MBA 'Gyaan' Givers
Friday, January 23, 2004Latest@NMIMS
The placement week (3 days actually) kicked off on 5 th jan at NMIMS. After the initial flow of companies that recruited the seniors, the process went on to be like a rolling one. Till date around 85% of the batch is placed and the the salaries have gone higher than the last years by 10-15% or so. Even now, everyday there is some company or other on campus to recruit people. There have been some good lateral placements also for the people with work experience.
Nowadays the stress is on summer placements since around 3/4 of the batch gets its summers during these months and yours truely is keeping his fingers crossed as well. Some good companies (including one offering postings abroad in singapore) have sent their requirements and would be in campus sometime soon.
Academic term has started 2 weeks back. We have 9 courses in this term as usual. Spanish and german language classes would start in this term in addition to fench classes that are going on since last term for those interested. Four of my batchmates would be leaving soon for France and Hungary for their respective exchange programs.
The winner of the GE scholarship (I didnt apply for it) would be announced soon and the person would get to spend a week or so at Jack Welch research center in banglore along with GE paying the entire tution fees and living expenses...kool na.
Euphoria, the annual inter-Business School event would be organised on 27-28 feb and the preparations are in full swing. I would add the link to the site as soon as its put up.
I have been adding a lot many things to my blog like writing about what i learn everyday in classes here..and when i say everyday, I am doing it for almost every class I attend. Please Click on my name here to visit and pour in your suggestions.
Rajat Khungar
Manfest 2004 @ IIM Lucknow kicks off today! There are a lot of participants from all over the country. Today's main event includes a bizz quiz by Sid Basu; and we also have Kapil Dev visiting the event, spread over the next two days! L is currently: ROCKING!!!
Happy New Year
I am just 7 days late in wishing you all but I am sure you guys wont mind it :)
Exams and following holidays and the trip back home took me off this site for sometime but now I would be more regular. I would be starting off this year's blog with some inputs for CAT/other MBA exams preparation. I have written about my experience in the earlier blog and would be giving some sites and links that should help the people preparing this year....
www.pagalguy.com/cat There are discussion forums here where almost everything you want to know about B schools is discussed...from SIMCATs of IMS to GD/PI of SCMHRD you can find it all there...A MUST VISIT
www.coolavenues.com A popular generic site about b schools and life there.
www.indiainfoline.com also has a link for b schools.
I would be posting some of the last year's important observations regarding B schools and their entrance exams etc.
There are many yahoogroups like CAT2003 / CAT2004 / mbaprep that one should join. If anyone of u doesnt know about yahoogroups or how to join them just drop me a mail at rajatkhungar@yahoo.com..
Rajat
www.rajatkhungar.rediffblogs.com
Happy New Year
Wishing a very happy and prosperous new year to everybody!!
January signals the start of the "Final Lap" or the final term for the first year when we have to grin(?) and bear the compulsory subjects thrust on us. During the next year, we choose the courses that we can take, and finally this decides the area in which we specialize. But, even next year there are one or two compulsory courses which everybody has to take.
January also means the height of winter in Kolkata. Joka is much colder than Kolkata. Pack a lot of warm clothing if you get an admit here next year. :-o)
It is long since the blog is updated. But for the enthu shown by Aravind, I think the blog would have been dead. I came across a very nice 'joke'. Am posting it here.
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A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, young man in a Broni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the shepherd, "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"
The shepherd looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers, "Sure. Why not?"
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. They young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg,Germany.
Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1586 sheep."
"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep." says the shepherd.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the boot of his car.
Then the shepherd says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?"
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"
"You're a consultant." says the shepherd.
"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"
"No guessing required." answered the shepherd. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew; to a question I never asked; and you don't know crap about my business... Now give me back my dog."
Vacation Time
The long hiatus between the posts has been due to the 2nd term exams and the ensuing holidays for all of us doing our first year. Venkat, Satish, et al have gone home for their holidays, but I am still here in Cal "fighting the long fight" as we dont have holidays this time.
So I thought I'd break this inertia of no posts for a long time with a post about the academic rigour here. Many people, including me, wonder what kind of work, what kind of effort is required at top B-Schools, the IIMs for example. I had many ideas - some of thems got from friends, alumni of these institutes , etc. So, here goes my penny's worth.
Right from the time you come in, you are told, and this message is reinforced throughout your stay here - "There is a high direct correlation between your CG(grades) and your placement". Most of the top jobs - the i Banks, plum assignments in MNCs, etc. mostly go to the top rankers, and it is definitely not an easy task to be even among the top 20% of your batch. 2 terms are over here, and I have a reasonable idea of the top performers in my batch, and the amount of work or "fight" as they call it is simply amazing! All the more so because this effort just does not happen during the exam week, grading is continuous. Class quizzes, assignments, projects, attendance, exams, everything contribute to your grades, and performing consistently in all of these requires huge efforts. These guys take painfully meticulous notes in class, this means attending most or all classes, and let me tell you, focussing through continuous 1 hour 45 minute classes is gruelling. Spending hours everyday, including many night outs before quizzes and exams, the effort put in is simply awe inspiring.
Well, all this is for the toppers. What about regular people like me and you(?). A CG upwards of 6 (I can hear some people screaming 6.5) is considered decent. And that is my target too. This means attending most of the classes, identifying people who take good notes so that you can photocopy them, get a comparative advantage in some subject (anything Software related for me) where you are quite strong, and you will be able to swap what we call "crashers" or tutorials with guys who are strong in other subjects. You will also have to put in quite a few painful night-outs before the exams.
In my opinion, the requirements from a person are - a strong quant ability (a must, at least at IIMC), ability to absorb a lot of info, filter it out and retain the crux, ability to memorize stuff(sad, but true- muggin does help), ability to identify when and how much effort is needed - differs from person to person.
So, do you have it in you?
A site campaigning against Offshoring to Bangalore!!! Derogatory. I read in Business World sometime back that for every $100 US invests in India, $133 goes back. True! There are job displacements happening. Why dont you match our cost-quality-competency with yours? For all those who may perceive that we are overly dependent on US for software, may be yes, at the moment. But, I am bullish about the thought of moving-up-the-value-chain. Sooner or later, the BPOs would do it, and slowly become independent of US's dependency for software business. It will happen.
How I wasnt able to crack CAT
We learn more from failures than from success..atleast this is true for me. I cant tell you what to do to bell the CAT but I can surely tell you what mistakes I made so that u guys can avoid it. This blog should help most to those people who are on the verge of clearing the cut offs and getting calls from IIMs but just miss it by a short distance because of some silly mistakes or not attempting the paper properly as I was always there in that slot.
IIMs & CAT...Guess I would have heard about them somewhere in 12th or 1st yr of engg (I am an ECE graduate) but had no intention of appearing for them as I was one of those many who wanted to give GRE, apply for MS, get admissions, go to US and settle there. I did the first three of these and had admits from 3 decent univ (Drexel, Syracuse & RIT) but never applied for VISA. There were so many reasons like I felt I shudnt pursue masters in technical field as I am not good in it, bad state of US economy, no aid (I had partial aid offer from RIT), and kinda change of heart when I interacted with people studying/staying in USA (Srihari Yamanoor doing at Stanford is one of them, He has been one of the biggest influences on me in recent times) & chucked this whole idea of going to states.
At this stage I felt that an MBA should be the next step that would suit my interests and give a boost to my career to the next level. I started preparing for CAT & other exams in august 2002 & looked at coaching classes in the city (Chandigarh). I went to IMS for a week but left it & joined a lesser known institute Matermind & that turned out to be the biggest blunder in the preparations. The faculty wasnt good & students were not THAT competitive. I dont mean here that if I was in IMS/Time/CL, I would have been in IIM as the result depends on the person & not the institute. Finally left the insti in september end without gaining much, now there wasnt much time left for CAT 2002.
LESSON -
BE decisive and stick to ur decision. prefer joining regular classes at IMS/Time/PT/CL/CF etc rather than elsewhere. If u can study on ur own regularly then u may skip these..
I finally enrolled for Professional Tutorials test series & found it really good, I also gave few mock SimCats and CL mock exams. My scores were always in the almost there range with sometime clearing the cut offs and some time missing it. In the last 1.5 months I just did mock exams & revisions of the same (inspite of having 2 yr old full course material of IMS and notes of CL I never practiced from them) . My so called course for CAT wasnt complete but while giving mock exams I was realising that I can crack CAT if I select questions better, manage time better & avoid silly mistakes.
LESSON - Practice makes a man perfect ! Work Hard
Perhaps I knew inside after looking at my performances in mock CATs that I might or might not make it so I just wanted 24 Nov to be one of my good days when I clear the cut offs...but it didnt happen. I did the same mistakes there, silly mistakes (in quants), improper time management (DI-45+ mins, QA-30 mins) and less mental toughness. I knew I wouldnt make it...My CAT percentile was 94.1 finally with 99.98 in DI. I messed it all up...
LESSON - mental toughness, time management, self-believe are the most important.
I appeared for other exams also & had interview calls from FMS, JMET (Rank-155) for IITs (mumbai, delhi & kharagpur),NMIMS, SCMHRD, IMT & SIBM. Finally I converted IIT-Kharagpur, NMIMS & Scmhrd and came here at NMIMS.
I took gd/pi coaching from PT-Chandigarh again and it helped a lot in improving my performance for the same.
NMIMS is great place and one of the best institutes in the country but IT IS NOT IIM. This does matter a lot, I dont wanna sound pessisimistic but the reality is these things matter a lot at every stage be it the quality of students, faculty, facilities, placements and in short whole life is difference. I have had my chance those who would give CAT this yr & in the years to come can still make the difference to their lives. Please start working harder & harder to pursue ur dream and leave this chalta hain attitude. I have seen so many so called average intelligent students going to IIMs & really good brainy people loosing out.
Hard work & Smart work go hand in hand.
I'll write about happenings at NMIMS especially the annual meet Pragana 2003 in the next blog....
Rajat Khungar
www.rajatkhungar.blogspot.com
How I belled the CAT
I have blogged about this in my own blog, sometime in October first week. That was a big history. Will try to make it short in my second attempt. I joined the IMS Catapult course, which runs for nearly one year. Joined IMS Egmore, not Stella Marris :-(, on December 9th 2001, which was a CAT day. So, I was a bit sentimental about that day.
We had our Regional Director Mr. Balachandran kicking off things with a long (nearly 90 minutes) eloquent speech. Till then, I didnt know anything about IIMs, except for one information that my brother was studying there. After hearing all of his words, I decided that I just will not be able to crack CAT, and started to focus only on institutes like BIM, LIBA etc.
The class had real 'studs' from well-known institutes, so, I was totally psyched. I decided that I have to fight it out for a BIM admission and started solving 'Mathematics for MBA'. I forgot the author name, but that book is very famous in Chennai atleast. It had some 3000 sums, which I solved with 90% accuracy in the first attempt.
CAT dream started when I began to crack the class-tests, and got a 99.61 percentile in SimCAT-1. That was when Mr. Balachandran came up to me and said, 'Great job!!! You are on track to IIMA for sure. Keep up the tempo'. After that, it was a disciplined effort, and in the end, I had solved somewhere near to 120 Mock-CAT papers.
My feeling is that if you can attempt 70% of the questions with 90+% accuracy, you are through most of the times. But, again it depends in the toughness of the mathematics section. If it is like that of what was given this time, I think one should be looking at around 15-20 points only. Again, irrespective of the level of toughness, the studs will score well.
My attempts in the final CAT paper was as follows - DI - 37; Qants - 27; RC - 33; I screwed up the RC part. One big blunder was that I didnt switch on my stop-watch when the exam started. I switched it on after around 3 minutes, so, I was completely unaware of the minutes remaining data. Fortunately though, I was sitting in the last bench, so, I could complete a couple of more sums than the others on an average.
My CAT score card (luckily, I have it right now) read -
(Section - % Score - Percentile)
DI - 76.57 - 99.78
Quants - 61.86 - 99.43
RC - 39.84 - 86.54
Total - 58.90 - 99.71
As you can see, RC was one area which I didnt do well, and it is not a surprise to me, considering the fact that I have never had an accuracy in that section of more than 70% at the maximum. I got calls from IIM A,B,L and I, of which I converted L and I. B's interview and GD were really good, but, may be, my English percentile was not good enough. I might have been 'Qualifying', but, not good enough for 'Order Winning'. (OPs terminologies :-)). Will blog about the GD/interview experiences (including Summers) once the season comes, or everybody else in the blog have written about CAT, whcihever is earlier.
Preparing for the CAT
A lot of requests have been made for us to give gyaan on how one should "prepare for CAT". Firstly, let me tell you that there is no shortcut or technique to actually prepare for CAT. Plain old hard work and all that grey matter that God gave you are all that matters.
Here are some of the things that I think are important - they've worked for me, but I cannot gaurantee that these will definitely help you. Use these as general guidelines.
Firstly, start early. If you are thinking of taking CAT to be held in Nov 2004, now will be a good time to start working. I know of quite a few people who have got great CAT scores after working for just a couple of weeks, and that just goes to show that the amount of preparation you put in depends on the skills you have right now. If you are confident about your quanti and verbal skills, are a stud at probability, permutations and combinations, etc., you probably dont need that much time.
Secondly, work on your speed. CAT will not be all that difficult if unlimited time was given. Time is short, and you have to improve your calculation and reading and retention skills. Some people have found techniques like vedic math and speed math training to be useful.
Third, accuracy is as important, if not more important than speed. There is negative marking, and each question you get wrong actually takes away the credit you get for your correct answers. DO NOT use guesswork!!
Attending classes at institutes like Time and IMS do help. They give you a structured overview of most of the areas you need to know for CAT.
Attempt some Mock CATs or Sim CATs and track your rank at a national level - if possible, at a section-by-section level. That way, you know where you have to work on, and will be getting feedback on how you have done on a national level. Paying too much attention to the score or the number of attempts is not necessary as long as your rank is good. A "good" rank is anything within the top 100-150, assuming upwards of a couple of thousand people have taken the test.
Thats about it from me, I'm sure some of the others will have their views to add...
Good Luck!
