CAT scores count for no more than 20%

Thanks to the RTI Act, IIM B has made it public that your CAT scores do not have a weightage of more than a fifth when admission decisions are made by the institute.

IIM B always had placed a premium on academic prowess that spanned much more than the 3 to 24 months preparation that students do to crack CAT. They did and still continue to place a lot of importance to a student's long term performance starting from Class 10. So, if there is anyone out there in class X and has a long term aspiration of cracking CAT, then make sure that you score well in your board exams as they matter as much as your CAT scores will 5 to 7 years from now.

For those, who have crossed the 10th, 12th or graduation bridges (especially for those amongst us who crossed the bridge not so colorfully), hopes of graduating from an IIM need not come to an end. IIM Calcutta, at least till the recent past did not place much emphasis on your previous academic record. In fact, the Admissions Committee Chairperson has gone on record a couple of years back that CAT score is sacrosanct and a high CAT percentile is certain to get you a GDPI call from IIM Calcutta.

I can vouchsafe for that claim. I have had classmates who had scraped through their graduation. A gentleman with a 5 CG from IIT Bombay was a classmate of mine. Another gentleman who is presently the CEO of a fast growing IT company barely managed 61% in 12 standard board exam (Tamilnadu State Board) and graduated with a 59% as a BA Sociology graduate.

The trend continued much after I graduated from IIM C. A gentleman three years my junior graduated from IIMC. Before joining IIMC, he graduated from Calcutta University with a B. Com degree. He had an aggregate of a little over 45% in his graduation. Very recently, a student of mine with a 6.5 CG from BITS Pilani made it to the IIMC. However, at IIMC he made a vow to be among the top 20 and made it to the top 18 and is presently working for a world renowned Business Consultant.

So, for all those who cannot go back and correct your scores at school and college level, there are still few IIMs left that give adequate credit to one's CAT scores. A 99.7 + percentile is likely to land you calls from a few of the IIMs, IIMC including, I hope. This is probably your only chance to redeem past sins should you aim to seek an admit from one of the IIMs.

I wish you all success in your CAT endeavors.

Cracking CAT a year later potentially costs $200000

Well.... all of us have read this. Top salaries of fresh IIM graduates have touched $200,000. It may not even make sense to convert the salary into Indian Rupees - as the figure almost looks mythical. However, it is true. Without delving into the depths of how many students from the IIMs manage to get such salaries, whether it it CTC or gross pay or take home etc., let us look what does that mean to you as a CAT aspirant.

1. Making it to a top B school such as an IIM a year earlier makes so much of a difference to your career. Look at it this way. Let us say, you are 25 and you expect to work till you turn 60. Each additional year of work with an MBA means so much in furthering your career on a fast track - whats worse - some of these job openings do not exist without a top ranking MBA degree. So, crack CAT soon. Crack it this year. It is better not to postpone somethings.

2. Well I am going to contradict myself. The career paths and astronomical salaries that are talked about are typically reserved for students of the elite institutes. So, do not do an MBA or a PGDM from any random Business School. Let us say, unfortunately you get only 97 percentile in CAT this year and have managed an admit only from a not so very popular XYZ Management Institute - it might make sense not to take that admit and slog another year to crack CAT and get an admit from one of the elite institutes such as the top 3 or 4 IIMs, XL, FMS etc., Remember - most people DO ONLY ONE MBA in their lifetime. Even if your MBA education is delayed by a year, do not settle for anything less than the best.

3. What does it take to get there?
Thankfully, IIM A has given some clarity on what you should aim to get in each of the sections. A 25% net score in each section with a overall score of 33.33%. This alone will not guarantee you a call. However, one is unlikely to get calls without this score. So, if you are practicing your Mock CAT Tests right now, make sure that you set targets that are a little more than what IIM A has stated so that you are well equipped to crack the cut off on the D day.

Best wishes for all those who aspire to make it to the top IIMs this year.

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education - classes, correspondence course for CAT

The surprise in CAT 2005

Well, the IIMs had to have the last laugh. This time it was in terms of a reduced number of questions. 30 questions to a section and a total of 90 questions.

Each section had 10 one-mark questions and 20 two-marks questions. When the IIMs reduce the number of questions, the biggest victim was the choice that a test taker had in terms of the number of questions that he could skip.

For instance, when there were 165 questions in CAT as in CAT 1999 and CAT 2000, you had 55 questions to each section. And in the case of quant and DI, from these 110 questions you had to choose 40 to 45 questions and get most of them right. So, you could skip about 65 to 70 questions. That is a lot of choice that is available to you. But when you have only 30 questions in hand, and 20 of those are 2 marks questions, then every question you skip or get wrong will cost you a lot. And it looks like it did cost a lot to many who had scored quite well in the practice test.

Having gone through the paper, I believe the section that was tough was the Verbal section. Some of the questions that carried two marks had two plausible answers and it is mere chance that the answer a student chose matched that of the correct ones as IIMs would have thought.

And one big revelation this time was that the IIMs clearly mentioned that the negative marks for getting a question incorrect is one-third the correct answer. So, all the double guessing of progressive negative that CAT test takers in the past had to put up with is off.

What next in CAT 2006? They might just decide that in addition to having negative marks for getting a question incorrect, they would want to penalize you for not attempting a question. Well, CAT 2002 or 2003 had a Math question using this concept!

CAT 2004 - not all questions are equal

CAT 2004 sprung a surprise - how can CAT not have a surprise?

For the first time in the history of CAT, IIMs have assigned different weightages to different questions - in the quant section there were 20 one mark questions and 15 two marks questions - totalling up to 50 marks. In the DI section, there were 26 one mark question and 12 two marks questions adding up to 50 marks and in the verbal section you had more variety - half a mark questions (10 of them), one mark questions and two mark questions adding up to 50 marks.

Therefore, the age old advice that all questions are equal and carry the same mark will no longer apply. To that extent one can claim that there is a paradigm shift in the way one should go about strategizing for CAT.

However, the truth is that nothing has really changed as far as how a student should look at CAT - because in most cases the one mark questions in CAT were considerably easier than the two mark questions and the half a mark question in verbal were the fill in the blanks question and were the - "see and mark" types.

What is with all the hype about the CAT cut off, 6 calls, workex, non-engineers

A lot of time, energy, anxiety is usually spent on predicting / knowing / doing a post mortem analysis of what the cut off in CAT will be?

Though a post mortem analysis after you have taken your CAT might have very little to offer you other than few anxious moments and some sleepless nights, the analysis of what happened in previous CATs could hold a lot of value before you take CAT.

CAT has changed a lot over the last decade or so. In the early 1990s, CAT used to have anything between 180 to 220 questions comprising two to four sections. There were years in which CAT had sectionwise time limits. Those seem to be somewhere in the distant past. As mentioned in the most recent CAT bulletin, there are no sectionwise time limits these days. Time limits apart, the kind of questions that appear in CAT and its impact on scores and cut off have changed dramatically over the last 10 years.

Of the 180 questions that were there in CAT in early 90s, 40 to 45 used to be from the verbal section (you can a actually read it as vocabulary section). We guys used to know the GRE Barrons word list in reverse order and use all sorts of nonsensical words like pleonasm and tautology in our day to day vocabulary. It did help. One got to answer and get a net score of about 30 plus in less than 15 minutes from this section. RC used to be a separate section and had mostly factual questions. Quant was usually considered to be the tough section. But Quant in those days mainly comprised direct application of concepts or formulae.

All those have changed. For instance, the most recent CATs have only 150 questions. The 30 odd questions that have found their way out include the vocabulary section. Quant is no more direct application of formulae. Along with these changes have gone the days of 130 and 140 attempts in CAT.

A friend and an IIM classmate of mine, K Venkatesh (CEO Maarga Info Systems) attempted 177 out of the 180 questions in the CAT that we took in 1991. He got calls from all the four IIMs, (we did not have I and K those days!) and converted B, C and L and joined C. While, I myself managed to attempt about 130 questions in that CAT.

However, any average student who gets into an IIM today will be ecstatic if he/she manages to attempt 130 and would even brand CAT as a very easy exam. In the last few CATs at least, candidates scoring above 99.5 plus percentile in CAT need not attempt anything above 80 questions to be there. What is probably needed is high levels of accuracy 95% plus accuracy. i.e., one should get about 75 of the 80 questions right.

Will continue later...

K S Baskar
PGDM - IIM Calcutta - Class of '94
Director - Ascent Education

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