CAT vs GMAT :)

This is a question that no one has a convincing answer for! Well, much like "Who made roger rabbit?" :)

Here's my answer..

If we talk about numbers, CAT really does stand out. I agree. But lets talk about GMAT's numbers as well. From India alone there are around 20,000 test takers every year. Thats a huge number. The global number is around 250,000 in a year. Lets consider the top 6 B-Schools in the US(coz we are considering the 6 IIMs here while writing CAT. Lets be fair!). There are around 1,400 merit seats in the IIMs. So they conveniently think that the selection ratio is less than 1%(Considering 225,000 CAT takers). Come on! Be real. Total seats in the top 6 B-Schools adds up to around 2,500. There are around 20,000 applicants who fight tooth and nail for these 2,500 seats. Now 20,000 applicants applying to 2,500 seats doesnt mean a selection ratio of more than 10%. The rest of the 280,000 people(280,000 because there'll be people who would have written GMAT for one season and for some reason they'll be applying with the same score in the next season as well) could have applied, but they dont because they think they are not worthy of getting into those 6 schools. Because there's an assumed cut-off in GMAT unlike CAT, where the schools determine the cut-off and then call the applicants for GD/PI, people tend to think that GD/PI is the second round. Strictly speaking, CAT is just a test and GD/PI is the first step taken by the school. This is because there's no option to apply to the IIMs after getting the CAT score based on the score. That would have been better to clear out the confusion. Now check the numbers for yourselves :)

GMAT has around 250,000 test takers and a considerable number of re-applicants fighting out for around 2500 seats in the top 6 US schools. And there are 225,000 CAT takers for 1400 seats. So now beat the number game! :)

So for all the CAT takers this year, All the best! :) Dont let the numbers affect your focus.

A Verbal Journey.. Contd.. :)

Just completed solving 50 questions on SC. In the beginning, my accuracy sucked in SC. Was a mere 50%(for the first 10 questions) and that was yesterday's story. Got pissed off and just closed the book and slept off. Today with great determination, I decided to solve the remaining. I attacked 10 questions at once and a little inspiration in between(read GMAT experiences of 700+ scorers) and checked the answers for those 10 questions.. I would just check the answer, go to that question and without seeing the explanation, I would ask myself where I could possibly have gone wrong. And bingo! I used to find some silly silly mistake of mine.. This way I would try not to commit those mistakes in the next 10 and I was hoping that my accuracy improves by employing this method :)

Finally, including the first 10 questions that I sucked at, my accuracy stood at 76%

And the method did work! My accuracy stood at 83% for the last 40 questions to which I applied it! It worked for me! Hoping this method works.. Atleast till my GMAT :)

A Verbal Journey!!!

I'm weak at GMAT verbal. Without any prep and having forgotten most of the formulae i.e, standard deviation and stuff, I manage to score a decent 47-48 in Quant. I'm not saying thats good, but I have a shot at pushing it to 49-50. But the case is completely different with verbal. I suck at it! Not just a "Whoa.. You're bad!" but a "Booooooooo!!!". "Divide and rule" being my policy, I attacked the CR sub-section of GMAT verbal and I was able to crack it in 2 days. Now I have an accuracy of more than 75% in CR. Over to the SC sub-section. Its gonna be tough. But hope to crack that in less than 2 days since its just basic grammar that everyone is born with! :)

Will keep you posted! See ya for now!! :)

Two important blogs

I mainly follow two blogs and also hound several forums in order to get valuable info.

The two blogs which I consider the "Mother of all HBS blogs":

http://www.computersexy.com/blog/

http://agirlsmba.blogspot.com/

Both are brilliant :)

My introduction to the world :)

Hi,

This is my first ever blog.

I'm a Computer Science Engg graduate from India and currently working in one of the largest and one of the most innovative companies in the world :)

You probably guessed it!

I have been working for the past 14 months(Starting Aug. 2008) as a Software Engineer.

Thats about my work-ex.

Acads are pretty good. I'd say impressive.

Extra-curricular: Just a handful few.

Its been quite a satisfying journey till now and I'm delving into the seemingly impossible considering my work-ex.

Yes, I'm applying to 6 of

Harvard Business School

UCLA Anderson SOM

Yale SOM

Stern School of Business

Kellogg

Columbia Business School

Duke Univ-Fuqua

UMich-Ross

UPenn-Wharton

Stanford GSB

Univ of Chicago-Booth

Dartmouth-Tuck

And i'll apply to the remaining 6 for Class of '13

My GMAT is like two weeks away and I'm kinda tensed. Have taken a vacation till Nov 10th and am yet to start my prep :)

I have a unique way of writing essays. Wherein I write my own quotes suitable to the situation that i'll be explaining. These quotes have the potential of becoming "a saying" in future :)

Will be discussing everything in detail.

Now that I have taken the first step into the blogging world, I need to consider this a journey as well..