A journey of expectations, failures, and peace: My tryst with CAT
It’s been more than a decade since I last wrote something, but to anyone and everyone who believe their actions and results are asynchronous with their expectations from self and their high self-esteem no matter what they try, I do this for you. Because you are me.
This is a reflection of self and a 3-year journey that has been profoundly impacted by a seemingly harmless exam-CAT. This is a narrative about shattering hope, humbling experiences, confronting realities, and deep introspection into self.
August 2017, Hall1, IIT Kanpur
It was a lazy autumn afternoon when Raman came up to me and said,
“TIME vale ek session le rahe L7 me. Chalega?”
“TIME?”
“CAT coaching institute hai.”
“Vo MBA IIM vala exam?”
“Haan, pizza bhi de rahe sunne me aa raha.”
It was the promise of a pizza back then that introduced me to the world of CAT which would eventually change my years to come.
Like most other final year undergraduates, we had nothing better to do and so we rounded up a bunch of our wingmates and decided to swing by this session and get a free pizza out of it! When we reached the lecture hall we were greeted by a pretty amusing and surprising sight: A lecture hall with a capacity of 500 that rarely gets a quarter full for core courses was packed with students listening attentively to a middle-aged guy on the podium. I could easily identify folks from 2nd year to 4th year, BTech, BS, MTech guys, CSE folks to Civil dudes, departmental toppers to my bois with multiple backlogs! That is when it struck me that the craze of an MBA pervades the hallowed halls of IITs too.
If MBA is supposed to be a launchpad then why do folks like us who are already in a sweet spot need one?
I returned to my room with no pizza (it was a scam) but with newfound realizations, questions like these, and a form for a coaching center. I still didn’t have a lot of idea around CAT and whether it’d be a right fit for me but it felt like JEE all over again and it was probably the competition and the opportunity to outperform the rest that got me interested in considering taking CAT.
I, Raman, and Shubham decided to give it a shot and joined TIME’s weekend classroom program that was set up in a small rented room right outside the campus main gate and had lecturers coming from Lucknow every weekend. Those were carefree times when most of us were living the time of our lives and hadn’t seriously given the future much thought and were banking heavily on the assumption that things will work out eventually. I particularly had very different priorities- friends, girls, parties, contesting elections, dance competitions, organizing events, etc. And in the midst of all this, my initial enthusiasm for CAT died down. I ended up attending only 3 classes and decided to wing it. In my head, CAT became an exam that tested English, Logic, and Maths which I felt didn’t require much practice (I hadn’t even paid attention to the fact that the sections were called VARC, DILR, QA until 2 seasons later!). I had enrolled for AIMCATs (TIME’s mock test series) but attempted only 1 mock and that too left it in between since I wasn’t really feeling it.
With Raman and Shubham in similar shoes (just 3 and 5 mocks) we decided to just wing CAT17 with almost 0 preparation. Fast forward to November, placements were round the corner, end semesters were ongoing and CAT fell in between exams of two very difficult courses. And yes, I was prepared for none of these things.
Act I: CAT 2017. Losing CAT virginity
My CAT center, probably the only one in Kanpur, was 30 km away and I had the morning slot. Winters in Kanpur are cruel and if you have to suddenly wake up at 6 am when you naturally wake up at noon, to travel 30 km in a battered tempo baring the cold wind, to take a 3-hour exam, it just makes it sad enough to make you pity yourself. To top it off, I had the attention span of a goldfish and was not used to sitting for 3 hours at a stretch.
I used to read during my school days and I felt that I have a decent command of the English language. Although conversational English being very different from what VARC requires is something I understood much later. I somehow attempted all 34 questions in that section not knowing whether any of those would be correct.
Solving your first DILR set directly during the actual CAT is a pretty amusing feeling and I was fortunate enough to experience this first hand. There is no fixed syllabus to DILR but there are certain types of sets that are more common and have their own traditional approaches. I was oblivious to this fact then and it actually played out in my favor as I later got to know that the DILR section that year was unconventional and on the difficult side.
Quant felt like a breeze. I still vividly remember finishing all 34 questions and still having 5 minutes to spare.
When the clock struck 11 and the exam ended I was still in a disarray as to what exactly had transpired in the last 3 hours. With no mental benchmarks available around what a good attempt looks like, I decided to not think much about it.
The peaks and the falls
Placements were slated to begin a few days after the end-semesters. I wanted to get into consulting then and all consult firms used to visit on Day1 itself. Although I hadn’t prepared for case studies or placements in general, I was okayish when it came to communication and problem solving and was lucky enough to bullshit my way into one of these Day1 consult firms.
And the festivities began. Quite some time passed by in this dazed elation.
Soon after that, CAT results came in, and much to my surprise I scored 195/300 which translated to a 99.75% To top it off, my boys had rocked the exam too
Raman: 99.6x%
Shubham: 99.5x% (DILR 100%)
All in all, 8 folks had scored more than 99.5% in my friend circle, one of whom scored a 100% next year.
And the festivities continued, now with greater gusto.
Things were looking up but then life happened….
Around the same time, semester results were out and as fate would have it, I flunked two compulsory courses. What this meant was that even if I got shortlists and cleared the interviews I’ll not be able to join since my degree had gotten extended.
Next, when PI calls started pouring in I realized the hard truths around profiles. I understood that my profile is what you’d refer to as ‘GEM 997 Fresher’ and that 7, GEM, Fresher would hurt my chances pretty bad. I ended up with only Joka call among ABC.
I skipped K, I, FMS interviews and decided to give Joka interview. Did not prepare for the interview as I had nothing to lose. I mean how bad could it be, right? Right? What transpired next was nothing short of a massacre.
Indian Habita Centre, Delhi: IIMC WAT PI
I and Aabhas, a friend from IITK, had the same center and slot. We reached IHC, trying to cram as many current affairs as we could along the way. After an okayish WAT, Aabhas was called for his PI. He came out of his panel with a big smile on his face and recounted his experience.
Major takeaways: Very courteous people, not grilling on academic scores.
Although I had a different panel, the latter was a big relief.
Later when I made it to my panel, I saw a girl leaving the hall with tears in her eyes. It was 3 more folks before my turn came. And each of them had entered the hall with a big smile but left it similar to the first girl. I was genuinely scared at this point since I was not aware of the concept of stress interviews.
It has been so long that I don’t remember all the questions exactly but I remember the serious look they had throughout the interview. Few statements that were made then:
“Why are your undergraduate scores so low”
“You are a disgrace to the nation”
“People like you should never make it to IITs or IIMs”
“You have wasted taxpayers’ money and the seat of a deserving student”
Since I used to dance in college, they made me dance in the interview and later asked me to leave.
Result: Rejected
Aabhas: Rejected (Although he made it to IIFT next year, so happy for that)
I knew that I’ll be taking CAT again. The thrill of the entire experience was something I wanted to experience again. Also, Joka was the only college of ABC that had considered me worthy enough to give me a shot. Converting Joka, thus, became a dream born out of love and revenge
Act II: CAT 2018. Shattering dreams
After the CAT2017 fiasco, I moved on with my life. Completed my graduation somehow and moved to Gurgaon to start a new chapter. Back then I was working with a management consulting firm that had extreme work hours and CAT thus, took a backseat. By the time I got used to the new life, it was October already.
To begin preparation I joined IMS mock series that season and planned to take mocks over the weekend. I had misconceptions and biases around the exam such as
CAT is a very easy exam (and I still won’t say it is difficult) and that if I can score a 99.75% with 0 prep I can easily score much more with a little prep.
This line of thinking was my undoing as I soon realized. I am not sure whether it was arrogance or a genuine lack of time, I attempted only 4 mocks that season and thought it was enough. I underestimated one of the most competitive exams in the country and the result showed
On D-Day, I went with the sole objective to get a 100% and this rigid mentality was mistake number 2. As VARC started, I was internally chanting, “I need a 100…..I need a 100” and was not really focussing on the passage in front of me. 5 minutes into the section, I realized that I read the entire passage but had not grasped anything. Panic kicked in. VARC needs a calm head and that was precisely what I didn’t have then. 30 minutes into the section I see a passage that was directly from one of IMS’s mock that I had given- this caused me to panic more as I got the feeling that I made mistakes in that passage during the mock (although questions were obviously not the same). With these apprehensions, VARC ended.
I began DILR with my mind ruminating,
“Will I be able to get a 100 with a shit VARC….I have fucked up, all hope is lost”.
With an already unstable mind, I directly attempted the first set in front of me. It was a simple 4 set Venn diagram but I wasn’t able to crack it even after doing it twice. (I later checked it was actually a calculation mistake). I had lost 15 minutes and had attempted 0 questions. Moved to a different set, another 15 min in, no questions done.
“I have definitely fucked up”
In the remaining 30 minutes, I somehow managed to do a couple of questions from various sets.
I started QA, already sad that CAT2018 is a goner, and attempted the entire section with a lump in my throat.
As soon as I left the exam hall I got a call from my parents and it was heartbreaking to tell them I won’t make it this year. They, sad themselves, consoling me and asking me to wait for the results made it even worse. With tears in my eyes, I vowed, yet again to make CAT2019 a different story.
And to learn from my mistakes
Result: 99.55%
Interestingly, VARC wasn’t all that bad. But DILR was really bad. And QA was not up to the mark because of my mental self-conditioning
I had none of ABC calls. I got FMS call, left it. Destiny had other plans.
Act III: CAT 2019. A test of patience
By now I had switched companies and was now working in a strategy role at a pretty decent startup. Work this time around was characteristically different- less hectic and relatively interesting. I knew I had to make this attempt count so I decided to actually prepare this time around. I enrolled for both TIME and IMS mock test series. It was also the first time I started critically analyzing mocks. Until this point, all I used to do was take mocks, look at the scores and then forget about it.
It was around July, my mother decided that she’ll come live with me till CAT so that I don’t have to focus on anything except work and prep. And that is exactly what I did. I immersed myself in mocks and used to devote 1.5 hours every day to CAT prep. I really wanted to make this one count, if not for anything, for the sacrifices my parents made in all of this. This is slightly out of context, but I just wanted to say that I am grateful to them for everything they have done and that they are entirely the reason I am what I am today.
I took 19 mocks by D-Day, had analyzed them well, and was as ready as I could ever be. In fact, a day before the actual exam I attempted CAT2018 (the other slot) and scored 220/300- a score that would have easily fetched me a 99.98+%. My father had also come to Gurgaon a day before CAT to cheer me up. So I was in a good state of mind and I had also prepared myself mentally to be not surprised by any shenanigans that the paper setter might pull. This time it was not about scoring a 100% or a 99.99% but about giving it my best.
Well…lady luck still wasn’t totally convinced. On D-Day, my Uber took me to a totally random place that was actually 10km away from my actual center. He refused to take me to my center and asked me to pay and book another cab. My father got into a heated argument with the cabbie that bore no fruit. This ate into my time and I had only 30 minutes before the stipulated exam start time. I somehow managed to reach my center, convinced the authorities to let me write the exam but was not in the best state of mind and my heart was pumping furiously. Additionally, they didn’t let me wear my sweater even though it did not violate the code of conduct mentioned on the hall ticket. Gurgaon winter and a flimsy half-sleeved T-shirt is the absolute worst combination.
Now, for any normal functioning human, it takes time to process all of this and get your bearings under control. But VARC2019 had different plans. Those who know can attest to the fact that if the general difficulty of CAT VARC section is x-1.5x, CAT 2019’s VARC was at least 3x. I was suddenly in front of an unconventional section where passages didn’t make sense even after 2 reads. Honestly, I was prepared for unforeseeable circumstances but this was unreal or maybe it was the events prior to the start that caused me to falter. For someone who used to attempt 34/34 in VARC, I did only 20 questions that day.
DILR was a nemesis since CAT18- one that I frankly had not been able to conquer to date. But I couldn’t let CAT19DILR be a repeat of CAT18DILR. I got my bearings and attempted the section to the best of my abilities. I completed 4 sets and the fifth one I did twice completely but couldn’t get answers present in the options(again a calculation mistake!). I was still somewhat satisfied with my DILR
To QA I think I did justice.
Result: 99.31%
That VARC went really really bad
DILR and QA were pretty nice
At this point, it had become funny actually. I had taken a week-long leave from the office just before CAT and everyone was expecting great news but I didn’t have any. It was one of those moments when you think life is at an all-time low and couldn’t go any lower but the string of consistently decreasing CAT scores coupled with personal issues was pushing the bar lower. In fact, it is precisely this point in time and space that I think I share with a lot of confused and lost aspirants out there. Maybe the expectation and the scores could be different, but the raw emotions, particularly the feeling of helplessness is the same I am sure.
“I cannot do it…..Maybe it isn’t for me…..I am fighting a losing battle…I should just give up and make peace”
This is what I was thinking. I was seriously contemplating moving on with life and trying other things. The hustle will always be there but probably CAT isn’t where I should be directing it…….
But yaar kya kre yaar ziddi hu…Ab chhod diya to zindagi bhar regret rahega
The stubborn person that I was, I decided to go for it- ONE LAST TIME!
For someone with an inflated sense of self, I had lost all confidence and although I had decided to try again, I couldn’t muster up the confidence to do so. Luckily enough, I met someone special. She helped me overcome these self-created hurdles and brought hope and positivity into my life. I am not sure where would I be right now had I not met her. God does works in mysterious ways.
Act IV: CAT 2020. Love, hope and direction
Ah shit…..here we go again!
July 2020: I had switched companies again and was now a product manager for a social media platform. The role was of higher ownership than my previous stints and was more interesting too. The world was in a state of disarray when COVID19 entered the scene and when life, as we knew it, itself was falling apart it was difficult to think of anything else except surviving. I and my girlfriend had both moved back to our hometowns by now and it was becoming a challenge to juggle between work in a WFH setup, CAT preparation, and a long-distance relationship. To date, I look back in wonder at how we were able to manage it all.
I was back in Visakhapatnam. The city of destiny. I cracked JEE from here. I knew Vizag would make CAT happen too. This time around, I wasn’t the same boy who just winged CAT17- I was more mature, in a more stable position professionally and emotionally, and humbled by previous encounters with the exam. I knew I didn’t have to prepare much of VARC, QA, DILR….I just needed to prepare the 4th section that CAT tests- the most important of it all- pressure handling and maintaining your sanity in the thick of things. I brought structure and consistency to my life- dabbling in everything from yoga, meditation to running 5km every day. I knew I had to be in the right mental state. I was clear if not now, I’ll go to the US/Europe and I wouldn’t lose out on anything so I could chuck thinking about all irrelevant stuff and focus just on what needed to be done.
As for actual preparation, I joined TIME, IMS mock series around August. And it was around the same time I was introduced by Rohit, a dear friend, and a current FMS student, to a bunch of folks who were colloquially referred to as PGDT20- Pagal Guy Dream Team 2020. I came to know about Pagal Guy, the forum in 2019 but I used it for the first time in 2020. I was amazed to see an ecosystem where aspirants are helping and motivating each other. As for the Dream Team, these were a set of exceptional folks almost all of whom ended up scoring a 99.8+%. DT also consisted of ex-DT members- current BSchool students and even alumni. These guys helped me with respect to tweaking strategies to some extent but more importantly in reinforcing faith that belling the CAT is a perfectly achievable target. The aspirants among those helped me in setting benchmarks that greatly motivated me to push myself to reach their levels and this showed in my mock scores.
This narrative would be incomplete without mentioning Amit and Raman(yes, the one from CAT17). Us three had also internally decided to clear CAT and join BSchools. I prepared closest with these guys and to all aspirants who might be reading this, it is important you get friends like them who are chasing the same goal as you. Believe me, it makes the ordeal a hell lot easier. These guys have seen their fair share of issues along the way but they braced and overcame those. My parents, my girlfriend, and these guys were the nexus my whole CAT dream rested on. I knew I could fall back on any of them anytime.
I am not writing a lot about QA, DILR, VARC here because it was more or less the same grind. In 3 months to CAT, I took almost 22–25 mocks, scrutinized them, smiled at good scores, cursed myself for bad ones, and kept hustling. A special mention to Moinack(FMS alum now, DT19) who took a VARC crash course that catapulted and stabilized my fluctuating VARC. It is not an exaggeration when I say I wouldn’t have been writing this had I not met Moinack. He wasn’t just a VARC coach but a mentor and friend in general.
It was with the support, belief, and push of all these people that I found hope again and was ready to take on the CAT..one last time!
D-day CAT 2020. Bas fir khatam krte hai
VARC: I breezed through the section having replayed the scenario countless times already. I was prepared for 345234601 ways things could go wrong and I still knew there could be more. RCs were fine, VA I anyway didn’t have a lot of hope
Next came DILR…………To put things in perspective, CAT2019VARC would feel like an easy sectional when compared to CAT2020DILR. This DILR was the real deal- nightmarishly unreasonably impossibly difficult!! DILR and I have had a love-hate relationship as you would have figured out by now. The first thing I did when I saw the pattern was that I took a deep breath and then I smiled. I knew that the section was difficult and would be the same for everyone. A replay of what went through my head in that 1 hour:
There were 5 sets…..
I started with the first one…spent 2–3 min…..and I was blank….Nope, cannot do this…
The next set…looks even more difficult….2 min into it….nope, cannot do this either…..
Third set…..Wow, this is the most difficult set I have ever seen…..
18 out of 26 questions seen, 10 minutes wasted, and no clue what to do.
BUT at the moment I controlled myself from spiraling into pity and in retrospect that was the most important moment in my paper. I knew I just need to perform to the best of my abilities and hope it is good enough RELATIVELY- and that I still had 30 minutes.
I looked at the 4th set. This was only a 4 question set but it felt doable. I still resisted the urge to do it and went to the last set.
Wow, this is pretty easy…..a standard Venn diagram set….did it under 5 minutes
Went back to set 4…now in a better state mentally….solved it in under 7 minutes
Went back to a 6 question set and in the remaining 15 minutes working on it. I cracked the set with 30 seconds left and as soon as I entered all the answers (It was a TITA set) time got over and the next section started.
Although I ended up making a silly mistake in that set because of which I got the entire set wrong and lost 22 potential marks but at that moment I knew it was the best I could have done. QA was a piece of cake and I didn’t make a lot of mistakes there.
I left the exam hall praying to God that I clear DILR cutoffs. I knew that if I do that I’ll definitely make it this year
Result:
Me: 99.92%
Amit: 99.6x%
Raman: 99.7x%
With a decent percentile in CAT, I knew that XAT might not really be necessary but I decided to give the exam. This time in CAT2017 style with 0 additional prep :)
Result: 99.93%
Act V: Calls and converts: The conclusion
I received calls from all BSchools I had applied to, namely A, B, C, L, K, I, XL, FMS. I ended up converting all of them too. The interview process and everything around it is a story for a different time. I met new folks along the way who helped me with interviews too; of course, Raman and Amit were there at every step too. In fact, we prepared everything together- from current affairs to maths to history to HR questions like Why MBA!?
Important themes that I want to stress in all of this is
1. The importance of quality people in your life: Everyone I mentioned in this story had a significant part to play in helping me reach here. It’s like a big puzzle that isn’t complete even if one piece is missing. If Raman hadn’t taken me to that lecture in 2017 I might have not been doing this right now. Meeting Aabhas in C’s PI, the fateful first encounter with my girlfriend, Rohit introducing me to DT and Moinack, Amit&Raman being an integral part of the 2020 journey, my family and its sacrifices, my managers understanding my situation- it is because of them that this happened.
2. The very crucial ability to keep going: If you want something, go get it. There are very very very few things in life that are impossible. And the rest can just be insanely difficult- but doable. Struggle when all odds are against you, struggle till you can, and then struggle some more! Because that is when the magic happens! Remember, it is darkest just before dawn.
My dawn: BLACKI FMS XL converts
Signing off
Anshu Pandey
Incoming IIMA PGP 21-23
ex-aspirant just like you!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anshupandey007/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anshu_kun/
