How to prepare for CAT?
Everyone agrees that there is no clear cut formula of getting through CAT and none but you have to decide your strategy to crack the test.
Believe me, the test is one of the simplest test you can get and there is no rocket-science that goes into it. It just checks an individual on how well he/she can adapt to the new pattern and how good a strategy one can design. Obviously, intelligence does help.
Since I was helping one of my friend to devise his strategy for the test, I thought it would be a good idea to put it over here so that many more can benefit from that.
Some of the tips for cracking CAT:
1. Dont worry at all. The more you worry, the lesser chances you have of getting through. This may not sound good to many but this is true and you will learn it through experience. If you look at it closely, it is just about keeping your cool and nothing else. Sounds simple but practically very difficult. Only practice can help.
2. Identify your strong areas.
3. Identify your weak areas.
4. Analyse your potential. Can you or Can’t you? If you are undecided then the answer is still positive but if you take a while longer than this, the answer might turn negative.
5. Get acquainted to all the types of questions and practise.
6. Do not Overdo.
7. Either make a full-hearted attempt or dont make an effort at all. Half-hearted attempt never pays.
8. Strengthen your strongest area and cover up for weakest area(by strengthening).
9. NEVER MAKE A STRATEGY THAT IS DEPENDENT ON TEST PATTERN. Go Open-minded for the test and devise a strategy there itself.
10. Most Important, Develop a clear understanding of all the concepts. To re-iterate, CAT is no rocket-science test, it is a simple aptitude based test.
My Strategy
Based on my understanding/experience and a bit of intelligence(a bit is all I have), I had developed a strategy which did work for me and might work for you as well. I advise you not to follow it religiously and make appropriate changes to adapt it to your style of working.
First of all you need to answer a few basic questions:
1. Do you know your strong points?
2. Do you know your weak points?
3. Do you know what specifically is wrong with your weak points?
4. Do you have any idea of how you can improve upon that?
5. Do you know how much you can score on a bad day?
6. How long would it take you to clear the 3 sectionals?
7. Who are you competing against? (Others/self/exam paper/person who has set the paper)
Make sure all of the above questions are answered before you make your strategy for the test.
It is important to understand that we are competing against humans and each human has some positives and some negatives. Finally what matters to us is the mean/average of it all.
Considering the sample space to have all average people,
Analyse as how much time would you need to score same number of marks that an average person would score in 50 minutes for each section?(Test time assumed 150 minutes)
This is nothing but a way to set your targets at the cut-off marks for each section.
Consider this example:
Now suppose DI and QA are my strong points and VA is the weaker section.
My analysis indicates that I need 25 min for DI, 30 mins for QA and 75mins for VA to score equivalent to other’s score considering 50 min in each section.
So that would necessarily mean that I clear cut-offs in 25+30+75=130 mins and that leaves me with 20 extra minutes to maximise my score.
Of these 20 extra minutes, I keep 5-7 min as my buffer time for unforeseen happenings/ unanticipated conditions, which would otherwise be spent in weaker section while the rest 13-15 mins is the differentiating factor to me and it is highly suggested that I capitalise it by spending it in my strongest/’most scoring’ section.
Make sure that you dont have to flip amongst the sections very often. Make sure that you don’t have to come back to any section. At max, take up your weakest/strongest section twice and manage your time properly that you do not overshoot time in any section.
One important observation here: It does not matter much whether the test is a high scoring test or low-scoring as what you are comparing with, is other individual’s score in 50 mins. 20 marks in 50 mins or 45marks in 50 mins don’t make a difference, you need same xyz mins in both the cases.
“How do I decide on how much time to give to which section?”
Simple. As per the definition, it must be the time when you are able to score equivalent to other’s score considering 50min for the section. Practically, there is an easier way out. Analyse your performance in AIMCAT/SIMCAT/…and record time that you need to clear the sectional cut-off. You have enough AIMCATs to experiment with this.
I think this post should be of atleast some use to people preparing for CAT.
Suggestions/Alternate strategies/Thank you notes/@#$%^& notes are most welcome.
Disclaimer: I re-iterate, the strategies could work out differently for different people and do not fall in the trap of adopting it as it is. It worked out for me but whether it suits you or not, is totally your call.
Consultancy- The Rosy picture
Just a few days back..ppl from a leading consuting co.(name removed for certain reasons) were there on the campus for an informal talk with the students and they painted a very beautiful picture…No, not on canvas, not on the white or the green boards but on everyone’s mind.
They made everyone feel that traveling is real fun, seeing your ideas being implemented is real fun. When airport staff know you by name and when they confirm your seats without checking your tickets..This is real fun.
You get to get a lot of experience in a lot of areas(both verticals and horizontals) within a very short span of time (often referred to as Dog’s Life), which essentially creates a lot more options(Exit strategies) for you. A person may get into a PE firm, start his entrepreneurial stint or may continue to retire as a Partner.
You get to visit a lot of places since traveling is just another part of the job.
You work with CXOs and help them find out and remove their business problems and what gives immense pleasure is to see your ideas being implemented. Lets say, You suggested some particular design for some store to increase the revenues and when you visit the store next time you find it there..wow!! sounds great. Indeed it is.
Sometimes you not only suggest but also get a chance to help the organisation implement it.
Wow all this sounds so great but somehow I cant help recalling words from Mahesh Murthy: “If consultants had any solutions, they would have been in the business(as employer not employee)”
In fact, I even considered posing the question during the ‘informal talk’ but then decided not to. to avoid a fine penalty if somehow they took it otherwise [:P].
~No Objections Meant but if I tell you time by looking your watch and still get paid for it, am I a Consultant?
Mahesh Murthy $ Prahlad Kakkar: They said it all !!! (Repost)
REPOST: Since Internet Explorer fails to show the earlier post properly, the post has been reposted here without any formatting.
Firefox users: Read here
So while I was wondering of ‘Why I am doing MBA?’, Mahesh Murthy & Prahlad Kakkar happen to come to the campus to deliver talks in Ascent’07, an e-cell initiative.
Mahesh Murthy:
His talk was primarily focused on why should one go for his own venture and how to go about it? Primarily an interactive session, he talked about his journey in brief and emphasized mainly on the minimal barriers to entrepreneurship and focused the discussion to promote entrepreneurship amongst students.
On Advertising
Against the widely accepted notion of advertising as a tool to benefit a business, Mahesh was straight forward in saying that all the expenses on advertisements are actually a waste of money and only companies who cannot innovate need to spend on the advertisement. His basic line of reasoning was that if the product can be differentiated from a competitors product, no expense on advertisement is required except to facilitate “Word of mouth publicity”.
As for instance, he took the example of Pepsi and Coke(the two companies with max advertisement cost), he said that since these companies cannot innovate much as far as user experience etc. is concerned, they have no option left but to spend on advertisements.
On Opportunity Cost
What is the one biggest factor stopping people from becoming entrepreneurs? It is the thought when they start calculating the opportunity cost of their starting their own venture and look at the short term certain losses and long term highly uncertain(certain to the condition of survival but that is a big ‘if’) benefits.
On “The lesser money you have to start with, the more successful you will be”
This kind of follows from the previous point of opportunity cost plus the “greater dedication” due to lesser security. Take an example of successful businessmen and you’ll find a very surprising pattern there. A large number of Generation 1 businessmen had very little money to start off with plus they had almost non-existent backup plan(Plan-B as what learned people do suggest). Not very difficult to get an example with Dhirubhai Ambani belonging to the same league. Is it a mere coincidence? Probably not.
With no backup plan comes insecurity, that brings along a greater dedication and devotion to the venture. With no backup plan and low starting amount, the feeling of “not much to lose” takes a high(Low opportunity cost)
so Mahesh was very clear while he said, “If you plan to start a venture, make sure you don’t have a Plan-B. There is no need to feel secure while making a decision. Let every decision be “the” decision of your life.
On Entry Strategy
“I have an idea worth so-and-so but how do i enter the market?”: This statement is one of the most useless statement under the sun.
Note that your idea is worth nothing. You need an idea to start but it is the implementation that is worth it.
On Working Years & The Expected Returns in Long Term
“You enter the industry as an employee, make handsome amount in initial years, good amounts in later years. But if you enter the industry as an employer, you make pennies during initial years, good amount afterwards and great amounts then afterwards.”
(Note: Great=Good* 10 to even Good*100 or even more)
You people are all 20 odds and you have around 50 years of work-life remaining.
Take your call!!!
On Unsuccessful Ventures
So is entrepreneurship an all sweet sweet story? definitely not.
out of every 100 ventures, 4 are successful. of these 4, only 2 make newspaper headlines. So the sweet part is just 2% of the story. “But also note that no entrepreneur die of unemployment”
On Need of a Team
One of the biggest challenge in starting your own venture is that you tend to feel lonely since you are the only one involved in this work. Plus if you succeed, it is all fine but if you fail, you gonna die alone!!!
So it is generally suggested to startup a venture in team. This, apart from the above two factors, also bring in the fact that the team may bring in more capital and sharing of ideas.
On Uselessness of VCs and Consultants
“Venture Capitalists and Consultants are most useless professions.” Now this was totally unexpected. You wont expect such a statement from a venture capitalist but Mahesh meant it all when he said that. He explained, One, you don’t need a lot of money to start a new venture, two, even if you don’t have it, try and get it from the people you know like your family, your friends, other acquaintances. Why? Simple, as if you take the money from people you know you tend to feel a liability and along with that comes tendency to make it ASAP and return it back. Having taken any external amount, the liability reduces with the fact that the fear of failure if gone.
Similarly consultants are also useless. “They do not know anything. They do not have any solutions. If they had, they would have been in the business. They just get the solutions from one company and tell it to others, most of the times just fitting a solution which does not.”
On Smaller and Larger Players
Who do you fear more? smaller players or the larger players?
If your answer is larger players, then I am sorry to say but you have not understood the game at all.
The larger players are least to be bothered about as most of the times they are complacent and rest of the times bureaucratic and inefficient. But on the other hand, smaller players are striving hard either to survive or to get into the league of bigger players. In either case, they pose a major threat as they strive to grow.
On the Paradox “I will work in an i-bank for 3-4 years(make money) and quit to start my own venture”
Laugh out loud when someone echo the above statement to you again.
It is really very simple. You enter a profession and you get stuck over there, not for one but for many reasons. One, the “opportunity cost” rises exponentially with passing time. Two, you get out of touch of the current happenings and trends in the sector. Three, you hold a position of respect in your earlier profession. …..
On Involving Employees into Ownership
I believe most of the people realize its importance and Mahesh just echoed the same.
Prahlad Kakkar:
The Ad-man with the hat was no different today. His talk was supposed to be a story of his life as an entrepreneur, although most of the time he talked about cons of doing an MBA and focused on following the dream/passion/hobbies and supported it all with his own example citing reasons for him venturing into advertisements, scuba diving, cigar and restaurant business. Although i would say some of his reasons appeared to be out of place and not the actual reasons, but if for the time being and with not much background knowledge, let us assume he said it right, then it was nothing but chasing his hobbies, with no priority at all to money.
On Rational v/s Instinct and its Effects on Decision-Making:
You enter a B-School and you are told from day-1 that the world is rational. Assume rational behaviour says eco. Prof. Probability prof. tells you how to make calculations to get to a rational decision. Marketing Prof. assumes a rational market.
But this is what differentiates a manager from a creative person.
If you start evaluating your instinctive idea on rational scale, more are the chances that you end up scraping off the idea. The instinctive idea is your creative self but the rational idea likes a more treadmill task and hence the conflict is bound to happen.
On Various Advertisements
Most of the advertisements that are being created today are from MBAs and hence are more of routine ads. Most of the advertisements companies have a well defined advertisement template which defines when product name should appear and for how long, when credits should appear, what are the different techniques,… and the advertisement making gets reduced to the task of fitting in different pieces together.
He personally was very upset with the state of advertisement industry these days.
Nonetheless he showed certain great ads to make us realize what he actually meant.
On Following the Hobbies/ Importance of assion
This is something he focused really a lot on. In fact, he stressed a lot on the fact that all his ventures are actually his hobbies. Take for an example, Cigar, he said he liked it a lot and hence thought of consuming it for free so setup his own company. Scuba diving, it was very expensive and he liked it so he started his own training school to do it for free.
Though I was not very convinced with these last set of arguments but still, with no data to counter it, I would rather accept it and believe that all these ventures are actually his hobbies. Anyways, it gives me a reason to follow my dreams as well.
So Now after these sessions, the situation has gone worse. Now it is not “Why am I doing MBA?” rather it gets to “Why does anyone do MBA?”, which Mahesh partly answered in his talk, “If everyone is an employer, where do we find the employee?”
Mahesh Murthy $ Prahlad Kakkar: They said it all !!!
IE Users..Read here
So while I was wondering of ‘Why I am doing MBA?’, Mahesh Murthy & Prahlad Kakkar happen to come to the campus to deliver talks in Ascent’07, an e-cell initiative.
Mahesh Murthy:
His talk was primarily focused on why should one go for his own venture and how to go about it? Primarily an interactive session, he talked about his journey in brief and emphasized mainly on the minimal barriers to entrepreneurship and focused the discussion to promote entrepreneurship amongst students.
On Advertising
Against the widely accepted notion of advertising as a tool to benefit a business, Mahesh was straight forward in saying that all the expenses on advertisements are actually a waste of money and only companies who cannot innovate need to spend on the advertisement. His basic line of reasoning was that if the product can be differentiated from a competitors product, no expense on advertisement is required except to facilitate “Word of mouth publicity”.
As for instance, he took the example of Pepsi and Coke(the two companies with max advertisement cost), he said that since these companies cannot innovate much as far as user experience etc. is concerned, they have no option left but to spend on advertisements.
On Opportunity Cost
What is the one biggest factor stopping people from becoming entrepreneurs? It is the thought when they start calculating the opportunity cost of their starting their own venture and look at the short term certain losses and long term highly uncertain(certain to the condition of survival but that is a big ‘if’) benefits.
On “The lesser money you have to start with, the more successful you will be”
This kind of follows from the previous point of opportunity cost plus the “greater dedication” due to lesser security. Take an example of successful businessmen and you’ll find a very surprising pattern there. A large number of Generation 1 businessmen had very little money to start off with plus they had almost non-existent backup plan(Plan-B as what learned people do suggest). Not very difficult to get an example with Dhirubhai Ambani belonging to the same league. Is it a mere coincidence? Probably not.
With no backup plan comes insecurity, that brings along a greater dedication and devotion to the venture. With no backup plan and low starting amount, the feeling of “not much to lose” takes a high(Low opportunity cost)
so Mahesh was very clear while he said, “If you plan to start a venture, make sure you don’t have a Plan-B. There is no need to feel secure while making a decision. Let every decision be “the” decision of your life.
On Entry Strategy
“I have an idea worth so-and-so but how do i enter the market?”: This statement is one of the most useless statement under the sun.
Note that your idea is worth nothing. You need an idea to start but it is the implementation that is worth it.
On Working Years & The Expected Returns in Long Term
“You enter the industry as an employee, make handsome amount in initial years, good amounts in later years. But if you enter the industry as an employer, you make pennies during initial years, good amount afterwards and great amounts then afterwards.”
(Note: Great=Good* 10 to even Good*100 or even more)
You people are all 20 odds and you have around 50 years of work-life remaining.
Take your call!!!
On Unsuccessful Ventures
So is entrepreneurship an all sweet sweet story? definitely not.
out of every 100 ventures, 4 are successful. of these 4, only 2 make newspaper headlines. So the sweet part is just 2% of the story. “But also note that no entrepreneur die of unemployment”
On Need of a Team
One of the biggest challenge in starting your own venture is that you tend to feel lonely since you are the only one involved in this work. Plus if you succeed, it is all fine but if you fail, you gonna die alone!!!
So it is generally suggested to startup a venture in team. This, apart from the above two factors, also bring in the fact that the team may bring in more capital and sharing of ideas.
On Uselessness of VCs and Consultants
“Venture Capitalists and Consultants are most useless professions.” Now this was totally unexpected. You wont expect such a statement from a venture capitalist but Mahesh meant it all when he said that. He explained, One, you don’t need a lot of money to start a new venture, two, even if you don’t have it, try and get it from the people you know like your family, your friends, other acquaintances. Why? Simple, as if you take the money from people you know you tend to feel a liability and along with that comes tendency to make it ASAP and return it back. Having taken any external amount, the liability reduces with the fact that the fear of failure if gone.
Similarly consultants are also useless. “They do not know anything. They do not have any solutions. If they had, they would have been in the business. They just get the solutions from one company and tell it to others, most of the times just fitting a solution which does not.”
On Smaller and Larger Players
Who do you fear more? smaller players or the larger players?
If your answer is larger players, then I am sorry to say but you have not understood the game at all.
The larger players are least to be bothered about as most of the times they are complacent and rest of the times bureaucratic and inefficient. But on the other hand, smaller players are striving hard either to survive or to get into the league of bigger players. In either case, they pose a major threat as they strive to grow.
On the Paradox “I will work in an i-bank for 3-4 years(make money) and quit to start my own venture”
Laugh out loud when someone echo the above statement to you again.
It is really very simple. You enter a profession and you get stuck over there, not for one but for many reasons. One, the “opportunity cost” rises exponentially with passing time. Two, you get out of touch of the current happenings and trends in the sector. Three, you hold a position of respect in your earlier profession. …..
On Involving Employees into Ownership
I believe most of the people realize its importance and Mahesh just echoed the same.
Prahlad Kakkar:(See also: TOI except the best ad part 
)
The Ad-man with the hat was no different today. His talk was supposed to be a story of his life as an entrepreneur, although most of the time he talked about cons of doing an MBA and focused on following the dream/passion/hobbies and supported it all with his own example citing reasons for him venturing into advertisements, scuba diving, cigar and restaurant business. Although i would say some of his reasons appeared to be out of place and not the actual reasons, but if for the time being and with not much background knowledge, let us assume he said it right, then it was nothing but chasing his hobbies, with no priority at all to money.
On Rational v/s Instinct and its Effects on Decision-Making:
You enter a B-School and you are told from day-1 that the world is rational. Assume rational behaviour says eco. Prof. Probability prof. tells you how to make calculations to get to a rational decision. Marketing Prof. assumes a rational market.
But this is what differentiates a manager from a creative person.
If you start evaluating your instinctive idea on rational scale, more are the chances that you end up scraping off the idea. The instinctive idea is your creative self but the rational idea likes a more treadmill task and hence the conflict is bound to happen.
On Various Advertisements
Most of the advertisements that are being created today are from MBAs and hence are more of routine ads. Most of the advertisements companies have a well defined advertisement template which defines when product name should appear and for how long, when credits should appear, what are the different techniques,… and the advertisement making gets reduced to the task of fitting in different pieces together.
He personally was very upset with the state of advertisement industry these days.
Nonetheless he showed certain great ads to make us realize what he actually meant.
On Following the Hobbies/ Importance of assion
This is something he focused really a lot on. In fact, he stressed a lot on the fact that all his ventures are actually his hobbies. Take for an example, Cigar, he said he liked it a lot and hence thought of consuming it for free so setup his own company. Scuba diving, it was very expensive and he liked it so he started his own training school to do it for free.
Though I was not very convinced with these last set of arguments but still, with no data to counter it, I would rather accept it and believe that all these ventures are actually his hobbies. Anyways, it gives me a reason to follow my dreams as well.
So Now after these sessions, the situation has gone worse. Now it is not “Why am I doing MBA?” rather it gets to “Why does anyone do MBA?”, which Mahesh partly answered in his talk, “If everyone is an employer, where do we find the employee?”
Entrepreneurship or the safe road??
So having already written about why and why not to join IIMs…I would like to take upon this topic in bit more detail.
We are often asked at various points in time a very basic question, which is also the basis of this post:
What is the difference between a LEADER and a MANAGER?
And often we answer this question, something like this: “A leader is a manager but a manger may not be a leader. A manager manages his team/resources while a leader has a vision and drives his team into that direction”.
Hmm..looks like they possess similar characteristics.
They are not!!!
It is not just a coincidence that none of the successful leaders have/had MBA degree rather it is because they did not have MBA degree that they went on to do different things.
The role of a leader is a sharp contrast to that of a manager… Leaders are risk-seekers while Managers are risk-averse… Leaders take risky decisions to maximize profits while Managers take conservative/safe decisions to minimize the losses…. Leader has passion for what he/she does while to manager it is a treadmill….Leaders are trend setters while Managers follow proven success routes..Managers use jargons as much as possible, Leaders hate it.
The flip side as we look upon as is:
Uncertainty of success of enterprise v/s an almost guaranteed handsome amount of money
Non-defined roles v/s Defined roles and tasks
Social pressures on entrepreneurs are bound to be larger for the uncertainty involved.(including issues like family support etc.)
So how does one go about deciding: Leader or Manager?
Simple answer: follow your instinct forget rationalism. You’ll get the right answer. 
Why / Why not go to IIMs??
Disclaimer: You may strictly disagree with me on any/all of these points but this is what I think. You are welcome to raise your concerns through comments/ by writing to me at abhi.taneja@gmail.com.
This question may look insane to people outside IIMs though not to many of those in the IIMs.
The grass looks really green from outside but we tend to forget, one learns marketing at B-schools.
Why??
- To get heavy paychecks/financial security.
- To learn to use jargons effectively.
- Repo in industry/society.
- To share a forum with exceptionally successful people.
- To meet/listen to/interact with highly successful/highly reputed people in the industry.
- To learn to show you are very busy, even when you waste 20 hours a day.
- To realize that money is not that important and there are better things to bother about in life.
- If you are traveling freak, you may like to do an MBA.
- If you already have your target set and MBA lies in the way to achieve that.(Forget financial aspects here)
- (To be completed)
Why not?
- The life ends at Microsoft Office.
- It kills your creativity.
- It kills your risk taking capabilities.
- Everything is relative. You learn to call a dummy life really interesting.
- Very high on individualism. Kills collectivism and team skills.
- A strict NO if you plan to be an entrepreneur. The paradox,”I will work in an i-bank for 3-4 years(make money) and quit to start my own venture” is 100% flawed. It only gets tougher to quit as time passes by and no one actually does.
- If you are satisfied with your current job, there is no point why you should be looking at MBA.
- If you are just looking for money, let me tell you their are better options out there.
- (To be completed)
Why am I doing an MBA?
The question largely remains unanswered.
Probably I dint know all this before making a decision to join.
Probably coz there is no easy exit strategy to it.
Probably I still fear taking a risk.
Probably the heavy paychecks still tend to attract me.
Why/ why not to join IIMC
I have had enough queries in the past few days and so here is the definitive list of reasons why you should/should not join IIM Calcutta.
1. This place will let you retain your individuality and treat you like an adult. You will not be treated to a deluge of tests and quizzes and readings. If you are someone who is comfortable in finding his own meaning of what an MBA is come here. Rigor here is defined by the sheer analytical depth and not by the number of hours you pore over your books. You will enjoy and find your own pace but the quantitative concepts even in Human Resource Management will leave you struggling with your analytics.
2. You will feel welcome and a part of a community the moment you enter the gates. This place will not intimidate you or make you to feel humble and insignificant. I have had dinners, lunches and innumerable coffees with some of my professors here. They treat students as equals and do not believe in putting you through a tough time for the sake of it. IIMC is not larger than life and will not make you believe you are. I did not “survive” my first year –I enjoyed it.
3. Most faculty members have been here 20 years or longer. They have the adoration of generations of IIMCians and have seen it all and done it all. We have many wjho have taught in Ivy league schools in the US. Our stats professor was a former director of the Indian Statistical Institute. In fact the reason IIMC does not have a waiting list is because there is an entire team of stats profs figuring out exactly how many final calls need to be given out for 300 students to join. They have incredibly managed to get it right almost every single time in the past so many years.
4. Finance, all that can be said has been said. If you aspire to be a banker, a market maker or a trader there is no place in India that prepares you better than IIMC. The sheer analytical content in every course, the advanced nature of the finance courses, the various unique positions/roles offered to IIMCians every year all point to this simple fact- If you want to do finance, you should be in IIMC. Every PGP-1 has done more in John C Hull’s “Options Futures and Derivatives” (the bible for IB markets) by the end of his summer placements than people will ever get to do in their entire MBAs elsewhere. I will not talk about the Eco/Fin faculty to avoid stating the blindingly obvious. You may disagree on IIMC’s supremacy on a million counts, but if you think finance- you think IIMC.
5. Placements. 225k 4 years ago, 250k now. The highest number of day zero offers (There is a little piece of news coming your way 
) The best lateral placements riding on the enormous alumni wave, Over a 100 laterals offers. There is a good reason why none of this has gone down even if the rankings have fallen. Placements are hard reality unlike PR and the Indian media. The placement reports are out there for everyone to see.
6. Sports/Extra currics/Culture- Read through some of my earlier posts. We have a performing dramatics cell which stages plays with budgets running in lacs absolutely professionally done. We have JBS BaroC-one of India’s oldest college bands and the lifeline of the IIMC community. We have a world class gym, grounds for almost every sport, and of course the surprisingly popular swimming pool. We have a life gentlemen and a bloody good one at that.
7. Student profiles- IIMC does not lay much emphasis on your past acads. There is a very popular interview with our Dean here in PG elaborating the same. What this means for you in very tangible terms is that the company shortlists during placements will not be a list of students ordered by their GPA. Year after year people enter the best of the companies purely on strength of their extra curriculars (Sports/Drams/BaroC/Intaglio). This is essentially a cultural point since inevitably alumni are involved in the short listing. If you do not have those stellar picture perfect academics but have spent your time cracking the scene outside, come here and rest assured you will have a blast and get a great career on your own terms. You do not have to become a mugging machine to ensure you have one of those dream offers. This is probably one of the most important points I would consider especially since this is where the top 3 IIMs differ the most and it is quite clearly a deal breaker.
This has been one of India’s best institutes for over 45 years now and the list of names that make up our alumni are quite clearly unmatched. No school in India can boast of a CEO of the scale of a Nooyi, a billionaire in Vikrant Bhargava or an all conqueror like Malli. Of course I am leaving out the CEO of CNBC India, our respected director and the founder of Rediff, the many many Mck,/BCG/ Bain/ATK partners. the Asia Pacific head of Deutsche Bank and the regular list of VPs, MDs and others across sectors including of course Professor Apte, the man behind IIM-B’s rise as a top Indian institute.
Ask the hard questions and the answer is obvious. If somebody asks you to join a school because everyone in the past has done so, he quite clearly lacks any other point to come up with. This post is a direct, clean list of my school and who would make a good fit there.
For the record- I write here in my own capacity and this post has nothing to do whatsoever with the PR cell of IIMC.
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