February beginning is a good time to review, recommit and restart. It is a good checkpoint for your CAT Prep. So, it is the perfect time for you to take a good, hard look at the status and progress of your CAT preparation. CAT-23 is almost 300 days away now. 300 days could be a...Read More

My IIM Bangalore personal interview was a breeze. It was as if I had scripted it. A friendly panel, questions from my comfort areas, a very positive and pleasant interaction. I wasn’t surprised when IIM B made me the final selection offer a few weeks later. My IIM Calcutta interview was a completely different experience....Read More

One of the major drag-downs on success in any field, including CAT preparation, is the tendency to take a lot of pressure. For most of us ordinary mortals, pressure has a negative impact on performance. It takes away a lot of energy, it can cause a brain-freeze at crucial times, and it doesn’t help us improve....Read More

A personal Interview is, first and foremost, an interaction. When you meet someone for the first time, your first takeaway is an impression from that interaction. The impression is usually qualitative – good, bad or umm.. unremarkable. Unlike the first stage of the selection process, wherein your CAT preparation results in some tangible numbers and percentiles as an objective...Read More

I tend to relate a lot of cricketing stuff with CAT Prep. Tendulkar was really good when he was just 14 years of age. He was smashing school records and dominating the best bowlers in the Mumbai circuit. He wasn’t a novice when he played against a formidable Pakistan pace bowling attack as a 16-year old...Read More

It was March 2001, if my memory serves me right. It was the day of my IIM Cal PI. The IIM Placement reports had just come in and a couple of days old Times of India front page carried the headlines of an IIM Cal student getting a 1 crore per annum package! Yes, this...Read More

The one area that seems vast and undefined for your B-School/IIM Personal Interview prep is awareness. During the first phase of your CAT preparation journey, you know the topics you will be tested upon and hence, the defined syllabus allows you to prepare accordingly. But this changes completely when it comes to the second stage of your...Read More

Not all CAT coaching success stories are struggles – some are relatively straightforward with just an occasional twist. But am sharing this one because it contrasts with the previous story of Hitanksha. She was a Journalism student of the Delhi University. And for her, it was the reunion with Quant after a long gap that presented a challenge....Read More

Often, when a CAT aspirant begins her/his CAT preparation or joins a CAT coaching institute, she/he expresses an apprehension. Usually, it is something similar to “I am weak in Quant” or “I didn’t have Math after class 10th”. Or some other version of ‘Quant-phobia’. It is probably the single most prevalent disease among CAT aspirants :)....Read More

Sometimes we tend to complicate things just because they are important. We feel they must be complicated just because they are important. It happens all the time during the CAT preparation process as well. Even the best CAT Coaching institutes tend to encourage this because somehow it adds the perception of value being added to the CAT coaching experience...Read More