CAT IN YOUR HAT

About the author: Abhimanyu Jha currently heads Zabberwalky, a design and communication consultancy. An IIM Ahmedabad/IIT Madras alumnus, he has previously served as the Business Head of a lifestyle brand at Hidesign. He has also got brief experience as a Senior Consultant in a New Jersey based supply chain consultancy. His score of 99.89 percentile in CAT 2003 that statistically places him among the top 150 students in that year makes him an excellent candidate for advising about CAT. Besides running a consultancy, he loves to read and write in his spare time, and is currently writing a novel based on Othello set in IIT Madras.

CAT 2007 is over, people are readying for their GD/PI or are already looking at CAT 2008. So I am now going to post here, if possible every week, a blog on CAT provided I am certain I am reaching a wide audience. The mission of this series of blogs is three fold

1. Teach you how to crack CAT

2. In my blogs, while explaining things, I will draw enough examples from the real world of business. So that by the time you get to CAT, if you pay enough attention, you will have a good knowledge of the basics by which the various functions of the business world like marketing, finance, operations, HR etc. operate. This may help you tremendously in your GD/PI. For example, in this blog, you are going to learn in brief about

a) Why the term 'risk' is so important in the world of business? (Btw, it's everything in the world of finance)

b) What strategy is and what does it mean in the business world?

c) What are KSAs, a very important terminology in the HR function?

d) What are 'dynamic games', a very important term in 'game theory', which is a famous theory in both economics and business?

3. Provide you information, improve your written communication skills, and entertain you at the same time

HOW TO GET THE ‘CAT’ IN YOUR HAT: 1 (Quite long but informative, so start only if you have time. Also this article applies to other MBA entrance exams as well )

* I would like that this article reaches a wide audience before I post its successor, so if you find this article useful, please publicize this to as many MBA aspirants as possible.

There is a beautiful song in a very nice romantic tragicomedy I watched recently called ‘Walk The Line’; the song is called ‘Let’s Go Time’s A Wastin’. Now the song by itself is very good, and has a sublime meaning if you think about it in greater depth, and you should certainly watch the movie I mentioned when you find time. But while you are planning to sit for CAT, you should do exactly the opposite of what the song tells you in many ways: you shouldn’t go time’s a wastin’.

No, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to songs or watch movies at all while you try to prepare for so called cracking CAT; in fact songs and movies are a great source of information if you listen to the right ones and know what to look for. I did pretty well in my IIM Bangalore interview and got through it, one of the reasons being my excellent knowledge of movies. Confused? Okie, I will now explain to you what I mean in greater detail.

A lot of you guys/gals will now be all set to sit for CAT 2007. I don’t know how each of you feels now. But this is how I felt when I was on the verge of sitting for my second CAT exam within a time span of a couple of months, the second sitting for the now infamous CAT 2003: hopeful, fearful, excited, confused, edgy, practically zonked, wanting to just get it over with, not wanting it to come at all… I was in fact a bundle of conflicting emotions.

This when I knew I had got a better chance at CAT than most people out there: I was an IITian, good at numbers, and my English was also pretty, pretty good. I was right ultimately: I got 99.89 percentile, which means I was more or less among the top 150 students.

And yet, I shall tell you, I didn’t know. I didn’t know what was to come. The exam, for all my past knowledge and preparation, was still uncertain to me, a risk. And the function of my knowledge and preparation was not to eliminate that risk, but to lessen it, to manage it. I could still flunk the exam or not give it at all; in fact I actually almost got hit by a jeep while crossing the road before my exam center and would have been in trouble if one of my friends didn’t pull me back and I am still thankful to her.

When you have been a businessman/woman for some time, you will come to know that is what most start up businesses are all about: managing risk. Are they about giving a good product, or value in today’s business terms? No. That’s only a part of the job; the bigger job is to manage the risk of being in business by convincing people that they should take the value from you. The reason why established companies/brands are more successful than startups is because they have already managed that risk.

Anyway, more about that next time. Let’s continue about CAT, and the one thing you should remember from all of my earlier talk, is that giving CAT is like starting a startup, doing business with a person who doesn’t know you and convincing him to take the product from you, managing risk. Except now, the product, the value is you, and you are selling yourself to the business schools that accept CAT scores.

So now that we have established the very, very, very vital point that CAT is similar to a business transaction where the buyer has no prior knowledge about you, and the end result entirely depends on this one transaction, you will immediately understand why many people talk about strategies to crack CAT. Yes, because all businesses have their own strategies.

(If you are not very clear what a strategy is, don’t worry; it’s very simple to understand. Just follow this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy).

This word, own, is a very important word here. Remember, businesses don’t have strategies that are applicable to all; they have unique strategies arising from the assessment of their strength and weaknesses. Yes, there are a few generic strategies with guidelines that tell you based upon your objective and your target customer, which strategy, approximately, you may follow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_generic_strategies). But again, the set of specific tactics (actions you should take) that will make up that strategy can be known only after you have done your, what in business studies is called, a SWOT analysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT).

Now for businesses there are different generic strategies because there are different objectives and customers, but for YOU, there is one customer group, IIMs and a few other B-schools, and one objective, GET THE CAT IN YOUR HAT. So thankfully, unlike businesses, your life is very simple; there is just one generic strategy you have to follow: call it whatever, let’s call it strategy X, shall we?

(I will thank anybody who can come up with a better name and give him/her credit too. Just post the name in your response, but remember, to come up with a better name you have to know what strategies are all about).

Now to get to this strategy X, and remember the path is unique to you, you have to do the following things

1. Know and understand as much about the generic format of CAT papers as you can, and then from there, find out what Knowledge, Skills, Abilities/Attributes, i.e. KSAs (http://www.va.gov/JOBS/hiring/apply/ksa.asp) are required to do the job that is cracking CAT
2. Once you are through with this, you have to practice good mock CATs and estimate how proficient you are in those KSAs by doing a SW analysis (OT is not required, I will tell you next time why), what proficiency is required in those KSAs to top in CAT, and estimate the gap, thus doing what businesses call gap analysis
3. The third and the final thing you have to do is to develop a unique set of activities that will make up your version of strategy X, and which will narrow the gap to the maximum extent possible in the limited time you have

Obviously the path is not as simple as I have stated it. The obvious first question if I were you, I will ask is that since

1. Different KSAs are required to clear different sections (like Verbal Ability vs. Data Interpretation)
2. Differing proficiencies are required for the same KSAs (like Verbal Ability vs. Reading Comprehension), and
3. CAT is an uncertain exam involving tradeoffs, that is I can choose to do more VA than RC or DI questions, besides the fact that sections differ in toughness from year to year,

then how do you fix on one degree of proficiency required in the KSAs to do very well in CAT, since they will obviously differ from year to year based upon the toughness of the sections and from person to person based upon their real time reaction to the questions while giving CAT.

The truth there is no simple answer. Cracking CAT, like succeeding in any other business, assuming you prepare for it, is what we call a dynamic game (Remember Game Theory… John Nash… A Beautiful Mind) i.e. what you will do next depends completely on what you did before, and so on. Also there is one external factor, the relative difficulty of the individual sections, that is unknown and will remain unknown, but which will affect the final outcome. So there are multiple possible scenarios and outcomes depending upon what happened before, and what surprise does CAT exam spring on you (it does usually, doesn’t it). That is why the best laid plans of many people go haywire if the pattern suddenly changes.

Don’t worry, both life and business are mostly like that, in fact much more complex, so you better learn to deal properly with such dynamic games. The key is to be flexible, know something like that may happen, not panic, and be prepared to adapt your strategy accordingly real time.

I will start telling you how to go about determining your strategy X independent of section toughness in the final CAT exam, in the next blog. As of now, even you have not got the entire point of what I wrote till now, I will ask you to remember one thing: the strategy X is your strategy X; it is unique, unique and unique. Which now brings me to the point with which I started this blog: don’t go time’s a wastin’. I will say three things in this regard.

1. Before writing this blog, I went to few sites like pagalguy.com, coolavenues.com etc. to get a feel of what you people thought about CAT and was amazed to see the number of posts on the bulletin boards and the time a few of you spent there discussing and trying to find that one strategy, which will pluck and drop the CAT in your lap like the apple on Newton’s head. Sorry, not happening. Daal nahin galne waali, in Hindi. Chalk kat le, in plainspeak.

Don’t do this. Time is precious. Use it in studying for CAT and practicing Mock CATs, and if bored, go and read ‘Harry Potter’ or watch ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ or do even general timepass with your friends. Will help you more – may improve your vocabulary and communication skills, and anyway will give overworked brain some rest. But don’t waste time trying to look for that magic bullet strategy that will nail the CAT for you. It doesn’t exist. If you think you have some such strategy for CAT 2007 and if you have banked only on that, rest assured you are going to swallow a bitter pill. If I have broken your heart, I am sorry, but that’s that.

2. If you are looking for shortcuts, then again you will be disappointed. There do exist people who get through CAT without shedding sweat, like me - I prepared for CAT for five days and that too practiced only mock CATs - but it was not because of knowing any shortcuts, in fact knowing anything which others didn’t know (I will tell you how next time). I lived for two whole years among 500 people who got through CAT into IIMA, the best B-school in this country, and I had not come across a single person among that set who even claimed to know such shortcuts, let alone prove their existence.

Shortcuts don’t work in such scenarios; most likely you have to at least burn the 10 pm oil if not the midnight oil. Shortcuts only work in things like politics, stock market, even business, where manipulation is possible. Not in CAT, not while improving your communication skills in English or in any other language, not while bettering your knowledge, not while developing your personality.

There will always be people who will tell you they know shortcuts, but if you believe them, it’s you who will be a loser. There is a saying in Hindi which goes like: ‘Aa bayl mujhe maar.’ It means: O bull, come and hit me. You will be doing exactly that. You will be laying yourself wide open for somebody to take you for a ride. And people will. So dOn’t listen to people who say they know shortcuts in this case; avoid them like a plague. At best, they will waste your time; at worst, they will lighten your purse strings too without giving you something in return.

3. The third thing you shouldn’t do is to go on a spamming spree asking IIM graduates to help you crack CAT. Will not work. Not because they are unhelpful, but because they don’t have time. Most of them are struggling hard to find time even for their personal lives. Besides you are not likely to be the first one doing that; they would have already received many such mails/scraps. It’s like me, an aspiring author, asking Vikram Seth to help me get published. Do you think it will work? People are not likely to respond to you unless you are their cousin/bullying cousin’s daughter/you look like Aishwarya Rai or Tom Cruise and the person is single. So you will be only wasting your time. Trust me. When, like you, I didn't know this approach wouldn't work, I tried it in other areas and only wasted my time
   

Since I began with quoting from a movie, I will also end with the same. There is another very good movie called ‘The Princess Bride’ with fantastic quotes. In that the brave hero tells to the princess: ‘Life is tough your highness, and if somebody says different, they are selling something.’ Remember that. In fact I will go beyond and say: ‘Life is tough your highness, and anybody who says different is selling something that will waste your time too.”

So, join me in the next blog on the tough road to developing your unique strategy for CAT, and while you are at it, work hard. Work hard in a structured, goal oriented fashion. That is the only way to get through CAT for sure, if any.

p.s. - Please post a comment critiquing/suggesting improvements/other comments telling me what else you want to know if you liked this article. Also as I mentioned in the beginning, please tell about this article to as many people as possible. I will write the next one, after about a week, after I see enough comments and am satisfied that this article has reached a wide audience.

Thank you for your time