HOW I CRACKED IT Toppers Say Its All About Discipline and Confidence

SHREYA BISWAS & SREERADHA D BASU KOLKATA | MUMBAI

Siddharth Sharma,in his final year of electrical engineering at IIT Kanpur,owes his success to regularity and loads of practice.The topics are easy,but you have to be thorough to crack CAT, he advises.On an average day,he would put in about 2-3 hours preparing for the test,while during weekends and vacations it would go up to 8-9 hours.Preparations at his end started about eight months before CAT,building up in tempo as the exam approached.His father,an associate professor of sociology in NAS College,Meerut;his homemaker mother and his younger brother encouraged him every step of the way.What helped too,was his love for reading,which explains why,unlike many other engineers,Siddharth was as strong in verbal ability as he was in quantitative.In fact,he says,he scored 100 percentile in verbal ability and logical reasoning,compared with a 99.17 percentile score in quantitative ability and data interpretation in the test.A keen athlete and a mediumdistance runner,Siddharth,supplemented his studying with a classroom programme at Career Launcher over the weekends as well as the test series at TIME once a week.He says he will be happy to get selected at any of the top three IIMs.I can only decide once I go through the process.The thing I know for sure is that ultimately Id love to take up a career in finance, he says. RAVI TEJA PALLA,22,ASST MANAGER,COMMERCIAL VEHICLE,TATA MOTORS,PUNE Cracking CAT is all about being disciplined and confident.I appeared for the test last year as well while studying electrical engineering at IIT Madras,but couldnt clear it due to weak verbal ability.I worked on it rigorously and followed a simple strategy.I improved my verbal ability with a lot of reading and practice.I took two mock tests every week and analysed the answers for three hours to understand where I went wrong.I never went by the mock test scores,as that is not the parameter to assess your performance with.Instead I would check for the accuracy of my scores to monitor my progress.Anybody can crack CAT if given enough time,so the secret is to be accurate and confident at the time of answering the test.While I attempted all the queries,I answered those I was confident about.This is the rule of thumb,else you might waste a lot of time.I prepared for 12 hours a week,which is a tall task for a working professional.So,I would divide the hours six hours on weekends,writing the test,analysing and preparing the test series of the coaching institutes and clarifying doubts,if any,with faculty.The rest of the six hours I would reserve for the weekdays.You have to be disciplined to do that;my three-month-old job at Tata Motors demanded a lot of attention too.I am happy I could do it as are my parents my father is a police inspector in Vishakhapatnam and my mother is a homemaker.

SIDDHARTH SHARMA CAT Topper

AP students clear CAT in style 105 Candidates From The State Secure 99 Percentile

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Hyderabad: CAT (Common Admission Test) result is out of the bag and students from the state have fared well yet again making Andhra Pradesh the fourth state in the country to have highest number of candidates who have scored over 99 percentile. A total of 105 candidates who took the test from the state secured over 99 percentile as the results of the top Bschool test were released here on Wednesday. States including Maharashtra,Delhi and Bangalore lead the list which was compiled by IIM-Kozhikode. An IIT-Madras alumnus from state,Ravi Teja Palla,has scored 100 percentile.He is currently working as an assistant manager at Tata Motors,Vizag.

I reworked on all my weak areas and concentrated on the same to better myself.Between work and its pressures it was difficult to study but I finally made it big, a proud Palla said. A student of TIME coaching centre,Palla said that mock tests helped him much in scoring well. Three students from the state secured 99.99 percentile,making APs CAT victory even better.As per the IIMKozhikode records,a total of 1.91 lakh candidates had written the examination from across the country. Officials at IIM-Kozhikode said the number of women candidates who scored well this year has increased.Four girl students had scored 99.99 percentile this year,said Debashis Chatterjee,IIM-K director. Currently most IIMs in the country have initiated 35 per cent recruitments of female students to improve gender diversity on campus.In all 255 girls and 1,640 boys scored more than 99 percentile. For most students from the state it was their hard work which finally paid off.Amit Pandey,who secured 99.87 percentile in CAT said that it was his rigorous training schedule which helped him score well. While working for a firm from 9 am to 6 pm,I had found time to attend classes and take mock tests almost every day.Since I dedicated over 2 hours of my time studying for CAT every day,I got a score which might land me an IIM call, he said. Coaching experts from the city stated that AP had always done well in CAT.Most IIMs in the country have a good percentage of students from AP.This year the IIMs gave out a consolidated list of candidates who have scored over 99 percentile and hence APs performance standards came to light, said Ramnath Kanakadandi,CAT coordinator,TIME coaching centre.