The Three Mistakes of My Life: Another review, a bit different

I had decided not to buy it. I had read quite a few reviews on the net and more importantly, the maturity I was hoping to see with his successive writings was missing in the excerpts. Assuming that the excerpts of a book are some of its best texts, I was disappointed. I was disppointed even with the first few pages. The staring pages, where Chetan receives an email from an Ahmedabad based businessman, who is quite dramatically poping a sleeping pill after writing each sentence, seemed to me more as a bait to create artificial interest rather than a genuine start to a real good story.

However, I almost bought the book (you can't avoid looking at the book at a Crossword store given the sheer volume of the stacks. And how it occupies every conceivable corner in the store, sometimes balanced like a house of cards and sometimes like a DNA spiral. Sometimes like the now-stabilized Tower of Pisa and sometimes like Shanghai financial buildings. Wherever you look, the yellow-black book greams at you, unmistakably). But as fate would have it, one of the trainees reporting to me got so happy with my paternal mentoring that he innocently asked me one day whether I have read this book and when I just said "No" (I didn't say "I don't plan to either") and the next day, he was there with this book, neatly wrapped in Crossword paper. I had to read it. It's someone's gift and the feelings of someone ought to be respected.

You can get an idea of the story in many of the reviews splattered across the internet (I plan to do different things) - it's about three poor small town ("Small Town" Ahmedabad, one of India's biggest cities) friends (okay, one was probably not so poor) who won't stop talking the hippiest language ever invented, the language even college going students in some Mumbai suburbs hardly speak (at least in my experience, I have not found many in those places talking like that), who start a business of a sports store that was destined to doom because of the unfortunate turn of events in Gujarat and the "Mistakes" of the protagonist. Don't bother if the "Mistakes" aren't really mistakes. They are made to look like mistakes because they needed to make their way to the catchy title, "The Three Mistakes of My Life".

So what are the mistakes in "The Three Mistakes of My Life"? Here they are:
- A bit of complacency on Chetan's part that anything he writes sells. I am okay with his language, that's his style. But what an author needs is more thought going into his/her work. That was missing. Why do I say that? There is a three page description of something terribly unlikely happening atop a terrace. But there is absolutely no description when these three "small town" friends landed up for the first time in the dazzling "Australia" (and How?). No description of their feelings, the place, the "wow" factor they must have felt. Nothing.

- Unaccustomed Earth (Borrowed from Jhumpa Lahiri's title) and No research. When you write about environs that surrounds you, you may need little research. But when you write an entire book about some place you have only visited once or probably seen through the car window, you need to do a lot of homework. Chetan, with his limited bandwidth of time, couldn't have known much about how people live in the old town of Ahmedabad. Sadly, that, clearly, vividly shows.

- Misfit between storyline and the lines of thought of the author. The story is serious. It's about the hopes and aspirations of young people. Of loss. Desperation. It's the feeling of getting caged when you really wanted to fly. Chetan, in all likelihood, may not have felt a lot of these feelings in his life. It's fine if you haven't felt. But somehow, you need to have that longing. Even though its vicarious, because you have seen these boys from close quarters. Chetan can very well write about the longings, desperations of IIM grads. Even though he may not have felt. Actually, this book is a misfit in my expected Trilogy. IIT - Call Centre - Big Bang IIM. When you don't share feelings, it shows. There is a strange detachment in his narrator voice.

Having said all that (Puh, it's way too long, I really type fast!), the book is not entirely without its moments of pride. Few witty lines from Chetan pop up like fire moths in a dark tunnel. But that is too few and far between to make any substantial damage to this review. :)

Who wants to burn money?

The other day, I was reading an article on how to cut down on expenses, in one of the weekend issues of Time of India. The author talked at length about how you should shop fewer times in a month, how you should track and payoff credit card bills regularly, how you should make a note of where most of your money is getting burnt etc. All that is fine. I think most of us know that paying credit cards bills in time saves us the interest cost. But if that was so easy, wouldn't the credit card companies have shut shop buy now? Obviously, no one enjoys paying the interest and only when you can not make the entire payment, do you pay the exorbitant interest charges.

How do you then cut down on your expenses? One thing is certain: Cutting down on expenses always doesn't necessarily mean living a lesser life. "Spending Money" and "Blowing Money" are different things. Spending money can buy you a better lifestyle, Blowing money wouldn't. It would keep on cutting larger holes into your wallet, something I will write about in this article.

1. Understand Differential Pricing

I have made it a point to visit Multiplexes only on Saturday mornings. On weekend prime shows, the ticket rates shoot upto Rs. 150 each, while the morning show price is a mere Rs. 50. Why? Does it cost more to handle the prime time crowd? Absolutely not.

Business owners know that different people have different paying capacity. Their intention is simple: To make you pay the maximum you are willing to pay for a particular product or service. Each one of us have a threshold. For example, you can say, "Boss, I can pay a maximum 130 bucks for a movie at Inox, not beyond that". Now, if for some reason, Inox ticket price is 100 bucks, it's losing 30 bucks from you, given that you are willing to pay 130. If it charges 150 for a ticket, it will lose you entirely, of course.

Hence the catch is in charging different prices to different consumers, carefully studying their behaviour pattern to figure out how much they would be willing to pay. Rich guys (unlike me!) who would like to enjoy their evenings in the weekends would have to shell out thrice the amount I pay for watching a movie.

2. Early adopters pay through their nose

It's pure economics. I remember what my grandfather used to tell me; "When a new product comes to the market, there are not many buyers. So the cost of producing each item is more. Hence the price is higher". He probably was hinting at "Economies of Scale" that we keep harping on at B-school case discussions. However, that is partly correct. When Nokia N70 came out, it cost almost 30 thousand rupees in India. Do you think people went such mad over N70 and gobbled it in such huge quantities that now it's price is a mere Rs. 7800, because the average cost of producing an N70 dropped drastically? Impossible.

Nokia always had "Economies of Scale". It produces hudreds of thousands of phones everyday. The cost of producing an N70, I am sure, wouldn't have changed much in these years. Even when the price of N70 was thirty thousand, Nokia must be producing it for a couple of thousand rupees, raking in a profit of more than twenty thousand per phone! Boy, someone looted you terribly.

Why would Nokia charge such exorbitant price then? It is again quite related to my point above; Nokia knows that people who love to flaunt a gadget before anyone else does would pay anything for it. A very well known fact on consumer behaviour. Now you know that If you buy a "lifestyle" product right after launch, you are being obsenely charged for a product that doesn't deserve that price tag from a pure quality and feature perspective.

3. What Brand?

Branding is not free. If you pay Rs. 2300 for that pair of Reebok shoes, my guess is about Rs. 1000 is spent on branding (read paying the models, sponsoring cricket and baseball matches, buying TV spots etc.). The cost of producing a Reebok shouldn't be more than a couple hundred bucks (ignore those air suspension and all that non-sense features, they don't cost much to the company and don't help you much anyway).

Brand of course guarantees quality because a lot rides on the consumer (and media) goodwill. But, the price charged is disproportionate to its quality because of the branding overhead. Fine, it gives you an aura (really?) and a standing in the society as many would swear, but is it always wise to stick to brands? Let me give you some examples:

The Rs. 180 T-shirt I purchased from a local shop in my home town is still as new and as usable as it was 7 years back. In these seven years, I have used and thrown (or used as dusting cloth) several Adidas', Reeboks and Louis Phillippes.

Second example: A shaving cream (Nivea, Gillete and the like) costs under Rs. 50. Still, it almost lasts the same as a Gillette Foam Can and provides similar lather and soothing effect. The foam can costs about Rs. 300. Why? Because it's upmarket. Same for Gillete Mach III razor (Rs. 300) versus Gillete Presto (Rs. 45 perhaps).

Functionality wise, I see almost no difference. Yet there is a huge difference in price. Who sees what razor I use or what foam I smear on my face?

So here is the bottomline

Go ahead and buy the latest gadgets. But be ready to pay much more than what it's really worth. Be ready to pay for features that you would never use your entire life (like printing image directly from my Nokia mobile). Secondly understand differential pricing. Change your behaviour (if possible, like my saturday morning movie trips) so that you take advantage of the differential pricing (and not taken advantage of). Splurge on brands only when it makes a significant difference to your status, standing, ego etc. etc. Don't spend for the sake of spending on a brand.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are entirely personal. Brand names mentioned are only for illustrative purposes and not intended to reveal any opinion about any brand. These brands belong to their respective owners.

My second note on CAT after "CATme If You Can"

Repost from my blog catmeifyoucan.blogspot.com . I will cease to update the "catme..." blog as it's too difficult for me to maintain so many channels for CAT related discussion. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Foreword
Welcome back to my second note on CAT. I think CAT is a game. It is not exactly a test of intelligence. Neither is it a test of your memory. It just a tricky two hour game where you need to be alert, agile and cool. Believe me, a large part of CAT is a test of your personality - how quickly you make decisions, how poised you are under extreme tension, how you allocate and manage time and how you seek out easy questions.This note is rather comprehensive in coverage, including groundwork for CAT, preparation strategies, learning from mock CATs, sailing through the D-day and tips for GD/Interview. Hope it helps you in your endeavor.Good Luck!

To add some credibility to this note, let’s also add that the author Ashutosh Kar is part of IIM Ahmedabad 2007 batch. He received final admission calls from all the six IIMs. Please refer to his earlier note “CATch Me If You Can” for short-cuts and problem solving techniques for the Quantitative section. You can download both these notes from his website http://www.geocities.com/get2reach . He can be reached at get2reach@yahoo.com.

Let’s Play
I sometimes wonder – where would I be and what I would be doing if I didn’t make it to the IIMs. I honestly don’t see myself anywhere, except of course trying to bell the CAT one more time. Before I go on to tell you what to do, what not to do and how to prepare, let me make one thing clear. CAT is not for people who can do without an IIM. I have harped on this point earlier too. If you think IIMs are where you ever wanted to be, there is a good chance that you actually land up there. Stay passionate and top it up with pure unadulterated HARD WORK. There is surely no easy way out to grab the CAT.

Words such as these may sure sound like a dragged on cliché – but let me tell you, Quants, Verbals or LRs come much later in your preparation for CAT. You start with a passion and that passion alone can see you through the exam. Everything else is just a byproduct, be it confidence, expertise, performance.

Having said that let me go straight to how you prepare for the various sections.

A little bit of a disclaimer before you start. The views expressed here are solely my own and the strategies I have employed have worked for me. I don’t claim that they would work for everyone. During the course of your preparation, you would find many experts saying many things about how to prepare. My word of caution to you – don’t ask around a lot of people about how to prepare. Everyone has his/her own opinion and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the opinions run exactly opposite to each other. A lot of suggestions will ultimately get you confused. I asked no one. I did what I thought was right for me.

Preparation
If someone were to ask me – what takes the maximum time to build expertise in - I would say ‘Verbals’. Because a command over English doesn’t get built overnight. But if you already have a good reading habit and if you are good at grammar, there is good news. You just need to refine that skill with fast reading, a vocabulary brush-up and certain not-so-obvious rules of English grammar. GMAT English section is really good in these. You can buy the GMAT official guide and other guide books from Princeton or Kaplan and work the verbal section out.

Let me also tell you the advantages of a good reading habit. Even if you think you aren’t exactly improving your grammar or English language skills, you pickup certain things subconsciously. The sentence syntaxes get stored in your mind and when you see a sentence correction question in CAT, you would automatically know whether the sentence is wrong. Or when you see a word whose meaning you don’t know exactly, you would recall automatically the context the word was used and you would be surprised how accurately you can guess its meaning.

As for vocabulary, there is a word of caution. Don’t get obsessed with it. That won’t help you get anywhere. CAT is moving away from vocabulary testing, though the coaching classes still hang on to pure Vocabulary questions in mock CATs. Don’t mug up the Vocabulary lists. Look through them and find words familiar to you. Try to see if you know their meanings. However, while reading if you see a new word, note it down along with a couple of words that followed and preceded it so that when you later look the word up in the dictionary, you exactly know how it was used in the text.

Regarding reading comprehension, what you need most is concentration with a little bit of technique. When you read a passage that is not engaging (which many of them certainly are), your attention tends to drift away. Though you keep on running your eyes over the text, you actually don’t understand anything of what is written. Relax, that is very common.

You can start by having a positive attitude towards reading comprehension passages. Think in your mind that the passage is interesting and you are going to know what is there inside. ‘It’s sure something new to me and I want to learn what the author is trying to say’. This attitude makes your task easier and you start understanding what is written. Moreover, if you have developed liking in a wide array of subjects, there is a high probability that you would enjoy reading whatever is given in the passage. But I must say that you should learn to concentrate while reading those difficult passages. If you are not able to, work on it – forget everything else while reading a passage and try to get absorbed in the subject.

The eye-span thing worked well for me. I could improve my speed by not going through each word one by one, but by breaking a single line into two parts and reading a single line in just two eye movements. This is called increasing your eye-span. You can try this out. It works! So, you read half a line at a time and not 5 words one at a time. Don’t get too bogged down by a line if you don’t understand it. That line may not be needed at all for answering the questions. However, try to be extra-cautious about the starting and ending lines in a paragraph because in a well written article, the first line explains why the paragraph is written and the last line gives a short summary of the whole paragraph. Even if that is not the case, reading these two lines gives you a fairly good idea about what the paragraph is trying to say. If you don’t understand what is inside the paragraph, you can revisit it if a question is asked from that paragraph. But don’t spend undue time in trying to understand each and every line, unless the line seems to absolutely critical.

Some say it’s a good idea to run an eye through the questions before reading the paragraph. I have found it dangerous. I lose valuable time in reading the questions. Sometimes the questions themselves are so difficult that unless you read the paragraph, you won’t understand what the questions mean. You are in a soup if you end up spending 2 minutes in reading the questions and understand nothing. My suggestion – forget the questions. Start reading the paragraph right away. Underline important names, keywords etc. as you go along.

Now coming to Logical reasoning, I believe it’s a skill you can’t do much about. You need to have the knack to crack the logic behind the question. Your thinking should be clear and systematic. However, I feel there are couple of things which if taken care of could improve your speed further in that section.

First, try to use visual tools to understand the question faster and build a map so that you don’t jumble up thing later. Say if Sita is the sister of Nita and Radha is the mother in law of Nita and Gita is the daughter of Nita, there is a high chance that you end up confusing the names and end up with Sita being the daughter of Gita. You could do well to draw a family chart and keep it in front of your eyes while you solve the question. Develop your own shorthand notation for various things. For example, don’t write ‘Nita’, just write N (provided all the names start with different letters). Similarly for questions in which you are given some clues and you need to fill up all others (Prof A, B, C teach subjects X, Y, Z on days P, Q, R, then some clues and the question asks you who teaches what on which day), draw a grid immediately with one column each for Prof, Subject and Day and try to match them. You can employ various techniques such as writing all possible options in a grid and eliminating them progressively as you keep on reading the clues and apply your logic.

Logical reasoning is unlike any other section in CAT. It is a high risk game. From my personal experience I can tell you – sometimes it’s like a nasty trap. You think the question is simple and you go after it. Say even after spending 5 minutes you are not able to crack it. You think why leave the question when I already have spent 5 minutes on it? Just one more minute of try and I can quickly answer the 3 questions that follow. You are already into a trap where you think that the question can be solved anytime with a little more effort. After 10 crucial minutes are gone, your heart starts racing. You don’t know whether to leave it or not. It’s painful because you have spent so much time on it – Do you then move on? When do you decide to move on?

There is no simple answer to this. If you think CAT is all about having strong fundamentals in Quants and a great deal of knowledge in English language, you are probably not correct. CAT is also about making decisions quickly. Which questions to attempt, when to leave a question and move on, what to attempt first, how to allocate time. These softer things play as much a role as any Quant or verbal skill does. Read a question and see if you have solved anything like that before. Can I crack it in given time? Does the number of questions that follow the LR justify the time I am going to spend on it? Learn to make these decisions.

Logical reasoning questions can’t have a well explainable strategy. I gave some hints; you can develop your own strategy that suits you the most.

Let’s come to my favourite subject. The quantitative section. There is not really any ground work to be done in quants except mugging up the multiplication tables, squares and cubes. You would find information on these and on various short-cut techniques in the ‘CATch Me If You Can’ document that I prepared. Most of what you will need in Quants section would anyway be provided by your coaching class, if you join one. If you are not joining one, you should seriously consider buying the material from someone else and register at least for the mock tests. If you don’t appear All India mock tests, you probably don’t want to appear in CAT.

Quants is one area you can improve upon a lot if you work systematically and intelligently. I remember when I started solving Quants, I used to solve the section tests of IMS. I could solve only about 10 questions in 40 minutes with an average of 3 mistakes per test. This is no doubt a fairly poor performance. Not that I was bad at Quants or something; I was pretty good in Quants having been selected for the National Mathematics Olympiad – just that I didn’t have the kind of agility needed for CAT kind of questions. Weeks before the actual CAT, I could easily solve about 20 questions with an average of 2 mistakes only. This number improved to about 23-24 while my target was 27-28. Though I don’t remember attempting 27 questions ever in any mock test, 22 was a fairly good number given that the cutoffs normally hover in the range of 10-12 (again this is my perception and not a vedic dictum)

If I list down the factors that helped me improve my speed, they would in the order of significance be:
1. Practice, practice and more practice
2. Use of shortcuts, quick calculation etc. (Refer to my guide on shortcuts ‘CATch Me If You Can’)
3. Careful analysis of which questions took more time and why, which questions were omitted, why were some easy questions not attempted, how do I figure out which questions can be solved in a flash etc.
4. Willingness to improve my speed every time I attempted a paper
5. Confidence that if I solve a question, it would be right because I have done similar question many times before.

You see, practice gives you confidence. If you have attempted CAT-like full length papers many times and have scored well, in actual CAT you would not be that nervous. Most of CAT questions would look easy to you and you would know how exactly to solve them. I was surprised to find that the CAT-2004 Quant section seemed like a kid’s job to me and I finished answering 30 marks in just 15 minutes!

How much time per day?
This is a nagging concern. Given that many of you would also be appearing for their finals in your respective degrees, devoting time towards preparing for CAT could be difficult. If you start very early, say in December, you could devote 1 hour a day till say July and still be fine. But if you start in April or May, you might need about 2 hours every day. Don’t increase the number of hours per day drastically as CAT approaches. You will break yourself. 4-5 hours a day is okay couple of weeks before the CAT. You should be preparing at a healthy pace when CAT approaches. Not last moment cramming.

I would any day suggest joining a class-room coaching. I have benefited a lot from it. Not that the professors there are great and you get to learn a lot from them. In most cases, they just solve what is scheduled for the day and then leave immediately as their billed hours get over. Most don’t stay back after the class to answer your personal questions because they are not paid for that. But yeah, some good professors in my coaching class did stay back.

What helps you most when you join a class is that you fall into a routine. Everyday you attend the classes, spend two hours solving questions, work for the next day and appear for tests almost every other day. More importantly, you get to mix with sharper people, learn from them and get motivated by them. Additionally, the handouts given by the coaching class that I joined had some real good questions not given in the material.

The best thing you can do while preparing is be regular. Appear classes regularly, write tests regularly and judge your improvements regularly. That way you maintain a healthy pace and slowly build up confidence. If you stop preparing for say a month, you speed drops significantly and you start worrying.

Mock CAT and the D-day CAT
Mock tests are extremely important. However, don’t enroll for all kinds of tests being conducted out there by all kinds of coaching classes. I think the 8 SIMCATs by IMS is just the right number of tests you need before the D-day. Prepare well before the tests and don’t take them lightly. Every time you appear for a SIMCAT, try to surpass your previous score and percentile.

However, don’t get frustrated with the mock CAT percentiles. I never scored great percentiles in mock CATs for various reasons. However, I kept on improving and that is important. It never ceases to surprise me how wildly the mock CAT and actual CAT percentiles vary for many people. I have seen friends do extremely well in mock CATs and yet not get a single call from anyone of the IIMs. I believe what happens on the actual day is a different ball game altogether. And you need to play that ball well. By staying confident and cool.

Tell yourself that you are better than all other guys who have come to the exam hall. The astronomical number of people appearing for CAT is not a true representation of how tough the exam is. About 80% of them don’t have any clue as to what it takes to crack the CAT. I have never heard any of my friends ever securing less than 80 percentile, no matter how under-prepared they were. So, you are not competing with 1.6 lakh people; it’s just 32,000. And you need to be in the top 3000 or so to get a call. That means it’s just about one in 11 and not 1 in 100 as the coaching classes and the media want you to believe. Boy that does something to boost your confidence!

Every time I came out of mock CATs, I found myself not satisfied with the kind of questions asked. I was even more disillusioned with the answers to RC passages. I always thought that in an actual CAT there won’t be any controversial questions and whatever I answer would be right.

Whoa! I just scrolled up and realized how long this note has become. Okay, let me wind up quickly. The final hurdle in your journey towards one of most hallowed places in the country is the GD/Interview.

GD/Interview
I don’t have much to say about interviews because they are like any other interviews where you just go and present yourself. No rocket science involved. Plain vanilla commonsense. Be it having proper dress sense, showing confidence, making eye-contact or greeting the interviewer while going in and coming out. I don’t think I need to harp on these any further.

What really amazes me is the kind of stories that go around about preparing for a GD. They are further fuelled by the coaching classes that try to scare your guts out by asking you to remember scores of strategies you must use to cut into the discussion. Shall I mention those strategies? Those are utter crap!

Let me tell you some of the strategies I was taught in my mock GD session:
Better be the first one to start. You get an added advantage. You lead the discussion.
Try to figure out who is the weakest speaker. It’s easy to cut him/her short.
Try to raise your voice which getting into the discussion and level your voice afterwards.
Try to summarize the discussion when you see no one else is talking much sense.
Try to bring the discussion to track if it goes off-track
You should be coming into the discussion at regular intervals and when you come, try to speak for about 30 seconds for the judges to take note of you.
See if someone is pausing for breath. That is the right time to come in and just grab it!

Utter nonsense! Don’t buy into these terrible strategies that go around year after year. I would probably not speak at all if I try to apply some of these in an actual GD, let alone cutting someone short.Probably these stories go around because there are far fewer people attending GDs than the CAT. Many are not aware of what actually happens in a GD. Moreover, the coaching classes probably want to psyche you out so that you fall back on them for a decent dose of GD tactics.

While it would be far from correct to say that these strategies are never going to help anyone perform well in a GD, I believe it’s senseless trying to apply some foreign knowledge and manipulate your natural self.

I am about to end my note. I would say that before you go to a GD, talk to the people present there. Show a GENUINE interest to be friends with them. Ask them about their calls, place, background, name and everything else. Don’t play tricks. Just be friends. It helps you in two ways. One, your nervousness withers away. Two, when you go the GD, it’s not a GD anymore. It’s just a canteen discussion among friends. Speak your heart out. Speak as if you feel for the topic and feel for your stand.

You would not realize when you cut someone short, when you talked for 30 seconds, when you argued hard, when you supported someone and when you summarized what you understood. Be in the discussion. Forget everything else.

Good Luck!
Gaurav said... hi ashutosh!gr8 work man! i hope i can share ur work elsewhere with credits to u.2:04 AM
Santosh said... Hi AshutoshReally a great work.I have got the untold and real picture of cracking the CAT.Based on your personal and practical experience.The points mentioned about RC is touching to almost every candidate.Hope I'll share this info to my friends.Thanks for tips.Santosh10:40 PM
Bharat Jhurani said... Thnk u so much Ashutosh.. the tips r really useful... Do keep us updated...1:18 AM
kulkarniy2k said... Hi Ashutosh!!That really did a lot of good to my confidnce... Thanks a lot!3:05 AM kulkarniy2k said... Hi Ashutosh!!That really did a lot of good to my confidnce... Thanks a lot!3:05 AM
s said... hi your catch me if u can document requires a password. wt wud it b7:44 AM
Ashutosh Deo said... Great Article! Boosted my confidence!Thanks a lot for your sharing your clear and practical thoughts.5:41 AM
Adwait Deshpande said... hi ashutoshreally nice to hear ur views about the cat exm and gd's tooi am sure they will help all the cat aspirants .so just 15 days for catany last minute tipsPS i too do not support last minute cramming9:09 AM
abcde19282002 said... Hey dude cn v hv a link exchangemba-knowledge.blogspot.comb-school.blogspot.comjust reply me if u wanna go ahead...11:04 AM
shyam said... hi ashutosh thank u so much........the tips are really useful.........but ashutosh i need u cat 1998-2006papers so please help me again.....thank's a lot your bettre idea for methank u9:43 PM
Apsara said... wow! what an awesome article :)....im feeling so positive...the best part is where you say "starting early, like in december...1 hr is okay". actually, i have started preparing for CAT-2008 since last month,and i try to give 2 hrs each day, but i still felt insecure thinking about people who started 2 yrs before, or 1.5 years ahead of the eaxm , but i feel better now!i need to work on my general awareness, bus. economics etc along with basic cat prep. , butthat seemed too tough until now :)...a very inspiring artile, thank you "sir":)8:51 PM

CAT Related Questions and Answers

Friends, as it's difficult for me to maintain so many channels for CAT related discussion, I will be henceforth posting all related stuff on this blog and NOT on catmeifyoucan.blogspot.com . I reposting this article from the "catmeifyoucan" blog here.

Questions and Answers:Following are answers to some of the queries I received from readers of my website and blogs. I will keep adding to this list as I get more mails. Please go through the answers thorougly before asking any question. Your concern might have aleady been answered!

Q. Which books to refer?
A. There is an overwhelming number of books available in the market that try to teach you everything from logical reasoning to reading comprehension. From quantitative skills to GD/PI. Would it help to get hold of a book?Well, may and may not. If you think you lack the bare minimums in a particular area, say in Quantitative ability or in Logical Reasoning questions, you might look for a book. But honestly, in my opinion, that is not necessary.I prepared off IMS materials and I didn't feel the need for buying any other book to help me in my preparation. What was given in the IMS materials were more than enough. CAT is not exactly predictable and what you really need to crack CAT is an experience in solving a variety of questions. You can do that by solving all the questions handed out to you by your coaching institute. You might also want to solve previous years' CAT papers. I have found that to be helpful. There are publishers who publish last 10 years' CAT papers. Solve them if you find time.Books wouldn't teach you anything out of the world. Ultimately the basics you need to crack the CAT Quantitative section are the 10th standard maths with some +2 level stuff such as logs thrown in. The coaching classes cover in just sufficient details these aspects of CAT and I never had any problems getting back to the basics. I thought I would buy a Reading Comprehension book, but abandoned that thought later. I didn't see any value add. RC is all about how fast you read and understand a passage. I thought that would come more from my regular reading habits, a conscious effort to increase speed, clear focus everytime I read and repeated practice, rather than some bookish gyaan. I think I took the right decision.In my opinion, don't bother about books before you even start preparation. Take a coaching class stuff, read and solve the questions and test papers. If you think you seriously lack an ability that is not duly fulfilled by the coaching material, consider buying books.

Q. Only 5 months are left. Is it too late?
A. The best answer to this question is of course 'It depends'. But I know that won't serve your purpose; especially for those of you who want to know if they can hope to crack CAT in such a little time. Well, I think 5 months is not that small for preparation. All you need to aggression in preparation. If you good at Quants, you can easily brush up your skills in 5 months. However, Verbal ability wouldn't be easy to refine. Logical reasoning doesn't take a long time to be a master at. It depends only your reasoning and thinking ability - how clear, concise and systematic you think. I think logical reasoning is more of a gifted skill rather thancultivated. However, as I already have told you in my cat blog entry 'CATbolism', one can improve his/her speed by adopting certain structured ways of LR solving.So the bottomline is, if you think you are good and just need to brush up things and get upto speed, 5 months could be just right with a little bit of extra effort. However, if you are not confident of your abilities vis-a-vis CAT, you might need more than 5 months.

Q. I am thirty. Would I have problems in getting a placement in investment banks? I only have experience in IT.
A. I don't think that should be a problem. But you still might have a question in your mind, 'Why would i-banks take me in the first place?' Well, if that is the question you have in your mind, let me tell you that i-banks prefer people who are good at numbers and have good analytical ability. If you CV or your Grade point/marks prove this to them, you might be on board!

Q. Is reading newspapers, articles from magazines sufficient for English?
A. IIMs don't need future Bookers prize winners. You don't have to be a literature genious. Nobody expects you to be. What CAT looks for is people who have a good sense of English with a decent vocabulary and knowledge of English grammar so that when you write company reports, you don't embarass your alma mater. That's it.Someone who already has a good reading habit would already know the basic grammar rules and would instantly know if a sentence is correct or wrong. Or whether a sentence would precede or follow another. If you didn't have such a habit, there is nothing to worry. I didn't have a great reading habit. I used to read only Page 3 out of Times of India, and never the editorial. However, I started reading magazines and newspaper editorials when I started preparing. My grammar was never a problem and reading helped me refine those skills.So start reading newspapers and magazines. Any reputed one that you can lay your hands on. For grammar, if you wish, you can buy a grammar book..but that way you would waste time on things that might never be tested. I would suggest working out the GMAT grammar instead. That was really helpful.

Q. Do I need a coaching?
A. Yes you do, in most cases. Even if you are super genious, to channelize your skills to CAT type questions and to practice the 2 hours of gruelling test, you must join a coaching, correspondence or classroom. I have found classroom coaching to be helpful when you are not able to squeeze out time out of your busy schedule to devote to CAT preparation. Once you join a classroom coaching, you must attend the class and you must spend say 1 hour at preparation. It falls into a routine and you don't skip or postpone your preparation. But don't expect to get god-level gyaan from the coaching institute instructors.How many hours of study when only five months are left?I think it's difficult to prepare for more than 3 hours a day when you have other obligations/engagements. For some people even three hours a day could be a luxury. Those guys should start early preparation...say right after CAT is over (not the CAT you want to appear :P ). I don't have much patience. Even if I were absolutely free, I couldn't have prepared for more than three hours because of fatigue. And normally, preparing for more than 3 hours is not required.Avoid taking CAT preparation as a crash course. Build up skills slowly over a period of time. Start early so that you don't have to devote more than 2 hours a day. But yes, in weekends, you need to spend more time. As CAT approaches, those 2 hours can stretch a 'little' longer. But for heaven's sake, don't burn yourself in days leading up to the CAT.

Q. What are the usual cutoffs?
A. This is a gray area that no one has a clear idea about. I would be wrong if I say anything about cutoffs. The reason is simple. Questions change every year, the difficultly levels change and your peer group (I mean other fellow aspirants) changes. Cutoffs are a function of all of these. Better the crop and easier the questions, higher would be the cutoff. Keep track of all cutoffs that various coaching centre guys give out and try to match them and draw a realistic target yourself. But worry about cutoffs only after you have appeared CAT. Until CAT, the last thing you need to worry about is cutoffs. I am sure you don't wanna clear just the cutoffs. Do you? If you do, you are never going to clear to CAT anyway. So why bother? :)

Q. How should I start? When should I start?
A. Pretty global question. I have already answered the when part, more or less. About 'how' part, well read up my post 'CATabolism' and you would get some ideas. Start by visiting various coaching centres, bring their prospectus down and see what you like most in terms of hours of contact, mock test papers etc. Take feedback from any local fellow aspirant/MBA student who has already gone through the same thing. If you are planning to take a correspondence course, visit the coaching centre websites and find out about them. I don't want to suggest joining any particular institute for the simple reason that I haven't got a chance to compare institutes.So my suggestion would have no meaning. Start reading magazines and calculating without the help of a calculator. Mug up tables and use them while solving questions. Follow a strict routine and solve the coaching class stuff in time. Don't postpone things. Stay passionate and have confidence. The moment you lose confidence, you would want to drop out. Say to yourself, 'CAT is not that difficult afterall'. All the best :)

posted by Ashutosh Kar at 6:55 AM on Jun 26, 2006

Bharat Jhurani said...
Yeah!! CAT is not tht difficult afterall.... Jus around 40 dayz 2 go....
8:31 AM
rocky said...
Hey dude....wanna link exchange wid b-schools.blogspot.comIf yes just comment on any of the post.i'l link u up.
11:57 AM
manzu said...
hi.. this is to Ashutosh ... i joined the classes for catbut could attend due to heavy schedule of my job..but now i have resigned and planning to spend my time in preparation.. verbal i finished doing ..but reading i have not spent much time. can u suggest me how to prepare for the remaining days.........

FCB (Don’t tell me you don’t know what it is)

I am tired of feminists. Of their incessant ranting and fuming about how inconsiderate we men are. How “All” men are the SAME (probably DOGs of the same breed?). How they have robbed women of their rightful place in history and how they have - from the time they became “Men” from apes - subjected women to oppression (And hence caused them depression couple of thousands of years later?).

All you empty-headed “so-called” feminists, give us a break. And please, please spare us that “All Men” nonsense. Understand that there is a fat line between supporting someone’s cause and maligning others. It is indeed commendable that many women have come forward and helped the cause of women, to drag them out of their men-dominated and male-inflicted misery. These are women who work out there on the field, listening to the oppressed, talking to them, understanding their plight and taking their cause to heart. I wouldn’t call them feminists even though they work for women. They are like any other group of people who work for the under-privileged; who believe in a cause and try to help turn around the life of a section of human beings in dire need of someone’s help. They help people in distress. Men or Women isn’t so much of an issue here.

And then there is this metro-bred, well-heeled, hair-frizzed, foundation-covered nothing-much-to-do-at-home-so-let-us-write-some-crap class of feminists. You would find them with remarkable regularity mostly in third grade articles (sadly in weekend issues of leading newspapers, spoiling all the fun of reading a weekend issue) going all out to bash the darker sex. Their unbelievably shallow and insipid articles quote a couple of instances of women (who probably they happen to know personally) who have fought against all odds and secured success in a “Man’s world” (and I thought they would never use this word!). Then they claim - on the back of such handful of instances – that women have indeed “Arrived” (where exactly were they all this while?).

Why don’t these sun-deprived feminists drag their fat bodies to the hinterlands of India - where India truly lives - and find out how terribly insufficient their examples are to prove their point. There are places in rural India where women don’t know if they are meant to be treated at par with Men. That they have the same right to life as Men. That they are women, not slaves. These women don’t see these instances of “Arrived” women and feel proud about it.

Let me tell you what irks me about these feminists. They, almost without fail, quote a couple of instances of successful women (as if women weren’t successful a decade ago, we had a women prime minister, remember?) and go on to claim that women are in no way inferior to men, because there is a women who is a pilot, there is another who is leading a corporate, there is yet another who is fighting for the country at the border. Five percent of their articles is about a couple of women they know, and the rest ninety percent is full of male-bashing and unbearable clichés about how a women effortlessly juggles various roles as a mother, sister, wife, lover etc. etc. (Men can play only one role at a time, say only a father, but not a son, only a husband but not a father, right?). In one of the articles I read recently, a woman wrote that the “only” reason why Men must still be needed has just been taken away with the advancement in technology that fertilizes eggs without requiring sperm, making Men completely dispensable. It’s unfortunate that I can’t show the expression on my face as I write this. “Utter crap” is an understatement. By writing such a text, the author did more harm to Womankind than Man, by showing how air-headed “some” woman could be.

I respect Women. I respect them from the bottom of my heart. Not because they have “Arrived”, or they can juggle several roles with ease, or because they are in the army or the corporate. I respect them because they are fellow human beings representing a different facet of humankind, with different skills and attributes. This mutual difference is at the heart of a beautiful coexistence that we must value and treasure. The charm of this coexistence is in knowing, recognizing and respecting this mutual difference. Men and Women are not meant to be equal in all aspects. They are meant to compliment each other for a beautiful world.

The point I am trying to make is that it makes little sense to bash men while supporting the cause of women. Men are not born to trouble women. I do agree that in many (in fact a lot) of instances, Men have tortured Women, humiliated them and belittled them. I agree that this has happened for generations in India and elsewhere in the world. I do recognize this grossly deplorable and sinister side of Men.

However, I see the problem not as much in Men as in the way the human beings are designed. The problem with Men is that they have been made physically stronger (does anyone dispute that?) by God, which, by default, gives them ready “Power” at their disposal. The lanes of history is littered in examples of misuse of Power by those who had them, because Power comes with an uncontrollable urge to test its limits, to see the effects of its use on those who it can be tried upon. It takes great courage and responsibility to control the urge to misuse power and we have seen many, whether men or women, falling prey to the spell of Power. Men aren’t infallible. Many have failed to restrain their physical Power and not use it on Women to inflict pain upon them.

The other, and probably more relevant reason for why Women have chosen to take a back seat in producing “Tangible Success” is their childbearing and nurturing responsibility, which, to some extent, has been forced upon them by the machinations of Almighty. This reason, however, has been misconstrued by Men (some Men, that is) as a sign of weakness and handicap, because in the days of brawn-centric domination, women couldn’t contribute much. Things, however, are different (though not completely) today.

There is absolutely no doubt that India is changing, albeit slowly. Women today have a better support system than they had in the past. The realization about rights as women is deeper than it was in the past. Media reaches more homes than what would have been imagined by many, a decade ago. The stories of women who have risen above the cut have been beamed to and impressed upon many women who look forward to some inspiration to take that one final leap. India, however, still remains a vast under-penetrated land where women still accept their fate as is; their oppression sometimes explicit and sometimes subtle.

The society is a fabric of crisscrossing threads of men and women. You can’t remove or sever the horizontal threads leaving only the vertical threads and still keep the fabric intact. What women need to realize is that the Men aren’t the only ones to comfortably blame for all their problems. Some part of the blame lies with them too and the major part with all of us, as a society, in failing to protect and nurture women so that they live with respect, dignity and achieve their full potential.

I am sure not many among us would go down on the street and fight for the cause of women. But each of us can do our bit in helping their cause. It could start with our friends, the children we would nurture (or already do), the people we know and most importantly (for Men though), the woman we live with or want to live with. Give women the love and respect they deserve and you will realize that nothing else in the world gives you better returns for what you invest (Sorry for that financial adulteration, blame it on my diploma from IIMA).

In the meanwhile, I have a few words for those big-mouthed feminists who write cheap, insensitive articles on weekend papers: “It doesn’t help being an FCB” (who needs the expansion? Mail me at get2reach@yahoo.com).

Ah, Pune!

I apprehensively looked out of the smoky double-glass window of my AC Chair car compartment lest I should miss my station. The almost opaque glass helped little to see and make out the place that came on and went by outside the cold confines of my temperature-controlled bogey. Someone had told me that this was the only express train - fitted also with an air-conditioned car - that stopped at Chinchwad station. My journey so far - along with two heavy-weight boxes, a cabin bag, a laptop bag and couple of books and magazines pushed desperately into a Crossword carry bag - from Mumbai had been as uneventful as most parliamentary debates. I kept feeding on Kiran Desai’s “Inheritance of Loss” while also nibbling away at the superbly cold and semi-insipid bread-veg-cutlet served to me by the attending staff in pale crimson colored uniform made darker by the dirt deposits. Their name-tags hung from their shirt pockets, looking directly at the ground, invisible to the mankind.

Outside, in an orange-tinted haze, platforms came and escaped. Beside the shiny gray metal tracks, the landscape changed; from the sleek high rises in Parel to the shanties and multistoried pile of tin and undercooked bricks enjoying, with sharp contrast, the hip-shaking services offered by Salellite TV; from the garbage mound in Dadar to the overwhelming vistas of Khandala; From the graffiti-spoiled pale bridges in Mumbai to the dark, water-spraying tunnels of Lonavla;

I knew Pune approached. I knew because the size of human construction beside the tracks grew - from one story to two stories to five stories to ten stories. I dragged my heavy-weight luggage slowly through the narrow alley negotiating my way carefully through the protruding ankles and bulging out heads of dozing passengers, towards the inconsiderate door that kept on hitting back on anyone who tried to breach its line; a line that separated the air-conditioned and un-air-conditioned world. The foam-seated class and the wood-seated class. The cold-cutlet eating class and the hot banana-peel eating class. The class that throws food (along with packaging) onto the tracks and the class that searches for food on the tracks.

Blocking the toilet entrance, in shocking and shameful lack of consideration for public convenience were stacked up baggage of passengers who planned to alight some stops later. It didn’t matter if their “planned” stop was about an hour away. For them, it’s nothing short of an achievement to have “reserved” strategic places so that they are the ones to alight first. What a terrible desire to come first!

I pulled with great difficulty all my baggage through the narrow exit, made narrower by these inconsiderate souls. I looked at these people and thought whether they deserved to travel by an air-conditioned coach. Whether they deserved to earn the money they earned. While some merrily spilled groundnut skin on the floor, others thoughtlessly climbed on the seats with their shoes on, to remove baggage from overhead holds. Yet some others emptied Haldiram moong dal into their fat mouths and tossed the packets to the floor in disgusting nonchalance.

Before the soliciting and universally irritating autowallahs mobbed me, I quickly exited the station and moved onto the road. I don’t know if I invented (or discovered) this theory, but I have certainly made it a popular strategy among my friends: that you get the best auto/taxi deal when you hire it from the road, rather than the station stand. When you hire an auto/taxi from the road, there is a significant chance that you are mistaken for a local and quoted the right price. On the other hand, if you actually are a stranger (which some of these unscrupulous elements can read accurately in a flash) and try to hire an auto/taxi from the station stand, you are likeier to be charged twice (or thrice or even more depending on how lost you look).

However, this time, the trick didn’t work; at least for the first time. I flagged down an auto and asked him the price to Talawade (this is where I have my office). The guy was in absolute hurry, almost like a terrorist eager to witness the site of blast. He spat out “180” and almost ordered me to bend myself into his auto. I knew that the price he was quoting was almost double the “fair” value. I stopped just short of saying “F*** off” and continued walking in the other direction. The way I looked at him with scorn and almost laughed off his solicitation must have surely humiliated the auto guy. He came down to “120” in a flash and this time shouted at me to sit in his auto, tilting himself out of his cramped driving position, his fat figure looming out of the timid auto, almost like a fat worm peeping out of its hole. I shouted back and continued walking away from him.

I later caught hold of a shaky old auto driver and thanked myself for doing to good job of reaching office without paying any new-comer premium.

This was my experience so far, in reaching Pune. And it was all well for the first couple of weeks when the climate was pleasant with almost no humidity and the sun sporting a soothing glow. And then it rained. And it RAINED.

What a rain it was! Buckets got emptied in the sky and the water crashed onto the city almost like water gushing out of a dam. The road to my apartment, which I thought was safe enough to save itself from drowning, disappeared along with the vacant plot by its side. In its place, there was water, flattening the terrain inside its belly. Tea-coloured plateau reigned till the concrete-lined horizon, punctuated intermittently by occasional braving cyclist or motorcyclist who waded through the wheel-deep muddy water.

Then I witnessed some misplaced bravado. A corolla stood at the bank of the waters by the roadside and in the drizzle, a semi-wet middle-aged executive stood in a pensive mood. All the four doors of the Toyota Corolla were open. I snail-paced my bike and peeped inside. There was a small pool inside which the driver of the car desparetely tried to empty. I conjectured that the pot-bellied executive must have asked his driver to drive through the water, confident that the water wasn’t deep enough to cause any havoc. Tch Tch!!!

My woes were, however, far worse than the pot-bellied executive. From my apartment, the office took a tiring and irritating 45 minutes, enough time for the rainwater to seep through every square inch of cloth and comfortably wet every square inch of the skin. Almost everyday, I returned home, completely drenched - my neatly washed and pressed shirt polka-dotted by the mud-spitting spinning tires of the four-wheelers that overtook me, my shoes filled up with water and making splotching noises when I walked, my office documents virtually floating in water inside the bag - all dripping and shaking.

Thus I continued my to and fro ordeal to office, completely submitted to the fury and vagary of Pune rain. More unfortunately, my car showed no signs of arriving. The driver who was supposed to drive it to Pune caught flu at the most inopportune moment and was down sine die.

Pune is a great city though. Once you get used to rain, and get used to get drenched, rains matter no more. You enjoy playing hide and seek with it; timing your stay in malls to avoid it; racing your bike just enough to escape it; stopping at the shop-shade at the right time. And I have been doing exactly that. The monstrous Pune-rain, in the mean time, has taken a few days off.

I am back!

After a long self-imposed hiatus - because of a compulsive desire to do nothing to make up for doing a "lot of things"during a supposedly gruelling two years at IIM Ahmedabad - I am back to blogging again!

The problem with me writing new stuff regularly is that I don't write my daily routine on the blog. I write when I find a topic worthy enough to narrate to others, so that the very few people, who, either by mistake or by innocuously following an innocuous link or are coaxed into or misquided by a fellow blogger to read my blogging page don't waste their time reading it.

I have started to write on many things parallely, but can't sit long enough on an article to give it finishing touches. The article on Pune was supposed to be much longer, but my patience gave away.

So here's presenting you with my first come back article, half-cooked from my literary impatience. Enjoy it, if you must...and you can!

"No more": Bye Bye IIM Ahmedabad

No more would the swivel wooden chair rock me for 70 restless minutes. No more would I push two doors to enter into the air-conditioned sleeping chamber. No more would I turn back every minute to curse the lazy minute hand that forgot to move every now and then and had to be reminded. No more would my sound-proof head play Sudokus on mobile.

It's all over. The flickering tube light synchronizing itself with the static in the speakers, the room going lightless when the sleepy projector threw slides onto the ageing white screen that painfully dropped down from above, the pale beige curtains that didn't move for decades, the old table in the middle with a new rectangular cut, the eternally covered glass and the water bottle, the empty paper cups playing on the stepped floor, the sleeping heads and dozing faces of friends, the outrageous figures on my notebook's last page, the rectangular square box that hung from belts and took rest on the table in breaks.

I will miss you CR1. Even though I didn't like to sit there waiting for the minute hand to move. Even though I was pained with endless lectures joined in series. Even though it was difficult to negotiate my way out if you ever wanted to go out during a lecture. All I know is that if I ever come back to this place, and sit on those swiveling brown chairs with wood scooped out to the shape of thousands of enlightened souls who passed through these portals, I will surely feel my throat choke a little. I will surely feel the screen dropping from above with that so familiar groan and projector lighting up. And the hands on my watch and those on the eternal witness hanging from the wall going still. As if time has stopped since 2007.

Escape? My foot!

I am partly asleep! But even at this hour (1 am to be precise) I am going to do what I have never done before. I am going to write my first "Blog". What nonsense, you might think. But, if you look at my other posts, you will see that they really don't qualify as "Blogs" - spontaneous ideas uploaded onto the internet without publishing-like stunts. Without reading, re-reading and proof-reading.

Well, now that the introductory paragraph is over, let's come to what I really wanted to "blog" about.

While flipping through the morning Times of India, I chanced upon an ad by Hutch. The newly-wed company with its peppermint-fresh vigor had put an ad on "Blackberry" - the dainty little wider black device that promises to unload your inbox right into your palm. So, what is the big deal? Yeah it does that, so? In fact it does quite well. But so?

So, I looked a bit more at the half-page ad, trying to digest the selling proposition. And what a proposition it was! "Escape from office" cried the bold line at the bottom. Are you kidding me? Blackberries are one of the most obvious and tyrant ways of hooking an employee to his/her job. To his/her office. People don't use Blackberries for dating or gaming. Or to check their Gmail or Yahoo! mail. They use it to access their office mailbox on the go. To update their bosses of the number of heartbeats they beat. The number of breaths they breathe. And of course the number of mails they read!

And see what this stupid ad says - "Escape from office"! Hah...if these marketers and ad agencies had their way, they would one day sell my kid a Shaving kit. "You will need it when you grow up!", is probably what they are going to say.

Grow up guys! Seriously.

Wordmasters?

The following is my entry to a creative writing competition called “Wordmasters” organized by Google across 10 cities in India on 30th September 2006. The rules were simple. Contestants were given two topics to choose from and for each topic, a list of 20 words were given which must appear somewhere in the writing, without any kind of alteration. Those words are highlighted in the text below. And yes, one can not exceed the 200 word limit and the whole exercise has to be finished in an hour. The topics given were “Angry? Who me?” and “Innovations”. I wrote on “Innovations”.

It's a different matter that Google didn't like my "Innovation". Probably it was "Beyond Goooooogle's comprehension". :) Nevertheless, here it goes.

I’m a prisoner of my own thinking hat. Ditched by own imagination. Blinded by my own observation. I am trying to create ideas that haven’t yet entered the cranial confines of the human brain.

I conjure up weird images. Of absurd devices and some impossible experiment. I compete with myself. The multi-coloured jelly-like thoughts turn in a blur inside my head. But still, no luck.

I analyze. Do people who innovate think out of the box? It’s strange, because all my thinking devices are placed inside my spherical box of bones. What reaches my inquisitive neurons is filtered by own ability to imagine. Can I transcend myself?

I give up. I feel drained. As if someone has sucked out all my energy. But wait! My horse sense has just taken over. Has anyone really ever innovated? It either struck them out of the blue or they did what everyone knew would be done one day. Can someone really innovate? Something that is so far uncaptured by thoughts, unfettered by imagination? Something beyond what humans already know? No, I don’t think so.

Eureka! I just got a new direction. Innovations are not about thinking what you don’t know. The phenomena are about knowing what you think. That’s practical.