight a lost battle.”
“Hmm. Okay, look bro. I’m no CAT saint but I do know this. A real loser accepts defeat even before taking up arms. As far as I know you, you’re anything but a loser. If you try wholeheartedly, even if you do not succeed, you’ll receive valuable learnings which would help you stand victorious the next time. You have nothing to lose. So leave the negative thoughts behind, and just go for it.”
Samuarth’s crisp pep talk had sealed the deal. I was all set to start with the prep.
In addition to wrapping my head around the CAT topics and managing time along with a full-time job, I had to conquer my inner demon that constantly craved the inertia of the carefree Bangalore life it was accustomed to. Painfully, I placed it on a short leash and began avoiding parties and outings from then on. Heck, I even had to go on a break with Sharanya.
This brings me to the second tip of this guide, one of paramount importance:
Tip #2 — Steer clear of distractions and negative thoughts. Prepare wholeheartedly and stay motivated.
The next couple of weeks of my prep were mostly focused on getting familiarised with the buffet spread of sample questions span across the three sections of CAT. I will deep-dive into each section at a later stage of this guide.
Approaching the mid of October, I began fast-tracking the prep by attempting the full-length CAT mock tests. I would purposely fend off any critical task at work and try to get back home by 6:30 PM, after which I would attempt a mock test. An acute dearth of time had pushed me to attempt a mock every day without fail, which had become mentally taxing. I looked forward to streaming the Harry Potter movies at night for recreation purposes after being tortured straight for 3 hours every day.
I focused all my firepower on practicing as much as I could before the exam and paid little attention to performing the post-mortem analysis of the mocks. For a General-Engineering-Male candidate(ironically called ‘GEM’) like me, anything below a 99 percentile in CAT was a farce. As per the data I had collected from various sources, a consistent score hanging around a 95 percentile in the mocks would roughly translate to a 99 in the real CAT(take it with a pinch of salt). My performance curve had plateaued at an 80 in the mocks. I had pretty low accuracy in the verbal section. The logical reasoning section was sheer luck, and I looked like a losing tortoise against the hare-like timer that failed to nap, in the quantitative section.
Equipped with an unbolted hope hammered into my conscience by the last-minute morale boosters, I found myself 40kms away from home, waiting outside the CAT examination center along with a hundred other faces. Some of them looked nervous, pacing up and down or fidgeting a pen between their fingers. Some appeared pretty chilled out. They either were super confident about nailing the CAT or were mentally prepared for the next year. The aura of the place brought back bittersweet memories of the day I appeared for JEE-Advanced, six years ago.
After a long painful wait, the examination for CAT 2019 commenced. The first section on Verbal and Reading Comprehension took my head for a spin. The passages seemed awfully long and perplexing, worse than the ones I had practiced during the mock tests. That first hour of the test had turned me into a sweaty piece of shit. The next section was Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning, which seemed better in its level of difficulty as compared to the Verbal section. Somehow, I was able to attempt 4 sets, which seems satisfactory at that moment. The final section was the Quantitative Aptitude, the one I was the most apprehensive about. The questions, to my surprise, were doable and I went ahead solving them in sequential order. But eventually, the hare had bested the tortoise in the race against time and I fell short of attempts.
The examination ended. As I was leaving the examination hall, there was just one thing on my mind, “I sure as hell, do not wish to appear for this exam ever again in my life!”.
2019 came to an end and I flew back home to Prayagraj for the new year’s vacation. I logged in to the IIMCAT portal and downloaded the results.
Overall Percentile: 93.64
Tip #3 — Start the CAT preparation on time and do not shy away from getting coached.
I was shattered seeing the outcome of my pathetic performance in CAT, but right then a new email popped up in my inbox that revived the spirits of my deceased hopes.
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