I am not a believer of New Year
resolutions. For me, those are just gimmicks of weak-willed people. So I
refused to categorize my first lecture in Career Launcher on January 1, 2012 as
a New Year resolution. I was just happy to be in a classroom, away from my
office. People had partied hard the night before, and as a result there were
only 2 people in the class of Reading Comprehension that day. Many teachers
would have felt inclined to cancel that class, but mine went ahead with it; a
clear sign that she respected the two individuals for showing up on 1st
January. A good first impression, I must say. She was to go on to become my
strongest mentor and supporter in the days to come.
The next 9 months were the actual
preparation period for the exam. People suggested that I was risking saturation
by starting so early. They were right. It is actually tough to maintain the
same intensity throughout and you run the risk of losing interest. This race
had to be run as a long distance race. As Dhoni would say- rather than
beginning well, it is important to peak at the right time in a long tournament.
So I tread at a smooth pace for the first 5 months before steaming up in the
months from June to September.
I have been asked this question often whether
I felt exhaustion or found it difficult to manage my time between office,
weekend classes, two mock test series’ and the inevitable cricket which I never
gave up. My answer would always be the same –“I am just relieved to be sitting
in a classroom.”Indeed I was relieved; relieved because I was proving to be a
complete failure at work in my company and the classroom was the only place to
relieve my bruised ego and earn some accolades. In my company, I literally used
to hide behind people when we were assigned work. No one would mention it
explicitly, but people thought I was a liability when it came to coding. It
hurt. It hurt more because it was all true. What kept me going was the belief
that the people around me in the office might be good at what they were doing
and I was nowhere near their level, but I was better at many aspects which we
were not concerned with in my office and I ought to give myself a better chance
to uncover those aspects of mine somewhere else. So classroom became the place
to be- every weekend –6 hours. It’s not that it was a cakewalk in the
classroom. Maths was something I always struggled with, but I always used to
look forward to the Reasoning and English class. My English teacher by now had
grown fond of me, and she was more like an elder sister to me than a teacher.
And it was not just about the
subjects or about the teacher. The classroom gave me two of my best friends –
Anshul Utpal and Prateek Chaturvedi. We competed with each other and at the
same time derived happiness from each other’s success in the tests. Anshul was
more consistent of the three when it came to mock tests. I and Prateek had more
in common – we struggled with Maths, loved English and swung between excellence
and mediocrity in the mock tests. I loved the unique camaraderie that had
developed among the three of us.
As the D-Day came closer, I
studied harder. I, however, cut myself off from studies 3 days before my exam.
I watched movies and TV series to lighten myself. The D-Day arrived on 15th
October. The exam passed smoothly and Anshul was the first person I called
after the exam. My words were – “I have attempted 26 questions in English and
Reasoning section and I am quite confident of scoring well there (> 96
percentile). I have attempted only 18 in Maths but that is the most I have
attempted ever in a test”. So it was an improvement but there was nothing
extraordinary about it. A decent score was expected but nothing flamboyant, not
after I had managed an average 88 percentile in my last TIME test and a lowly 72
percentile in my last CAREER LAUNCHER test.
A surprise awaited me when the
results came on 9th January, 2013. I had got 99.56 percentile (96.42
in Maths and 99.74 in English). This is the most I had scored in any test and
it was a coup of sorts for me. The result was hard to sink in and
congratulatory messages flowed from everywhere. The news got leaked in my
office as well. This was the best part because the loser from yesterday had suddenly
got cult status among peers. People who had never ever talked to me wanted to congratulate
me now. Old friends called too as and when they came to know about the result. There
was no one happier than my teacher on hearing this news. She welcomed me with
the brightest smile I have ever seen on her face when I went to meet her. What
was my reaction to all this? – I just let the moment flow. After a period of
mediocrity, this was a welcome change in my life. That night when Prateek asked
my response to all this, all I said was that “I was relieved”; yes, again the
same feeling of being relieved; because no one was going to take this score
away from me and the possessive me had the right to hold on to it forever. I did not want to go to sleep that night
because I did not want 9th January, 2013 to end. It was that kind of
a day, one of the best of my life.
PART 2: THE ROAD TO ADMISSION
The whole process of CAT and its
results can be a very draining experience for a candidate. If all goes well, it
takes some time to soak in that feeling of success. Time can slip by quickly,
and you suddenly find yourself staring at an interview. I had to make sure I
did not fall in that trap. I started my preparation for the interviews the very
next day of the result. The ease with which I had prepared till CAT did not
replicate itself in this phase. The personality assessment phase is anyways
considered tougher than the actual CAT and it lived up to its reputation.
The fact that this was my first
experience with CAT and thereafter meant I actually encountered many surprises
at this stage. When the calls started coming, I realised scoring a near ton in
CAT was not good enough. With a score of 75.2% in 12th Board, I
missed out calls from IIM-A, B, C, K and I. Anshul (94.08 percentile) and
Prateek (96.72 percentile) found the going tougher. A score in the range of
94-97 percentiles is the perfect case of ‘so near yet so far’. Besides, there
are the perks to deal with if you are a general male engineer candidate, as the
three of us were. My score ensured that
I faced less hassles as compared to Anshul and Prateek. But there were
definitely more roadblocks ahead in my way than what I had imagined on the day
the CAT scores had been announced.
But withstanding all that, it was
time to move forward. Filling the forms for the next stage was a tedious
affair. I had a tough time coming to terms with the current affairs of the
world because my GK was pathetic. I did not speak a word in my first 3 mock
GD’s because I felt irritated at the idea of raising my voice in a fish market
where we were actually supposed to make sense. I often wondered what the right
approach in an interview was because every faculty who took my interview had a
different opinion and prejudice about the interview procedure. The mock
interviews were still crucial because they familiarized me with the basics of
what I might face. The mocks also taught me to judge the fine line between
being honest and being stupid in an interview.
I had 13 interviews scheduled; 3
in February, 7 in March and 3 in April. I had to travel a lot for the
interviews and mentally I started getting so tired that I took the step of
resigning without a single convert in my hand. I paid off my notice period and
thus gave myself ample time to travel, relax and study. Before resigning, the
interviews appeared like a burden. After resignation, they became a merry ride.
The process became enjoyable.
I have many memories from these interviews.
The one which completely caught me in alien territory was my interview for
IIM-L (6th March). They would just not let me take the interview
towards the area of my strength and kept attacking my weaknesses. Despite
coming up with a decent GD and Essay, I failed to convert that call. It did not
help that the same interview score had to be transferred to the new IIMs too.
As feared, I could not convert the new IIMs too. One instance where I became very
nervous was the GD round in FMS (22nd March). They had 14 people sitting
there for the GD! FOURTEEN! I was absolutely blown away in that GD, and it was
curtains to FMS then and there.
Most of the other calls I converted.
The one that I enjoyed most was the experience of IIT-Delhi. After the terrible
experience of GD in a group of 14 in FMS, here I was sitting in a Board-Room
type of set up in IIT Delhi, on a huge round table, with 14 people in the
group. Yes, that dreaded number 14 again! Bad memories from FMS came flooding
back. I decided that there was only one way to tackle this GD. Instead of
getting lost among the voices somewhere in between, I thought that the best way
to tackle such a situation was to start the GD come what may! So as soon the buzzer
went off, I spoke. I spoke as if my life depended on how much I speak at that
moment. I was soon cut short by another
participant and I did not speak again in the entire GD. A flawless interview
followed and I converted IIT-Delhi in the first list.
Another interview with
interesting memories was the one at Nitie, Mumbai (2nd April). I had
a GD group of only 9 people. Alas! The other 8 were all shouting. It was the
worst GD I had participated in. I had earlier given up in my GD of FMS and was
determined not to do so again. I kept my cool, pitched in a few points but
those were not enough according to me. After the GD, two of my fellow
participants came to me and said – “Dude, I can’t believe someone can be so
calm in such a hostile GD. Hats off.” If my GD was hostile, my interview was
worse. Again this was a scenario where the interview kept drifting towards my
weaker areas. First thing I did after coming out of that ordeal in Nitie was to
call Anshul. The first words I said were, “Humse Na ho payega Nitie”. I eventually converted 2 out of the 3 courses
offered by Nitie.
However, the college I am finally
going to is yet to find a mention. It is in fact Shailesh Jain Mehta School of
Management, IIT Bombay. It was the only interview (8th March) in
which I was asked the question, “Why MBA”. It was the first interview where
they took interest in the fact that I loved cricket. So a barrage of questions
followed from cricket; and I answered them all. I was at my happiest after this
interview. It was also a very pleasant experience being in the IIT Campus and
the chance to become a part of that campus was exciting to say the least.
There are two ways to look at
this eventual result. The first way to look at it says- “I succeeded in making
it to a college like IIT Bombay and I should be proud of that”. The second way
says- “In spite of getting 99.56 percentile, I could not make it to a big IIM
and I should be sad about it”. At this
moment, I would like to remember what my teacher told me- “There are no good
colleges or bad colleges around here for MBA. What we eventually get into
should be the ‘Right College’.” In some ways, IIT Bombay seems like the right
place for me. The cut off score in IIT Bombay was 99.08 percentile this
year. All my to-be batch mates, after a
score of 99 plus percentile, must have dreamt of making it big into an IIM. The
fact that they could not and instead ended up being there in IIT Bombay means
that they were all imperfect in their own ways. This gives me a chance to be one
among equals. That is not always a bad thing. So instead of being unhappy about
not making it to an IIM, I am today happy and thankful to God for what I have
and I look forward to make the most of it when I join SJMSOM, IIT Bombay on 12th
July, 2013.
P.S: - Anshul made it to XIM, Bhubaneswar with his XAT Score while
Prateek made it to IMT- Ghaziabad with his CAT Score. We still remain in touch
and hope to continue this friendship for a long time to come. Touchwood!
.