Author: catcracker

by

The Personal Interview – Hobbies and Interests

Another popular question which you should be ready to face: “What are your hobbies/interests?”

As with “strengths”, this is a very deceptive question. Again, it is not really asking “what do you do in your spare time?” but “what do you do better than most other people you know?”. In an attempt to impress, a lot of people claim hobbies which they are not really all that fond of (or good at), and this can lead to their downfall on occasion.

For example, statistical evidence (and my experience with interviewees) suggests that 60-70% of people mention reading as a hobby (and more than half of those mention it as their first/only hobby). The idea presumably being that reading sounds like an intellectual pursuit and marks one out as being erudite; not a bad impression for a potential MBA candidate to make. As usual, though, the problem is that one also has to be able to defend one’s claim, and that is where a lot of people fall short. At one extreme I have known some desperate optimists who claim to be readers, yet when asked “what books have you read?” confidently reply something like “The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho” and when asked “and what else?” give the interviewer an indignant look as if to say “what, one book isn’t enough?”. But even if you are not quite so literally challenged, can you really claim that you are among the most voracious and attentive readers you know? (In passing, I should mention that I myself read between 40-60 books in a typical year. And I still hesitate to mention reading as my main hobby!) If you are lucky, the interviewer might ask your favourite authors, some books by them, why you like that author or those books, who are the protagonists of the story, what you learned from it, and so on. If so, at least you can defend yourself if well prepared. But it is a real possibility that the interviewer might just look at it and say “oh, another wannabe claiming to read stuff” and not even bother to check!

Claiming a more interesting hobby (a true one, mind you, not just taken up for a month for interview purposes) can make you more memorable, more likely to stand out from the crowd of aspirants. In addition to the relatively standard ones like trekking, cricket, dance and music, I have encountered hobbies as diverse as macrame, karate, chocolate-making, sudoku, android app development, minesweeper, origami and scrabble. And some people have even successfully defended hobbies like “watching TV” or “playing computer games” or “listening to music”.

If you plan to claim something as your hobby, therefore, take the time to do a little research. If you say “listening to Bollywood music”, research 4-5 favourite songs – movie, actors, composer, lyricist, what you find special about that particular song. If you mention “reading”, do the same research with a few books and authors. If you like “watching cricket”, know some of the major records and the important recent occurrences, if you prefer “playing cricket” know the basic rules – ways for a batsman to get out, size of the ball, length of the pitch…but in all cases, show your passion for it.

Additionally, if you claim something which can be tested on the spot, it is entirely possible that an interviewer will do so. If you sing, or dance, or play the flute, they might ask you to demonstrate, if you sketch, they may ask you to draw them, if you do sudoku, you might find yourself handed the day’s paper and asked to prove your claim. (I claimed a high reading speed in one interview, and they tested it!). The good thing is, if you live up to your claims, they are more likely to give credence to everything else you claimed (but the reverse is true as well, so claim nothing you can’t back up!)

by

The Personal Interview – Why MBA?

A question that bothers people a lot is the short and not so sweet “Why MBA?”.

The true answer, for most aspirants, is pretty obvious – more money. But that seems such a crass thing to say in an interview (besides which, the interviewers already know that part). So you need to find some more palatable reason to present, which you can defend. Effectively what is being asked here is your statement of purpose, your manifesto so to speak.

And a good answer is not just a matter of saying “I want to learn how to manage a business”. At best, that’s a space-filler answer which the interviewer will accept and ignore. At worst, the interviewer might decide to get into specifics and ask you exactly how an MBA is going to teach you to manage a business. The thing is, this answer is kind of missing the point – even if an MBA will teach you that, you need to explain why you wish to be taught how to manage a business in the first place, and why at this point in your career/life. So you need to lead up to what it is in your past life which led you to this fateful moment of the interview.

Note that this is not a clichéd or one-size-fits-all response. Like most of the standard questions, your answers needs to be tailored to you, and compatible with the other answers you provide and the overall picture of yourself you are attempting to build in the interviewers’ minds.

For example, a person with 2-3 years of standard work experience could talk with quiet sorrow about how there is little new learning and opportunity for growth in the role, and how an MBA would revitalise an otherwise dormant career. A fresher might talk enthusiastically about how a specific subject led him to consider getting into management (or even a specific field in management – for example Industrial Engineering leading to Operations, Organisational Behaviour leading to HR, a course on Options leading to Finance). A budding entrepreneur might talk about how an MBA would enable him to avoid the common pitfalls which await careless start-ups, while someone who has already been part of a start-up might explain how they were often hampered in their work by a lack of knowledge outside their narrow and specific domain. You could mention a relative, or a teacher, or a well-known business maven, and enthuse about how that person has inspired you to go for an MBA.

But in every one of the above cases, you have to be willing to defend your answer, and for that you need to think about the further questions which are likely to ensue from your statements.

To take just one example, if you claim that entrepreneurship is what drives you, then it wouldn’t hurt to be able to talk confidently and passionately about the kind of company you intend to start up, the current state of that particular sector, the potential initial investment needed, the number of people would you need in the first couple of years… Too much, you think? Perhaps – but remember that saying “I want to be an entrepreneur” is a very fashionable answer among aspirants (who seem to think that it will sound impressive while saving them from specific questions on Finance or Marketing or any such field). What’s an interviewer to do when everyone claims entrepreneurial talent? Quite often he’ll decide to check. And so you had better be prepared!

Also, if you claim entrepreneurship, the interviewer is well within his rights to ask something on the lines of “so why do you need an MBA? Tell me three famous entrepreneurs who are MBAs” and for an unprepared candidate, this line of questioning can be quite a googly…

by

The Personal Interview – Strengths and Weaknesses

The next question we should examine is “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”

Again, let’s look at this question unemotionally. It is very tempting to say “my strength is my sincerity” (or hard work, or determination, or any other standard prized quality). But it is quite likely that the examiner will counter this by saying “So you mean to say all the other candidates are not sincere?” for which there is no good answer! Or even worse, that the examiner will just ignore the answer filing it as “standard cliché, no point questioning further”.

The thing is, the examiner is not really asking “what are you good at?” If he were, you could well answer “I am good at eating – I do it thrice a day without any particular effort” or “I am amazing at breathing, I do it all the time!”. What the examiner really means is, “what are you better at than most of your competitors?”

Accordingly, you need to introspect and figure out what strength you have that you can defend with examples from your life (preferably genuine ones). If you want to claim that you are good at managing people, you will have to provide anecdotal proof of the same. If you state that you can handle pressure, you would need to show examples of how you have faced a pressure situation and overcome it. And you will also have to think about the repercussions of your answer – for example if, wishing to demonstrate the quality of hard work, you explain how you worked harder than anyone else for your CAT, the examiner might well foil this by saying “So how come you didn’t score higher than the others then? Are you more stupid than them?”

A weakness is an even more fraught question. I notice that many people try to present a strength masquerading as a weakness. As an interviewer, when a candidate comes up to me and says “My weakness is that I am a perfectionist” I frankly feel like doing a facepalm. Being a perfectionist is not a weakness, folks. If it makes you behave in an unacceptable way towards your colleagues, then that behaviour could be a weakness, yes (Virat Kohli, I’m looking at you here).

So why is the examiner asking for a weakness? Why shouldn’t you just reply “Sir, I have no weakness!”? The problem is that in the (justified) opinion of the typical interviewer, everyone has weaknesses. So if you claim not to have any, the only conclusion that would be drawn is that you have no self-analysis skills. So you would definitely be expected to identify some reasonably genuine weakness. The next logical question is, what is the point of identifying a weakness? To improve it, of course!

And hence, when choosing a weakness to present, you need to preferably identify a weakness about which you can present anecdotal evidence about (a) how it has cost you in the past and (b) what you are doing to improve yourself in that area. Whether you choose to claim to be short-tempered, prone to procrastination, or unable to stay focussed doesn’t matter – the key is how you choose to elaborate on your choice.

To sum up, both in strengths and weaknesses you need to identify something where you can give examples from your past to illustrate the point you are trying to make; you need to find a way to make your answer relevant and memorable, while at the same time being consistent with the overall picture of yourself you are trying to present.

by

The Personal Interview – Tell me about yourself

Today we’ll look at a question commonly posed at the start of an interview: “Tell me about yourself”

The knee-jerk response to this question is often something like “My name is ABC. I am an EXTC engr from XYZ college. I come from a middle-class family. My father is a government servant. My mother is a housewife. I have a brother who is an engineer and a sister who is doing her MBA….” and so on. But it is worth asking yourself: is this what the interviewer wants to hear?

Let’s examine this questions from the interviewer’s point of view. Is the interviewer interested in you as a person? Not really (though a good interviewer will pretend to be). Then why ask this question?

The key thing to understand is, the interviewer has a limited time with each candidate (around 20 minutes on average). To make a reliable decision in 20 minutes is already a daunting ask. How should he go about it?

One way is to make a pre-defined list of 20-25 questions and ask them to all the candidates. But this is quite likely to be unfair as those topics might not lie in the comfort zone of some of the candidates.

Another option is to spend the first 7-10 minutes of each interview probing the candidate to find out his/her area of comfort and then going ahead to ask questions on those areas. While some interviewers do this, it can end up being a waste of already limited time.

A third option is to start off by asking the candidate “what do you want to talk about?” and then taking cues from the answer received. However, an interviewer cannot phrase the question in such direct terms, and therefore instead couches it in a more neutral way as “tell me about yourself” – the implied meaning being “tell me where you want to take the interview”.

In other words, this question puts the reins of the interview into the hands of the interviewee; a skilled candidate can use this to guide the interview wherever he/she wishes to take it. There is a flip-side, of course – if, not being aware of this thought process, you mention a topic outside your comfort zone, the interviewer will assume that you are eager to talk on that topic and will judge you based on your answers.

A sensible answer would thus be to very briefly introduce yourself and then quickly move on to those topics which you are eager to talk about. So your pre-work for this would be to identify (a) those topics in which you know you can make a good impression with your knowledge and passion and (b) those topics which you absolutely wish to avoid. So if your academics are stellar, you will quickly bring them into the discussion. But if your academics are terrible while your extra-curriculars are impressive, just pass over your education in one line and jump to your other interests. If you feel that your work experience is your USP, bring that in as early as you can.

Most importantly, don’t bring in unnecessary, extraneous elements without a reason. If possible, every point you bring up should bolster your candidature. Bringing in your family to demonstrate that they inculcated good values in you is fine. Bringing them in just to introduce them is pointless – the interviewer is considering you as a potential student and not your family.

With luck, if you answer this one question right, the rest of the interview can be a breeze as the reins will be firmly in your hands.

by

The Personal Interview – Introduction

In the next few posts, I’d like to share my thoughts about the PI, an integral part of the admission process in most top colleges (and incidentally, in most jobs as well). We’ll start with an overview of the PI in today’s post, and in future posts I will try to dissect and analyse individual “standard questions” and how to come up with answers for them.

Let’s start by asking ourselves one simple question: “Why the PI?” When entering, let’s say, an engineering college, one does not typically undergo a PI (or a GD for that matter). A simple written test suffices. But in most MBA colleges, the PI plays an important role. Why is this? One probable answer is that an MBA requires you to deal with people, first and foremost, and hence an aptitude test alone is not enough to judge one’s abilities in this sphere. There are three types of people one would typically interact with in the corporate world – superiors, peers and subordinates. An interview tests how one deals with one’s superiors. (Similarly, a GD tests how well one deals with one’s peers).

From the candidate’s point of view, though, a PI is a golden chance to sell yourself. In the first shortlist, which is typically done by cut-offs and cold equations, you get no chance to defend yourself in case something in your resume is sub-optimal (for example, you have no work experience / you graduated as a five point someone / you have a gap of a year in your education). But once this hurdle is cleared and you get an interview call, you at least get a chance to explain, to justify your past sins.

I often see people getting discouraged even after getting a call; a common remark I hear is “I only just cleared the cut-off. I have no chance whatsoever of making the final cut”. I have even heard people say things like “They called me with such a low score…‼ I am sure they are just calling me to laugh at me”. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Remember that the people who will be conducting interviews will be important people (at least in their own minds!) and have a very inflated opinion of the value of their time. They are not going to waste time on interviewing you if they have no likelihood of selecting you. This means that once you have a call, you have a significant, non-zero, chance of getting through. Obviously you need to perform better in the interview than someone who cleared the cut-off with marks to spare; but it is not impossible.

Conversely, I see people who become over-confident (or at least complacent) because of a very high score in the written tests; who assume that it automatically guarantees them a seat. While it does increase their chances, it is not a certainty; in the second stage of the selection process, most colleges give relatively little weight to the written test scores and as much as 60-70% of weight to the PI/GD/WAT processes. And certain colleges will be harsher on the high scorers in an interview precisely because they are high scorers (for example, looking at the past few years’ data, around 50% of those who get a 100 percentile in CAT do not get a final call from IIMA)

Either way, what it boils down to is this: for the interview round, a typical college would call maybe 5-10 people per seat. So if you have a call, you have a 1 in 10 chance or better of making it through; around 1 in 5 for the top colleges. While this might seem an easy proposition compared to the 1 in 100 chance of getting a call through CAT, you have to remember that in CAT over half the competition is fairly casual. But in the second round, nearly every single person is dead serious – and good enough to have made it to the top 1 or 2 % in the first round. In other words, your preparation has to be very thorough, else you will be found wanting.

Next time, I’ll look at one of the standard questions – “Tell me about yourself”

J

by

Preparing To Convert Your IIM Call Into a Final Admit

So you have got that coveted call and now you have started fretting about the second stage! You have probably started prepping but are buzzing with questions and a still do not have a structure to the your prep. This post is geared towards giving you the right perspective to organise your prep and some prep goodies as well.

What is the probability converting a first call into a final admit?
Well if we keep all other things out (your academic record, CAT Score, work experience and the weightage each college gives to each of these components) the probability of converting any one of the old IIMs will be around 20-25%. Usually around 4 to 5 people are called per seat for the second stage for the old IIMs. So honestly, it is not that easy.

What should you NOT spend your time doing?
Do not spend time trying to calculate how much you need to score in your WAT-GD-PI round to get a final admit — it not worth the effort. You goal is simple, trying to score the maximum you can in the second round and leave the math to the college. You should spend your time preparing for the second round and not doing the math.

What is the common thread tying WAT, GD & PI?
On the face of it it might seem like WAT, GD and PI are different beasts altogether and besting each one of them requires different skill-sets. Well at some level they can be equated to the different formats in cricket — Test Cricket, ODIs and T20s (not in any order) — while the format is different and there are specialists in each format, the core skill tested are cricketing skills. Over the years the core skill tested in each of GD, WAT  and PI is your awareness of GK and Current Affairs.

That GDs and WATs test GK and Current Affairs is something that need not be stated. But even in PIs interviewers want to test how aware you are of the world around you. For example, they might ask you to

  • name all the districts in your home state as you travel from North to South
  • the names of CEOs of leading companies in your sector
  • your view on recent political events in you state or sector
  • your view on events of national importance or policy
  • your knowledge of people and important trivia about what you call your hobbies (it is trivia because it is just a statistic but it is important because you have mentioned something as your hobby)

So what you need to first understand is that at some level the second stage is closer to preparing for the Civil Services, albeit at a level that is much less demanding in terms of depth and width of knowledge tested

You Need More Than The Manorama Year Book
Most aspirants shortlisted for the second stage of the IIMs and other schools start with the Manorama Year Book. But that is just what it is — a start. While you might be asked facts in an interview and need facts in a GD and WAT, what is more important is the quality of the arguments you put forth. When we evaluate essays written by aspirants we find that are desperately trying to fit in into the essay all the facts that they have crammed. To really make an impact one needs to go beyond facts and have an opinion.

The only way to do this is to read in-depth articles on various topics that can be a part of this year’s GDs.

Issues Most Likely To Be Part Of This Year’s GD/WAT/PI Topics
Every year has it’s share of hot topics going into the GD-PI season. If we look at the big topics over the last few years they fall into two categories:

Event/Phenomenon-Based: Delhi Rape Case, AAP, Social Media, Terror Attacks etc.

Policy-Based: FDI, Nuclear Energy, Direct Cash Transfers etc.

While topics based on events/phenomenons are unlikely to get repeated, policy-based topics usually get repeated since policies usually have a longer shelf life. For example, while direct cash transfers was finally implemented as the Jan Dhan Scheme only recently, it has been in the news for more than a few years. Similar FDI in different sectors becomes an issue at different points in time.

So what are the event/issues/policies that can be a part of the second stage this year?

  • The Charlie Hebdo Attack and Freedom of Speech
  • The Rise Of The BJP and Narendra Modi ( alrrady asked in the s.P.Jain WAT)
  • Religious Reconversion in India – Secularism & India
  • Direct Cash Transfer Pros and Cons
  • Faster Environmental Clearances –  Economy  Vs Environment
  • Society in the Age of Social Media

Each of the things listed above can lead to more than one topic so you should read as many articles as possible on these to get the whole 360 degrees.

Research Previous Years Institute-Wise GD/WAT Topics
Most of the premier institutes have a very specific style when it comes to the kind of topics they give as part of the WAT/GD. IIM-L for example, tends to favour the abstract over the topical. IIM-A tends to give short subjective topics as opposed to information heavy topics, whereas IIFT does the exact opposite. So you will do well to thoroughly research the format and topics from the previous years.

The PI Checklist
Preparing for the PI starts with the five basic questions that can also become your IIM-B SOP:

  • Tell Me Something About Yourself
  • Describe Your Work Experience
  • Why MBA?
  • Short-Term & Long-Term Career Goals
  • Strengths & Weaknesses

The GD-PI TOOLKIT
We have suggested a lot of research and reading so we thought we should give you a goodie bag that will make your job easier with a GD-PI Toolkit which contains a compilation of

  • Institute-wise WAT-GD Topics and PI questions from last year
  • Articles across various sectors like economy, education, politics etc that can be useful for WAT-GDs this year

Most of these articles are not simple bulleted-lists but in-depth data-filled analyses. We are sure you will be better off reading one of these detailed articles than waiting for a certain new anchor to let the panelists speak!

Apart from this we have also put together a long-list of all the possible questions that can get asked in PIs and some stuff related to the whole second stage.

To access all of this, all you need to go is to https://www.facebook.com/imschennaionline?ref=hl and start downloading.

Till the next post, which will be soon, start reading, researching and rehearsing!

All the best,

T

by

Happy New Year!

Hi folks!

It has been a long time since we last posted. Hopefully some of you have moved a step closer to your dreams, and the rest of you have not given up on theirs.

As many of you might have noticed, we’ve migrated from the wordpress.com domain to a new one (never fear, the old link will still redirect here for the foreseeable future, so you need not change your bookmarks or anything). Two years and nearly 500 posts have flown by in what seems like no time, and another year is upon us. We will continue to slowly but steadily add more stuff here, as and when we feel we can add value on a particular topic, and maybe discover some new ways to explain things in a better manner. Thanks for all your support and kind words!

The auspicious occasion of a new year also seems like a good time to share some good news with all of you 🙂 So without any further ado, here goes:
Scorecard

Happy 2015, everyone!

regards

J

by

CAT 2014 Analysis: November 22, Slot-2

It has been a while since there was no sectional time-limit and since I barely take any full-length mocks CATs apart from the actual CAT, it was a pleasant departure from the previous attempts.

So, let’s dig in to the analysis in the order I attempted the paper.

Verbal Ability
Wanted to really max this section so started with VA and specifically RCs. The four RCs were all relatively straightforward. If we want to split hairs, we can classify two as Easy and two as Moderate; compared to SimCATs they can only be classified as tame. Also for the first time in a quite a few years I felt there were no ambiguous options. During the Prometric years, I often left some RC questions purely because I knew none of the four options were correct and I did not want to both lose a mark and dignify the question with an answer (I was setting the Verbal Sections of the IMS SimCATs for a while, so I know a thing or two about question-setting)

Only on 2 out of the 16 questions did two options seem close and even on those a re-check would easily lead one to the answer. For those whose strong suit is Verbal, the RCs were a nicely-wrapped gift. For those who are of average ability with RCs, 3 passages with 10-12 attempts and 8-10 correct was definitely possible. I would say about 25 marks from RC were there for the taking.

Moved on to VA which was also surprisingly harmless. None of the question types posed any real problem. If we were to arrange the question-types in increasing order of difficulty they would be Jumbled Paragraphs, Grammar, Odd One Out, CR-Summary, CR-Inference. Everyone who prepared for the test could have attempted 12 questions.

The bulk of the scoring in this section should have come from VA & RC with 20-25 attempts and 18-22 questions correct.

Logical Reasoning
Since I had made sufficient attempts in VA-RC in good time to clear the sectional cut-offs I was only looking at LR as an added bonus to push the overall score higher. But it did not turn out to be that easy. One set was easy, two were moderate and one was tough. Even on the moderate sets, 1-2 questions should have been left in each set as they were time-consuming.

For those for whom LR is the main scoring area around 10-12 questions attempted across 3 sets would have been the best they could have done.

So, without getting into the percentile nitty-gritty, what is a good number of attempts on this section? For those with strong QA-DI, around 28-32 good attempts were definitely possible, for those who were looking to this section to max their overall score through the VA-LR section, around 32-36 attempts.

Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation
QA was a pleasant surprise since despite all news pointing towards an easy QA on previous slots, one does not believe it until one sees it, the questions were as straight-forward as they can come. The only thing that could go against you were silly mistakes. Those who attended all classes and were aware of the basic stuff would have had no problem with the QA.

DI was a bit tricky and time-consuming and if one devoted bulk of the time to QA then just picking one DI set would have sufficed.

Overall for someone looking to max their score through this section around 33-38 questions were definitely possible; for those who are average on QA-DI around 25-32 attempts were a definite possibility.

I think this year’s CAT had a larger purpose than just screening students for the second stage. The papers this year send out a signal that the IIMs, especially the newer ones, do not want students to shy away from the test because of its perceived toughness. The QA section was made easier so that more non-engineers would be encouraged to take up the test, and the VA section was definitely not scary for engineers.

Whether the test is tough or easy, it does not make a difference to the selection procedure of the IIMs since they use percentiles. But managing the perception of the test is paramount to ensure that slew of new IIMs that have been launched do not have empty seats!

By the way, the CAT is over but the test-taking season is not over yet. For those whose CAT did not go that well, there still are plenty more fish in the sea, especially one called XAT, which is on par or better than few of the older IIMs. For those who did well, it is still a job half done, so do not give yourself a break of more than 2-3 days. So either ways it time to put the CAT behind us and get back to prepping for the rest of the tests!

All the best!

T.

by

CAT 2014 – My Take

Here’s my take on the CAT as I perceived it (16th morning slot). Note that the opinions expressed are entirely my own 🙂 Also it is slightly long…not that that will surprise anybody!

Overall Structure: There were 4 sets of 4 questions each of DI, LR and RC. 34 singleton questions in QA and 18 in VA rounded things off.

QA: As many people have noted already, the QA was pretty easy. However, it was not the cakewalk some have made it out to be; there was the typical emphasis on testing the basics with deceptively simple but very precisely worded questions (and as always there were a few elegant traps in the finest tradition of CAT). The topics covered all the usual suspects (Geometry, Algebra, Arithmetic, Numbers, Modern maths all had significant representation) and no really unusual ones (no, after 40 years CAT has still not seen fit to ask a questions requiring Pick’s theorem or Fermat’s Little Theorem. Much to the sorrow of those who have been studying such stuff faithfully). It would seem CAT still rewards those who stick to the basics, but do those really thoroughly.

DI: While not exactly difficult, most of the sets would have troubled those who had only learned to handle standard data presentation forms; they required quick analysis and structuring of significantly non-standard data formats. Time-consuming, for sure, but a pleasure to attempt if you like that sort of thing.

VA: Much to my chagrin, direct Vocab-based questions remained elusive for the second year in a row. Instead, Grammar, Parajumbles, Critical Reasoning (Inferential), Incorrect Sentence in the Para, and Summary questions made up the numbers. I felt that a little over a third of them were pretty straightforward (a pleasant surprise after last year’s VA where nearly every question gave me a headache).

RC: The RC section was surprisingly pleasant, passages of a very reasonable length and on topics which did not put on to sleep (philosophy, I’m looking at you here!). The questions, too, were not as ambiguous as they have typically been in recent years – in many cases I could arrive at an answer without doubt or hesitation, which is unusual, at least for me! Those people who neglected the RC section in this one out of habit are probably going to live to regret it – this could have been a good scoring area even for someone who is not an English maven. Given the level of LR, the CAT RCs were catharsis, you might say.

LR: Even more so than in DI, the LR sets were non-standard. Only one of the 4 sets could be described as straightforward – unfortunately that was also the longest and had the most conditionalities and hence a good number of people ignored it totally. Two of the sets were quite impressively tricky to grasp. I found them refreshing and challenging, and unusually, even after solving them I was not confident of my answers (which rarely happens to me in LR). Certainly the most daunting area in this slot.

Overall, the DI and LR together called to mind the heyday of CAT’s DI and LR (during 2002-2008) in terms of the precision of wording, the skill-sets and the quick thinking required, while at the same time being entirely new in the specifics (which obviously I cannot talk about here!). The closest comparison I can draw is CAT 2006, where the Pathways set and the Erdos number set, while relatively quite easy, confounded most test-takers by being totally unlike anything they’d seen before.

In the QA and DI section, my personal take is that a score of between 65 to 75 would probably be an acceptable performance. (This would probably require 30+ attempts with a pretty decent accuracy, quite achievable under the circumstances). In the VA section, a score of 60-65 should prove sufficient; possibly as low as 50, since a lot of people who were relying on LR underperformed horrendously.

Now to address some of the interesting statements I’ve been encountering, the FAQs you could say:

FAQ 1: The paper was so easy, 98%ile cutoffs will go to 200, I have heard

No. Really, people, no. Easy or not, 150 would be a fair score and 175 an awesome one in any paper. 98%ile means close to 4000 people; even in the easiest of the Sims after all, you rarely saw a 200 – the idea that 4000, or even 400 people would be able to hit that level seems very improbable, to be frank.

FAQ 2: But so many people are posting scores like “84 attempts with 90% accuracy”…

Yes, they are. So are they more foolish for posting those, or are you more foolish for being gullible enough to swallow those estimates? People are notoriously bad at estimating how well they have done – and over three-fourths of people tend to overestimate (in public, at least). Ask yourself these questions:

  • Whenever you have written SimCATs in the past, after you submitted, but before the score appeared, you must have made some kind of estimate of what you expected. How often was this accurate (or even in the same ball-park, really?)
  • How many people do you know who can actually manage a 90% accuracy reliably? (I can’t. And I have been doing this stuff for over a decade and a half). In QA, perhaps. But given the subjective nature of VA, even 80% there requires some luck.
  • Assuming that your friend is speaking the truth and actually is sure that his 84 attempts have 90% accuracy. He must therefore have known that 8 questions were wrong. Why did he mark them then, I wonder?

If you are still not convinced, try a little experiment. Chances are that some of you who are taking the test on Saturday will be taking a last practice test today or tomorrow. If so, do me a favour – after the time is up but before you submit, write down on a piece of paper your attempts and your estimate of how many you got correct and wrong in each section and overall. Then submit and see how accurate you were.

FAQ 3: So then what about those people who are getting 99.99 in percentile predictors?

Percentile predictors, even if accurate, (and that’s another kettle of fish) depend on the accuracy of the input you give them. Garbage in, garbage out. And as pointed out above, most people’s estimates of their accuracy are greatly exaggerated.

And while some percentile predictors at least try to give an honest opinion, most are like fortune-tellers; they tell you what you want to hear. They rely on the human tendency to be flattered; if one tells you that you are going to get 88 and the other says 97, and you actually get an 89, you will still remember the latter one more fondly despite it being wildly inaccurate. As a result, you have loads of people who are joyfully shouting from the rooftops that it has been predicted that they will get a 99.99 or similar (never mind that they haven’t actually crossed 90 in a single practice test so far).

However, stop a moment and think – if 2 lakh people take the exam, only 30 people or less will actually achieve a 99.99 or more.

FAQ 4: But isn’t 150 too low? QA cutoffs will go to a 100, surely?

You would think so, but it probably won’t even come close. What most of us seem to forget is that the majority of people are scared of maths. Even easy maths. They come in with an aim of “20 good attempts” and even faced with an easy paper, they rarely go beyond 30, if that. The textbook example which is the closest comparison would be of CAT 2006, which had a tricky DI/LR section, but featured a QA section which was at least as straightforward as Sunday’s (and what’s more, 2 minutes per question, on a paper-based test; more than what we have here). Yet the QA cut-off for a 95%ile score was under 40 out of 100. Assuming that people haven’t miraculously gotten smarter in the decade since (a safe assumption) I don’t see a comparable cut-off crossing 70 this time.

FAQ 5: I’m writing the paper on 22nd? Will the level and breakup of questions be the same?

Short answer: we don’t know J

To the best of our knowledge, the level and breakup varied slightly between the two slots on Sunday – the LR was noticeably easier and the QA was almost certainly a bit tougher, for example. And a sub-area which featured 3 questions in the morning had none in the afternoon. So for all we know, the papers on 22nd might feature vocab or DS (or maybe even Pick’s theorem, though I’m betting against that). You try to predict the CAT at your peril!

My gut feeling is that the overall level of the paper will not change too much. However, the “difficulty distribution” might well undergo a drastic revision – for all you know the LR might be easy-peasy arrangements while the RCs might feature Spinoza, Kant and Freud. Or even good old Derrida. My only advice on this (and that hasn’t changed in its broad essence over the past ten years) is “don’t carry any pre-conceived notions with you”. As C. P. Cavafy says in his lovely poem “Ithaka”
      Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

      wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

      unless you bring them along inside your soul,

      unless your soul sets them up in front of you.”

If you go there expecting easy QA, and it turns out tough, then you might panic and end up missing the easy LRs that accompany it. Or the easy RCs. As happened on 16th, with those poor souls who had pre-decided “I will do all the LRs and not look at the RC” and who, even now, are probably regretting their rigidity. Have a plan by all means, but be prepared to change it at a moment’s notice if necessary. Flexibility might be crucial to survival. As I am fond of quoting “no battle plan survives the moment of first contact with the enemy”

And of course, don’t forget that most invaluable piece of advice from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

dont-panic

regards

J

by

CAT 2014 Experience

I wasn’t actually planning to put a “CAT Experience” post, but since many people have requested one, here goes. As many people have said, the CAT was not that tough this year, a sight for sore eyes…

Soft kitty

I’ll divide this into two posts, this one detailing the overall test-taking experience and another one with my take on the test level and what it might entail for future slots. This will also give me an opportunity to address many rumours and fears which seem to be proliferating in the aftermath of Sunday’s slots.

Some of you might directly wish to jump to the other one 🙂

Pre-test procedure:

I wrote CAT ’14 in the morning slot on Sunday. My friend and I arrived at 7:15. We were let in at around 7:45 or a little after, with a first round of basic checks i.e. admit card + id proof. (I believe people were allowed in till a little past 8:15 at my centre. However, don’t take risks on this – there were reports from some centres of latecomers being summarily ousted. That extra twenty minutes of sleep could cost you a year. Unlike in previous years, there was a board outside with a list of names and the allotted labs/computers. There were two labs at my centre, with nearly a hundred students.

Things were pretty well organised at the centre (Aruna Manharlal Shah institute, Ghatkopar, in case you’re wondering) – they had even opened the cafeteria so that once we got in, we could refresh ourselves with some basic breakfast (dosa and chai, in my case). After a jolly half an hour there laughing at the people doing frantic last-minute mugging, we went up to the second floor where the labs were. There was a registration room for the final formalities, and waiting rooms to await our turn (these rooms were where we were required to deposit our worldly goods, such as they were; no tokens were provided but as far as I know everyone got their stuff back without incident)

When leaving the waiting room, you were allowed to carry only the admit card (on the topic of admit cards, please make sure the print is decent; black and white is fine, but the photo should resemble you and the signature should be reasonably clear, and you need to stick one recent colour photo on the card) and an ID proof. A quick webcam mugshot and Left Thumb Impression later, we were directed to our hot seats.

The system provided was unexceptionable with a large and clear screen and a responsive mouse. The space between rows was cramped, though, and the icing on that cake was that the on/off switches for the computer were located on the floor directly beneath the monitor. Right where I would normally put my feet. Which means I spent the entire test with my legs carefully cramped as far back as they would go. Non-ergonomic, to say the least!

Having got in, another short wait ensued – during which we were handed a single sheet of A4 paper (don’t worry, you can ask for more if you like, they keep count and you have to submit them all at the end) and a single ballpen. We were asked to enter our passwords and then wait till the server reckoned it was 9:30 and told us to start. (The keyboard, although present, is not meant to be touched – one enters one’s password via the mouse using an onscreen keyboard. We were assured that touching the keyboard would stop your test and put your session in jeopardy; not surprisingly, none of us tried the experiment)

During the Test:

The interface was smooth, no significant glitches. A few points worth noting:

  1. Scoring: the test clearly and unambiguously stated: +3 for a correct, -1 for a wrong and no penalty for unattempted questions.
  2. When a question was answered and marked for review, it was not listed in the “answered” count obtained by hovering over the section name. However, we are assured that those questions (indicated on the right by a violet dot with green tick) will also be evaluated.
  3. Highlighting feature was absent in the RCs (I don’t use it myself, but those who rely overmuch on it should probably beware)
  4. In some RCs, a curious thing happened – three questions were asked, then an LR set came up, and then the same RC popped up again with a 4th We don’t know yet whether this was intentional or fortuitous, whether it was a feature or a bug.
  5. There were colourful graphs in the DI section. I don’t know about other folks, but I was quite cheered by them!
  6. There were frequent interruptions – a couple of attendance sheets were passed around, the invigilators came to collect the admit cards mid-test (you have to sign in their presence and hand over the card), and a few times the invigilators’ phones made weird noises. So be prepared to keep a firm grasp on your concentration.
  7. When the 170 minutes were up, the test automatically stopped (making the submit button possibly the most redundant piece of coding I have seen in years) and the screen showed a summary of attempts in each section and overall. Then we all trooped down to hand in our rough paper and pens, and walked free into the wide open spaces. (Note: please don’t forget to take along your id proof while leaving – as you would probably have pushed it into some corner of the desk, out of your way, it is surprisingly easy to forget

regards

J