IN THE LAST MONTH OF PREPARATION TIME,MAKING THE
CAT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN YOUR LIFE MIGHT BE
COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE. ARUN SHARMATELLS YOU HOW
KEEPING THE 'BIGGER' PICTURE IN SIGHT CAN HELP YOU
GIVE THE EXAM YOUR BEST SHOT
AS you enter the last month of preparation time, there are a few key issues we would like
you to address. Believe it or not, but you need to reduce the importance of the CAT in your
life.
While this may seem ironical but you will have to do it if you want to give yourself the
best chance of performing at the optimum on the day of the CAT. Making CAT the most
important thing in your life might be counter-productive for you at this stage. The reason is
not too difficult to understand — being the kind of exam it is, you would require to give
yourself the maximum freedom of thought while writing the test — and this would not
happen in case CAT is the most important thing in your life.
You do not want to take the exam with unnecessary pressure on you. So, the idea is that
you need to reduce the pressure on yourself. Our only contention is that if you are free from
unnecessarily negative thoughts, you might end up doing the best you can. Thus, reducing
the importance of cracking the CAT at this stage of your preparations will ironically give you
your best chance to bell the CAT.
So your obvious question would be: "How can I go about reducing the importance of the
CAT at this stage?" A few suggestions for the same:
1. Create a back up plan for the year if you do not get through. One of the ways to reduce
pressure on yourself is to give yourself a two to three year timeframe for entering a Bschool.
Once you do so, you would realise you have at least three attempts at the exam and
hence, the exam on November 16, 2008, need not be your only chance. However, if you
have this kind of plan for yourself, then you need to actually have thought about how you
are going to concretely use your time in the two to three year t i m e f r a m e. Create a
plan of a u g m e n t i n g your bio-data by working fulltime/part-time, doing additional p ro
f e s s i o n a l courses, learning a few languages and in general raising the level of
'education' in your life. Education beyond degrees — through the pursuit of knowledge is
what we mean to say.
2. Realise for a fact that the IIMs are not the only way to succeed in your life. Even if you
do an MBA from a second-level B-school you will still get enough opportunities to make it
big. So, you need to realise that the IIMs do not hold a kind of exclusive key to success. Tell
yourself that even if you do not do well in the exam, and are forced to join a relatively lower
branded institution, you still would be excited about who you are and what you could
achieve in your life. If you do not make it to the top through the hypotenuse of a rightangled
triangle, you still have the two legs through which you can reach the same
destination. Remember, the long-term goal is to reach the top of the corporate ladder and
as long as you can reach there, it does not matter what credentials you have picked up in
the form of you management education.
3. Create a long-term plan. Another way to think about this situation is that in case you
are forced to go to a second level B-school in the short-run, then you can still plan to go to a
top international B-school after five to seven years of working. There is also an executive
MBA from a top B-school. Once you have a professional profile on your bio data, you can
always think of this option. This thinking is especially crucial for first timers. A lot of you out
there have profiles that are not good enough to break in the doors of the IIMs in your first
attempt. So, in case you do not have that coveted IIT or university-topper tag of the finest
Indian universities, then you can always build your profile over the next five to seven years.
After that your profile would be equivalent to the best people around.
4. Reduce expectations of people around you. If you cannot, then stop taking these
expectations to your heart. Start living your life for yourself. Many of aspirants we know are
giving the exam in order to prove themselves in someone else's eyes. This person could be
your father, mother, brother, grandfather, uncle etc. Stop living for them and start living for
yourself. One of the truths of life is that if you can start meeting your own expectations from
yourself, all external expectations will also be met.
Other things that you need to do now:
I) Take your preparation to the stage of perfection — stop studying fresh portions, focus
on concretising your learning
II) Create a concrete work strategy for the last month and follow it religiously
More on these issues in our next article in the series.
(The writer is an alumnus of IIMBangalore, a nationally renowned CAT
trainer and the author of a series of books published by Tata McGraw Hill on CAT
and
other aptitude exams)
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