CAT-CALLS

A call from a reporter working with a leading news channel yesterday evening got me thinking in more ways than one. He was asking for my comments on the 3 errors which had crept into the CAT 2006 question papers. Now that's an alright thing to do but his further prodding made me sit up and realize that this seemingly harmless line of questioning may actually not be so. My first reaction had been spontaneous and honest, almost so much so that it got me worried that he would put me on record for saying what i had. But i would only soon realize that i had nothing really to worry about because the answer i gave was exactly the opposite of what he wanted, and it fortunately, had no chance of making it to the airwaves. This became quite clear when he put his next question which was actually the same question again, but the language had undergone a complete transformation. When i would still not react in the way he wanted me to, out came question number 3, which was actually question # 1 again but now it came with the answer already prefixed with it. All he was seeking was a certain reply which had not been forthcoming, so words were being put into my mouth now. Luckily, i had realized the trap well in time and didn't fall for it.

"When there is no news, it's often created by the newsmen", once said Vir Sanghvi. Yesterday's experience coupled with a few news pieces i read in the newspapers and saw on the news channels today and i understood what the ace journalist was trying to say that day. I was at my Barakhamba Road office on the CAT afternoon and had met dozens of students who had just written the most important examination of their lives. Each one of them was well aware of the 3 errors but not one was making a hullabaloo about it. The general opinion was that it was not expected from the IIMs and that was it. No one thought the mistakes could have impacted their future lives. After all there were 75 questions and even the best had attempted only 50 odd questions. You had plenty of questions to not attempt, so a complication here n there and they had all proceeded to the next question without much ado. But this is lean season for newsmakers, and they scented blood here. All that was needed were a few comments from the various stake holders – students, parents and training institutes like mine. That’s how the phone-call fitted into the scheme. Thank you Mr. Sanghvi, for the forewarning.

The C.A.T is not news, it happens every year but mistakes in the CAT questions had potential. Almost 2 lakh people wrote the CAT this year, up by almost 40% from last year so the CAT is definitely getting popular. Now there are less than 2000 seats in the six IIMs put together which means most students can't make it to the top. Could their frustrations be tapped into? After all we are talking about almost 2 lakh families now which translates into a million people. A million people is a lot of people, enough to take the TRPs up by a decimal point or two. In the cut-throat world of news channels, that’s reason enough to sit up, take notice and make news!

CAT 2006: The changes

What used to be about 170-180 a few years back has now reduced to just 75. If you look at the last four years, the decline seems to have been a very planned affair. 150, 123, 90 and now 75 - that's the number of questions asked in the CAT( Common Admission Test to the IIMs) in the last four years in reverse chronology. Experts say it's a move towards the GMAT-ification of CAT. I don't know whether they are right about that but if that's the raison d'etre behind this shrinking basket of questions, it's a pitiable one. What makes more sense, and is possibly the correct rationale is that the IIMs have realised that what can be tested over 175 questions can as accurately be done over fewer questions, just that they have played it safe by following a gradual approach towards this. My own feeling is that they have hit the peak this year, and we will see this graph plateauing over the next few years.

The most impacting change this year was interestingly the least visible one. Increasing the number of options is at first impression not too great a change, but it can change the whole test-taking-technique dynamics. You will need a little more education before you take an educated guess now!! The game of elimination becomes a tad more time consuming. It may change the way you go about solving a problem completely. And there's a 20% more chance of you getting confused between two options. Other changes this year included an increase in the test duration to 150 minutes and a return to the traditional uniform marking scheme.

While these structural changes are important and affect the test takers, it's the anatomical changes in the CAT that happened this year that are without doubt more crucial. When I met Ravi Kiran, a student at the IMS Barakhamba Road branch, minutes after the test, he seemed confident about his chances but was more than a little disappointed that his many hours spent learning the finer nuances of the English grammar had gone completely waste. A mere glancing through the English section was sufficient to understand Ravi's point. Not a single grammar or usage based question was asked this year. All that was important this year was reasoning and interpretation. When i spent a little more time with the paper, i realised that although it was not as obvious in the Problem Solving section, a similar philosophy had been adapted there as well. Logic and conceptual understanding counted far more than any technical knowledge of mathematics. I will not be far off the mark if i were to say that the IIMs have reduced the importance of both English and Mathematics in the CAT.

All in all, three things would count this year:
1.Conceptual Understanding
2.Logical Reasoning & Other Reasoning Skills

3. How good an interpreter you are - your ability to arrive at decisions based on given texts and data.

All three are important attributes seeked for in a manager, and that's why at IMS we keep saying, "Take the CAT like a Manager".

For a detailed analysis of CAT 2006 and to know the possible cut-offs for the IIMs, MDI, MICA, TAPMI and other institutes click here

Over 40,000 students wrote the CAT 2006 in Delhi alone

In my previous post, I mentioned that early indications showed that around 30,000 students wrote the CAT (Common Admission Test to the IIMs) in Delhi including the NCR areas. Newspaper reports in the last couple of months gave a similar figure and we thought we were right. But by the time the final figures were compiled from the 56 CAT centres in the region, the figure had changed upwards by more than 35%. Including the centres in Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon over 40,000 students appeared for the Sunday's entrance test to the finest b-schools in India. ( Faridabad and Ghaziabad were not given a centre by the IIMs this year)

That's a staggering number compared to only a few years back when I had written the C.A.T. - in 1999, the figure for the entire country stood at 75,000 or so. Now North India alone has that many people writing the test !! With over 2 lakh applicants now across the country, India is awfully lacking in seats in quality b-schools which means that thousands of good students end up pursuing their MBA dreams from an inferior business school. While at IMS, we constantly ask students to not compromise on their choice of an institute, even suggesting them to wait for an year if need be, it's easier said than done. There are not even 10,000 seats in b-schools you would pass as good. So it's hardly a surprise that lots of our students don't heed our advice in this regard. The industry needs far many more qualified professionals than our system is churning out today and there are enough students inteterested in taking up management as a career option, as can be seen by yesterday's enthusiasm. What we need is more top quality b-schools, and soon.

*****
Post-script:
IMS has taken a step in this direction setting up a b-school at Kolkata. Praxis, as the new b-school has been christened is an IMS Learning Resources initiative in collaboration with XLRI, Jamshedpur.

My bread-n-butter Sunday

Today, 19th November 2006 is not just any other Sunday। It's the CAT Sunday - as i post this entry over 1,80,000 students are possibly writing a test which may can their lives forever. The Common Admission Test for the six IIMs is a ticket to corporate success, so it's hardly any wonder that the competition is gruelling. So gruelling that even a 99th percentile ( a top 1% score) is sometimes not sufficient to get the all important interview call from the Indian Institutes of Management.

For us working at IMS, the stakes are both higher and lower। While we are not too concerned about our percentiles any more and our own careers insulated from the vagaries of the CAT, the percentiles of thousands of others suddenly become that much more important. While IMS has been sending students to the IIMs by the hundreds every year for over 29 years now, every CAT is a fresh new challenge. The butterflies are back in our stomachs every winters - have we trained our students well enough, have the new changes we incorporated this year been right, have we prepared our students to face the pressure of the percentile game? This year is a bit more exciting since we launched a brand new pedagogy - the ICAP ( Interlinked concepts and applied pedagogy) for the Common Admission Test training programme. The basic idea was simple - the CAT keeps changing, our students should be prepared for any eventuality. Though it was launched only in July and the first proper test will be in November 2007, we did give our 2006 students a few ICAP booster classes. With an interesting case-study based teaching method and the cartoon characters Kittu and Mittu to simplify your mathematics learnings, ICAP is a quantum leap. But the CAT is the real test. Let's see what the students tell us this evening and tomorrow.

*****

Post script:

Reports from my marketing team out in the field covering the 56 CAT centres in Delhi/NCR indicate that there are close to 30,000 students writing the test this year in the national capital region. It's only getting tougher..

Reproductions from my columns in the Education Times - 5

Question:
Post the CAT, one is not left with too much time for preparations for the GD & Interviews. Should I start right away then?

Answer:
You are right about the lack of time for preparations for GD & Interview after the CAT. Plus you will in all likelihood also preparing for some of the other entrance tests. What you could do now for the second stage of the selection process is:
1. Regulary read at least one English newspaper and one Business daily. It is however preferable to read two general dailies as this will help you get different points of views on the same topic. Often the GDs & Interviews are not so much a direct test of your knowledge like a quiz, but a place to voice your opinions on matters of national & global matters, specially from the world of business. Whatever views you may hold forth, if you could back it up with substantial reasoning, is highly appreciated. In the GDs you might face counter-questions on points you raised. Even though you may not agree with the opinions of one of the newspapers, but one of the other participants may do. In such a scenario, tackling his/her arguments will be easier if you have a good idea about the other opinion(s).
Must read:
- Page 1
- Editorials
- Edit Page columns
- Business Pages
- Sports Page/s
- News n articles from areas which you may have mentioned as your areas of interest

2. Swap some of the sit-coms that you are watching with News channels. TV can be a good source of passive information acquisition. If you are not very comfortable reading your Economic Times, you may start off with one of the business channels. Choose any one that you may fancy.

3. Do a quick run through lots of political and business magazines. Spend time on areas which you may think are likely gd/interview topics. Formulating a list of such topics is not very difficult. Take help from friends and classmates.

Reproductions from my columns in the Education Times - 4

Q. I started my prepration for the CAT only a month back, whereas everyone else seems to have started way back. Do I stand any chance?
( Sanghamitra Mishra, Dibrugarh )

A. While 6 months is the ideal time needed for preparation for the CAT, it's not a given because of the nature and components of the test. The CAT tests you on concepts you acquired at school, from Classes 6th to 11th. So there are hardly any new knowledge areas that you need to cover. What changes is the way you are tested, so the questions are different from what you would have answered at school. Another important aspect is the inter-linkage of concepts - you sometimes have to use more than one concepts to arrive at the solution. The CAT is a elimination test for the country's top management schools, and as such it tries to find out whether you are fit enough to be a manager. Maths & English are only tools, and therefore the difficulty level of the questions, while constantly increasing over the years, isn't really the highest and that's why you still have a chance.

Whether you start early or late, you should give ample time to the basics. Quite a bit of dust settles in in the intervening years - maths formulae need to be re-memorised,
your grammar might need some brushing-up and you of course then need to do some old-fashioned practising on the questions. I am assuming you have spent your time so far on your fundamentals. If you are still on it, don't panic and rush into testing yourself on full-length tests. The wiser strategy would be to be thorough on the basics and only then attempting the tests, even if that means you have time for only a fewer tests. Remember that it's more important to get the best out of a few tests than writing tests endlessly. You may refer to previous week's CAT Countdown for more on post test-analysis. ( In case you can't locate the newspaper, you can check it out at www.timesofindia.com/e-paper)

The CAT is the most important of them all, but you have quite a few other options available as well. XAT, FMS, SNAP & JMET will take place later and you will have more time for preparation for these important tests. If you have 2+ years of work-experience you can also consider writing the GMAT. Besides b-schools abroad, some Indian B-schools viz. ISB, MDI, MICA etc. also accept GMAT scores.

Reproductions from my columns in the Education Times - 3

Q. Post the CAT, one is not left with too much time for preparations for the GD & Interviews. Should I start right away then?

Answer:
You are right about the lack of time for preparations for GD & Interview after the CAT. Plus you will in all likelihood also preparing for some of the other entrance tests. What you could do now for the second stage of the selection process is:
1. Regulary read at least one English newspaper and one Business daily. It is however preferable to read two general dailies as this will help you get different points of views on the same topic. Often the GDs & Interviews are not so much a direct test of your knowledge like a quiz, but a place to voice your opinions on matters of national & global matters, specially from the world of business. Whatever views you may hold forth, if you could back it up with substantial reasoning, is highly appreciated. In the GDs you might face counter-questions on points you raised. Even though you may not agree with the opinions of one of the newspapers, but one of the other participants may do. In such a scenario, tackling his/her arguments will be easier if you have a good idea about the other opinion(s).
Must read:
- Page 1
- Editorials
- Edit Page columns
- Business Pages
- Sports Page/s
- News n articles from areas which you may have mentioned as your areas of interest

2. Swap some of the sit-coms that you are watching with News channels. TV can be a good source of passive information acquisition. If you are not very comfortable reading your Economic Times, you may start off with one of the business channels. Choose any one that you may fancy.

3. Do a quick run through lots of political and business magazines. Spend time on areas which you may think are likely gd/interview topics. Formulating a list of such topics is not very difficult. Take help from friends and classmates.

Reproductions from my columns in the Education Times - 2

Q. I am confident about the Maths section, but I have been struggling with my English. (Have fared badly in Reading Comprehension in the SimCATs). How should I divide the allotted time across sections?

A: It’s quite a tempting idea to allocate more time to your weaker section/s but not necessarily the most appropriate. Remember the cut-offs will be decided based on an equal-time-allocation scenario. The best solution to your problem is also the most traditional one – work harder on your reading comprehension, experiment with 2-3 different tactics depending on your chief problem area – accuracy or speed. You still have over 45 days to go before CAT and it’s sufficient to sort out the problem.

Reproductions from my columns in the Education Times - 1

Question:
To get a call from a top b-school, I need atleast 90 percentile with sectional cut-offs as well. However, I have been consistently struggling between 70 and 80 percentiles. What can I do in the remaining time?
( Arjun Arya, Dehradun)

Answer:
Most students reach a peak-performance level in the late September-October period. However, this peak maybe a function of your knowledge and knowledge-appication levels and not the final summit. If you seemed to have hit such a plateau, spend some time analysing your past performances. Often students tend to not attempt or make mistakes in questions from a common topic. For example, you will find that you have been avoiding pie-charts regularly or have been getting lots of questions from permuations & combinations wrong. Now your task is to select and work on 1-2 such areas, so that you have a new knowledge-area to score from. These are a few additional tips for you, but use them cautiously, and only if it suits your particular requirement.

1. To attempt these additional questions, you will need to find out some additional time as well. This can only come by reducing the time you have been taking to answer the other questions. So while analysing your past papers, you need to look out for the questions which have been eating up too much time. You need to find out faster ways to solve them or weed out some if needed.

2. An average student attempts 3 out of 5 RC passages. Try and see if you can run through passage 4 or 5 very quickly after reading the questions first. Your objective is to answer only the easiest 2 questions. Experiment with these a few times before you try it out in the real world. If it's not working for you, you will be better off avoiding this tactic