MBA Journey

Let me give a brief background of myself before I quote my percentile to you.

I am a Chartered Accountant by profession and was working in Hindalco Industries Limited as Assistant Manager, April 18th was my last working day.

Let me give a humble thank-you speech to my parents and my boss for being super cool and motivating me for the exam.

Now coming to my percentile - I scored 90.06%ile to be precise.

Let me divide the MBA preparation into 2 stages:
(i) Preparation for the CAT exam
(ii) Preparation for the Interview

(i) Preparation for the CAT Exam

We had our exam on 27th Nov 2022, whereas I started my preparation in the previous month itself around the 13th Oct 2022 (pretty late). My first MBA exam was NMAT, which was on 30th Oct 2022.

I attempted all the MBA exams, even though I was aware I was going to fail miserably.

One thing I want to highlight is that all the OMEs (Other MBA Entrance Exams) went smoothly except the IIFT exam. The UI of the exam is something for which you have to prepare, but not for the main exam.

My advice (which I wish someone had told me):

• Cover the course on time, where coaching institutes come into the picture.

• Mocks are the key - Since I was self-studying, I took 3 test series, including IMS. One thing I want to highlight here is that I never focused on the percentile; my focus was to solve 50% of the paper correctly ie percentage. I hope you all know the difference between percentage and percentile.

• Section-wise strategy: 

• VARC - Score maximum; 

• LIDR -  Solve at least 2 sets correctly, and 

• Quant - Try as much as possible.

Preparation for the Interview

I attended around 9 interviews this season, where I converted 6, waitlisted in 2, and we are still waiting for the results of one and only one college, i.e., IIFT.

During an interview, the first question is crucial as it sets the tone for the entire conversation. Typically, the initial question is "Tell me about yourself," followed by other inquiries like "Why MBA?" and so on. I would like to express my gratitude to Deepak Shukla, sir, for his invaluable assistance in crafting and structuring my responses to these critical questions.

Angles of the interview questions:

Well, Mukul Dixit Sir helped me gain the perspective of an interviewer. What angles do I have to prepare so that interview questions don't throw me off balance? His 2-3 hours of class on the topic of Varanasi was super helpful to tackle most of the questions about Varanasi.

Be prepared for randomness: 

They may ask you some random questions. Let me quote 2 examples from my firsthand experience.
(i) Asked me the name of the second President of India, then the first and also the third president.
(ii) Asked me to name all the major cities you will come across if you travel from New Delhi to Shillong.

Teachers of IMS might be in the best position to explain how to tackle such questions.
And then comes the most perplexing moment. Results are announced, and you find yourself in a position where you must make a decision based on multiple offer letters. I personally encountered the same dilemma and came to understand the concept of the "problem of plenty."

Overall, my journey was altogether different from most of you, but the ultimate result is similar. Enjoy the journey, but ensure you have no regrets post exams, meaning that you did all possible things to convert, but things turned out differently.