One more mammoth post from an UnderDog! Hope it makes sense!
July 2003
July 2003 bole toh fultoos bindaas life! Bole toh got a job on the third day of seventh semester, in the fourth company coming in the college(NIT Calicut)! No classes going on due to the placements, and no tension in life! Daily life used to be playing games(computer/outdoor), watching movies or more imp, helping batchmates in their interviews or going to their parties
if they get thru!
For the first time I see people studing for
cat! TIME had organised a special batch for my college, and some people had joined it. Unke saat humne bhi
CAT ka form bhar diya! 1100 bucks ka sawal tha, bapu nae bola ja jele apni zindagi
Had never heard about any site called Pagalguy 
November 2003
No tension! Junta from NIT Suratkal had landed up the previous night (center was Calicut), lots of boozing & stuff going on in the campus all night
Early morning gave the paper, wapas hostel aye toh malum pada paper cancelled!
A few of us were [
what the f**k!!!], the majority (including me
) were
[Ye ye Ye! 1100 mae do baar cat dene ka chance ]
Still hadn't heard about Pagalguy February 2004
Again no tension! Got up early morning, gave the
cat again. Never bothered to check the result till the score card came. Got around 88%! Had to give a party coz i was the top scorer in the floor
Still hadn't heard about Pagalguy
September 2004
Decided to give
cat a rest for this year, busy in sw work & trekking!
Still hadn't heard about Pagalguy May 2005
Got together with a bunch of guys in my project who were serious about
cat and prep. Joined CL full classes, worked on it full steam! We were part of a group of work-ex ppl who had weekend classes, but we enrolled for late night weekday classes in addition to it! (
thanks to two wonderful CL faculty: Chandra Sir & Ankur Sir :- they sat with us every night!) Apart from the weekend classes, every day evening, it used to go from 8 to 11+, from may end to october! Those were the good old days!
Finally got to know about Pagalguy and joined asap November 2005
D-Day! Got completely un-nerved due to the new format of the
CAT paper. Could manage a feeble 90%, and had applied to only the top 10-15 odd colleges, so no call. Also made the big mistake of ignoring other mba exams (SNAP/JMET/IIFT). Finally MBA 04 gave me a TISS & SPJain Dubai call, both which i couldn't convert
This was a hopless period for me, I had completely spoiled my work profile, as i had made it very clear that i was interested in mba. I had prepared like hell, the likes of which I could never replicate. Gave a few company interviews, but never felt the interest. MBA was in my blood. Decided to give it a shot again. March-April 2006
Decided to start prep early enough. Also had new roommies who were giving
cat for the first time (Newbies
); introduced them to the world of
PG! Joined the mock series of TIME; also formed the famous
ninja_talli-pankay82-Roman2005-kapil_b cubicle in my office (
Being a bunch of core mba-givers in the same cubicle, we used to openly discuss zillion quant/di/english questions in between work; be it questions from QQAD/DQAD/QuantMarathon/DIMarathon/Geometry/Parajumbles/etc
threads, we dicussed/shouted/quarrelled/solved it among ourselves!)
It was a sight for sore eyes!
If one of us was on leave, he used to continue from home thru sms-es & phone calls!
November 2006
D-Day! This time
CAT was a breeze, thought I had done quite well; later on I found out that people had done even more better! :lookroun: Again managed an average 93%.Later on gave IIFT/SNAP/JMET/XLRI/FMS as they came by; scored a decent 530 rank in JMET, a pretty good 90 marks in SNAP, and an exhlirating 99.65% in XAT!
Gave the simbi (sibm/scmhrd) college interviews, and the Xlri interviews, finally waitlisted on both the xlri calls with a decent chance of converting one of them.
Edit : Converted both of them, went for the BM course.
I learnt quite a few lessons from the 2 odd years of MBA prep.
CAT is not about proving that you are the best.
CAT is about showing that you can give even the best person a good run for his money.
CAT is not about determing where do you exaclty stand among the thousands those try for the same few odd mmgnt seats.
CAT is about ignoring those thousands of ppl and instead fighting against yourself to improve yourself.
CAT is not about waiting for a chance to show your skills.
CAT is about grabbing the chance whenever you get it.
The best person is never gonna be decided through
CAT; do not keep
cat as your only option in life; there IS life beyond
CAT.
CAT gives you an oppurtunity; one out of many to go a step further.
If you are not able to step up this time, look for alternatives. Never get disheartened. Keep options open.
Amen.