For people who joined a two-year program at an MBA coaching institute and are wondering why they are still miles away from their choicest b-schools, here are some revelations. In a survey conducted by PaGaLGuY.com amongst 366 students from the top b-schools in India on ‘which preparatory program helped them get through a b-school’, only 5.74 percent of the students attribute their success to the two-year program. Of the people who had taken MBA entrance tests for the first time, only 9 percent give credit to the two-year program and amongst the retakers (students who had taken the CAT one or more times before finally achieving success), only 3 percent think that they were successful because of the two year preparatory course. The institutes that were a part of the survey were: Indian Institutes of Management at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kozhikode, Calcutta and Shillong, Faculty of Management Studies, New Delhi, NITIE Mumbai, Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi.

Amongst all the students surveyed, a whopping 47 percent of the them credit the Test series for their admission-worthy scores. Dig deeper into the survey and we come to know that freshers assign most credit to the 1 year program and the retakers to test series.

Test Series: The winning edge

As you can see in the above graphs, the one-year program and the Test-series have paid highest dividends among admitted students in top b-schools. MBA entrance examinations. Such a high percentage of students attributing their success to the Test Series bargains a little thought. A Test Series course is a set of compiled past ten-year question papers of the CAT amounting to about 20 to 40 mock tests. The ten year question papers help a candidate identify a test-taking pattern and formulate strategies. The mock tests are held every weekend and the student spends the subsequent week analyzing the mocks. This helps him to formulate a) section wise strategy and b) Question wise strategy. Anyone who closely takes and analyzes the mocks realizes the important areas to concentrate on for a good score in the examination (for example Number system, Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry for quantitative and reading skills and grammar for verbal). More retakers than freshers assign their b-school admission to test series because a retaker is better able to analyze his mistakes in the mock tests due to his experience of actually taking the exams.

Also, it is believed that preparing for the CAT is more about being a better test-taker than it is about being strong at math, English or DI concepts. A test-series is designed to allow an aspirant to optimize his test-taking skills, while longer drawn-out preparatory courses concentrate on concepts, which is a less pivotal area in the process of acing MBA entrance exams.

Why do two-year courses exist?

It is intriguing why students join a preparatory course that is statistically doomed (read: the two year program). One reason could be the large amount of money spent in marketing this program by coaching institutes which control an appreciable share in the market. Another reason can be the kind of counseling provided to students at the coaching centers. They are made to believe that they lack in a crucial area or areas of the CAT and lack it to such an extent that they would need a longer time to master them. For example, a humanities students might be told that his quantitative skills do not match up to the engineers. He is assured that a two year program will mend this lacuna, thus influencing his psychology for an admission.

The two-year and one-year program – is the difference only in the duration?

If one checks the curriculum and the number of contact hours of a two-year and one-year program, it is easily inferable that both are essentially the same. The coaching institutes charge the same fee for both the courses too. The only difference is the amount of time. To fill this gap, the students are sent on long ’study breaks’ in two-year programs. The batch strength is halved when the students return from the break, with their morale and enthusiasm down by the same degree. These students are then clubbed with other batches (whose classes were not discontinued); the mismatch in the levels of the batches further affects the students resulting in very few of them making it to the top b-schools.

Why is the two-year program offered by coaching institutes at all?

At this point one might wonder why the coaching institutes have such a program on their list altogether. According to eminent sources from the coaching industry, it is ‘to capture the market before it matures’. The two year courses are meant for students in their penultimate year of graduation. If they are left to themselves, they will join a coaching program in the last year of graduation, thus increasing the competition between coaching institutes. With the two year program the coaching institutes finish this market preemptively so that they can concentrate on the serious aspirants who do not want to wait for a long time before taking their entrance examinations.

It is really YOUR decision

The decision for joining a preparatory program should be a personal one and should be determined by one’s own strengths and weaknesses. An informed choice does play a significant role in determining ones success.