When should one start preparing for CAT 2007?

In less than 3 hours from now, 2006 will come to a close. A new year brings with it new hopes and new aspirations. For those of you entering your final year of graduation, it's time you made the big decision - what after B.A /B.Com / B.Tech / BBA ?

Last year well over 4 lakh people wrote various MBA Entrance Tests in this country and they were fighting over less than 5000 quality B-School seats that India has to offer. Of course, doing an MBA abroad is a very good option and the competition there is relatively easier but either which ways you need to make a decision now - whether you want to join the MBA rat(read cat) race. More than 20,000 students have already begun their journey to Ahmedabad - the first batch for CAT 2007 started as early as June 2006 at IMS Learning Centres across the country. Going by past history, that number should more than double by the time the first month of the new year draws to a close.

If you have decided that you do want to go for the coveted MBA degree, then you need to answer the second question - when do you start? Is January too early? Is January already late? Should i first get over with my college exams in May/June? How will I combine the CAT preparation with college exams and the internships and summer training programmes? Each such question has to be answered and factored in to arrive at your final answer.

Take the following points into consideration:

#1 Pre-final year exam schedule

#2 Dedicated preparation time for the above

#3 Mid-term exams if any ( Delhi University students generally have this in Jan)

#4 Duration of your internship/summer training programme

#5 Semester exams in Nov/Dec 2007

and personal factors as well:

#6 Your current level of preparedness / level at day zero

( you can contact your nearest IMS Learning Centre and register for a Preliminary Test - this is based on CAT 2006 and it will give you a very good idea of where you stand vis-a-vis the Common Admission Test)

#7 Are you the kind who prepares for exams over a longer period of time/shorter but crunched study periods?

Some suggestive answers:

1. Start early if possible - January is perfect. But go slow - don't overdo things and space out your preparation programme.

2. Buy the correspondence pack, start preparing on your own for a while and then you may get a better idea of when you want to upgrade to the full classroom programme.

3. If you are not an Engineer/BBA and will not be doing a summer programme, then May or any time immediately after your 2nd year exam ends may also not be a bad time to start.

4. Ask your classmates who have already started.

All the best,

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.