a'badites please help. TIME or IMS?

[cattie]

Back with another querry . Could someone lemme know the pros and cons of TIME & IMS long term(around 12-14 months) classroom coaching of ahmedabad. would like to know the fields in which each of them excel in and regarding the material they provide and stuff. would help a lot in deciding me and my frnds which of them to join. btw any prospective joiners can also post. lets team up

[buck_was]

Hey Cattie !

Wats the missing link b/w Vizag n A'bad ??? Surely not IIM-A as yet

Newayz... me a half a'bad - half b'lore d00d... did the full-time classroom contact prog of TIME at B'lore last yr... but know quite a lot of their a'bad counterpart as well... they r supposedly the better ones... especially considering their test series and personal kinda treatment as well...

But, wen i say 'better', its bcos TIME is relatively new in A'bad... just 2 batches old... while, if we neglect the advantage of TIME due to its test series, then coaching instts like PT also spring up into picture... with similar no. of 'good' calls to their credit...

TC.

[tnameh]

Hey!

Hemant here. I have lived in A'bad for quite a while and had to do a lot of R+D to find out which classes I should pick up for my CAT prep. Here are my 2 cents:

1) PT seems to be the most popular for classroom training. Most popular by a long way. Weekly tests, plenty of material, extra vocational training, not to forget the GD/PI experiences.

2) IMS, I would rate second here. Excellent material. Highly competitive test series. Great postal course as well.

3) Places like TIME, Excel etc, I would rate much lower than these two. I personally think that TIME's AIMCAT series is quite VFM if you have enrolled for postal courses or are studying on your own. It is quite a good complement to your prep.

In short, for classroom training in A'bad don't look beyond PT (Ashram Road Branch, and not the Premchandnagar one, lemme make that clear).

For postal courses, IMS is the best. By a long way.

Regional differences exist. IMS is # 1 in quite a few places in India. Followed by Career Forum, Career Launcher, TIME et al. But students swear by PT back in A'bad. The others, apart from IMS... nahhhh. No so great. Not even Time.

For classroom training in A'bad, dont look beyond 1) PT 2) IMS (necessarily in that order)

Hope that helps!

Cheers

Hemant
http://n3urotica.blogspot.com

[cattie]

Gr8 post there Hemanth, brought out a diff perspective reg the issue. never gave PT a serious consideration earlier. would u happen to know(so well informed that u r) abt the gandhinagar branch of PT as well. we would rather prefer that if it stands the same as the ashram road one( I really doubt it, but just in case). thanx for the effort dude.

[cattie]

Originally Posted by buck_was

Wats the missing link b/w Vizag n A'bad ??? Surely not IIM-A as yet

well, buck_was, I study in g'nagar(at da-iict) and am frm vizag. getting the link now....? . btw just for info sake, me sagar.

[buck_was]

Hey Sagar!

Do let us know, wot u finally settled for...

[tnameh]

Hey Boss!

PT hasn't got any centres in Gandhinagar. Why would they? The place is a semi-ghost town. And nobody from Ahmedabad would bother travelling that far to attend a coaching class.

They have two. One at Ashram Road, one at Premchandnagar. Either way, you need to travel a light year to reach these places.

If you wanna study at A'bad, dont look beyond PT and IMS. Places like Careerline, RBE, Excel... shady!! Especially RBE.

Baaki bacha TIME. That's in Navrangpura. Would be a couple of KMs from PT (A-Road). It ain't THAT hot among CAT takers there.

Make your choices man. If travelling is a problem, go for IMS postal.

[couch potato]

Originally Posted by tnameh

1) PT seems to be the most popular for classroom training. Most popular by a long way. Weekly tests, plenty of material, extra vocational training, not to forget the GD/PI experiences.

Can u post the PT results for CAT 2003?
I mean the number of PT students gettin calls from IIMs and their names....
that would make things clearer...

Thanks

[tnameh]

Check out the website. I obviously wouldnt have those numbers. They should be available on www.ptindia.com. I suspect that they wouldnt be having the breakup for various branches.

In any case, just understand this: Ahmedabad isnt the kind of place that would be producing too many IIM-type students. That number would be meagre. Scant. so dont be disappointed if you find out that the branch has less than a dozen people going to some some IIM.

Visit these branches, talk to a few students, talk to the faculty. That should hopefully give you an idea.

Hope that helps.

[cattie]

[quote="tnameh"]PT hasn't got any centres in Gandhinagar. Why would they? The place is a semi-ghost town.[\quote]

there musta been some miss interpretation on my part while talking to one of my seniors. somehow got the impression that they have a branch at g'nagar. anyways wasn't really interested.

Originally Posted by buck_was

Do let us know, wot u finally settled for...

Would like to let u know, I've almost made up my mind to enroll at PT. gotta contact them as yet. thanx for the peice of info, Hemanth.

Originally Posted by tnameh

In any case, just understand this: Ahmedabad isnt the kind of place that would be producing too many IIM-type students. That number would be meagre. Scant. so dont be disappointed if you find out that the branch has less than a dozen people going to some some IIM.

couldn't agree with u more. my exp at IMS would explain that. I went along with 2 of my frnds to have a talk at IMS reg their course and stuff. there was already a group of 5, same case only thing they were 2004 aspirants. we were taken up by the receptionist along with them. she started asking abt our reading habits, how much we already knew abt the CAT paper, abt B-schools, abt XAT, JMET ....

To my horror, the other grp had not as yet set their eyes on a mock-cat paper let alone a real one. didn't have a clue reg the various sec involved. haven't heard of any of the B-schools neither the rest of the exams relating them. did not have any reading habits(as far as the one beside me was concerned), and for God's sake didn't know what an editorial sec in a newspaper meant (now I'm not sure if that was meant to be a mock at the receptionist but I doubt it).

u could imagine our surprise. It knew no bounds for sure. anyway no hard feelings. I was just presenting the senario, let it not be at the cost of their dignity. after all they wouldn't be throwing away around 6k bucks for nothing. but I must say the exp caught me spell bound.