Important question to ponder upon...

[pooran_pooran]

Originally Posted by Psychodementia @ Sun Nov 28, 2004 7:15 am

"Do you think the 2hours are objective and quantitative measures of a person's ability to be a manager ?"

Arun

In one word, "No". Those two hours cull out aspirants who are good in quants, DI and verbal. Even the gauging of the time management skills of a candidate in the CAT tests, I feel, is bit exaggerated. Time management in CAT tests is something that could be acquired over a period of time by regular practice, but that does'nt necessarily translate into efficient time management in all spheres of life.

A manager needs to have other qualities too - leadership, communication, maturity, ability to see/seize opportunities, ability to foresee/avert problems, team spirit, self-confidence, social skills...to name a few. The qualities listed are not just feel good words; any person with ample work experience will vouch for the importance of these qualities as quite a lot would have seen a variety of colorful bosses.

The present selection process of CAT first separates candidates good in QA/DI/Verbal and then administers GD/PI to assess other qualities. Though I would like to add that no selection process would be absolutely perfect...what if this was done the other way around? GD/PI for a lakh and half candidates and then CAT test for those shortlisted - good idea, but it is a huuuuuuuge task.

What if the candidates were to submit essays and letters of reccommendation of their professors and/or superiors at workplace first..then the shortlisted candidates were to undergo GD/PI....then in the third round, CAT tests. If the universities in other countries can do that, why not IIMs? Those universities in fact receive applications from all over the world. This perhaps will probably provide an wholistic view of the abilities of the applicants.

Better still, they can do away with the CAT and go for GMAT, or make CAT something like GMAT. This would also reduce unnecessary/unwarranted pressure on the aspirants.

All said and done, the final decision has to be taken by the IIMs. It is perhaps the number of applicants that is really discouraging them from doing something like that.

-pooran

[ketanm]

Originally Posted by Psychodementia @ Sun Nov 28, 2004 7:15 am

If I could re-phrase it, more like, "Do you think the 2hours are objective and quantitative measures of a person's ability to be a manager ?"

Arun

Then I think the more pertinent question would be,

Does the IIMs really looking for people with exceptional potential to be a good manager?

My answer would be a NO. What is the aim of IIMs in conducting CAT is to weed out those who they think definitely can'nt be good managers(the bottom rung). Its NOT a selection exam but an elimination one. Then the next question arises... Does that mean if I dont get selected, I do not have potential for being a good manager (as per the IIMs)? Again the answer is NO. Here the problem lies in the fact that there are too many aspirants but very few seats. With CAT they have NOT only eliminated who they think are poor candidates, but also many who are up to the desired expectation of IIMs. These are the typical unlucky ones but there is nothing to bother IIMs, since good candidates far exceeds the no of seats.

So essentially the equation can be expressed as :

1.5 lacs sitting in the CAT exam --> Around 5000(or whatever number) are equally worthy of IIM seat --> 3000(or whatever number) lucky ones gets the IIM GD/PI call

Note: Even these 5000 are NOT _all_ the "top" ones.....some may have been very unlucky (example meeting with an accident on the D day, or getting sick etc etc)

So dont think you are worthless because you were not able to make it to IIMs. Think it as a loss to IIMs (You could have been the next charismatic IIM alumni donating (m/b)illions of $$$$ to your alma mater)

Ketan

[purple yogi]

very emtional post man .... actualy iam in the same boat have been doing well in sims and lost the battle on the D DAY ... i ll be completing 2 years work ex in an leading ionvest ment bank all i have to say that INDIAN B school suck big time when it come to choosiong people and their whole funda of having such kind of paper is very weird .. man what are they rtying to test ...... i would b completing 2 yeras in march and iam looking at the other career options ... why MBA WHY ..its not the end of the world man move on ........ sp jain xlri are all good institutes .. i think top 10 in india would give u a phenomenal break thats for sure ..... but thats what mBA will do we all be parto ft he rut man ... people are who have done wewll for themselves are people who are are unconventional ...... they will definately do better .. like i said i am currnlty doing i banking .. i can assure i would eknow better then IIM grad about how IPOS and shares work but i wll not get that opprtunity beacuse i am not an IIM .. which i think is bulls hit ... there is a hell lot of difference between books and actual work ......
i read an interesting survey of 1000 ceos of companies......
only 28 of the were mBAS that about it .. the rest enterpreneurs.... and guess what we are going to work for them ..... if take up the standard route ..... ie MBA

[one_step_to_insanity]

[quote="pooran_pooran @ Mon Nov 29, 2004 1:20 pm

What if the candidates were to submit essays and letters of reccommendation of their professors and/or superiors at workplace first..then the shortlisted candidates were to undergo GD/PI....then in the third round, CAT tests. *If the universities in other countries can do that, why not IIMs? *Those universities in fact receive applications from all over the world. *This perhaps will probably provide an wholistic view of the abilities of the applicants.

Better still, they can do away with the CAT and go for GMAT, or make CAT something like GMAT. *This would also reduce unnecessary/unwarranted pressure on the aspirants.

All said and done, the final decision has to be taken by the IIMs. *It is perhaps the number of applicants that is really discouraging them from doing something like that.

-pooran[/quote]

Excellent post. Actually the number of applicants should make the IIMs graduate towards the GMAT model you mentioned.

The entire structure of CAT is such that it boils down to those 2 hrs .. don't we all know that? You could slog for an year and be reduced to absolute misery because of those 2 hours. If I ever saw an exam where the result could be absolutely disproportianate to the prep, CAT would be it .. and I guess the galling thing is that you have to wait one whole year to try again. Unlike GRE or GMAT, where you can choose to change the dates or to cancel the test altogether if you feel you are have not done well, CAT offers you no such luxuries.

Anyways I don't see it changing any time soon.

[Psychodementia]

Originally Posted by ketanm @ Mon Nov 29, 2004 2:55 pm

Then I think the more pertinent question would be,

Does the IIMs really looking for people with exceptional potential to be a good manager?

My answer would be a NO. What is the aim of IIMs in conducting CAT is to weed out those who they think definitely can'nt be good managers(the bottom rung). Its NOT a selection exam but an elimination one. Then the next question arises... Does that mean if I dont get selected, I do not have potential for being a good manager (as per the IIMs)? Again the answer is NO. *Here the problem lies in the fact that there are *too many aspirants but very few seats. With CAT they have NOT only eliminated who they think are poor candidates, but also many who are up to the desired expectation of IIMs. These are the typical unlucky ones but there is nothing to bother IIMs, since *good candidates far exceeds the no of seats.

So essentially the equation can be expressed as :

1.5 lacs sitting in the CAT exam --> Around 5000(or whatever number) *are equally worthy of IIM seat --> 3000(or whatever number) lucky ones gets the IIM GD/PI call

Note: Even these 5000 are NOT _all_ the "top" ones.....some may have been very unlucky (example meeting with an accident on the D day, or getting sick etc etc)

So dont think you are worthless because you were not able to make it to IIMs. Think it as a loss to IIMs (You could have been the next charismatic IIM alumni donating (m/b)illions of $$$$ to your alma mater) *

Ketan

So you mean to say the logistics are the only problem ?

Think about it. Also, something the OP had put up : If CAT were to be held several times every year, a la GMAT style, we would actually get a better pool of applicants.

Also, I am not trying to demean the efforts of someone like tdubey (I'm sorry if Im taking the same names but I cannot see a better examples). To get the kind of scores they have is certainly impressive. But do you think that someone like him should be allowed to exibhit some other "qualities". If I see a guy who has been in IMO and an IIT-JEE 111 rank, I know his academic capabilities already. I don't want him to slog anymore for CAT now I would be tempted to give away that IIM seat without looking too much at his CAT scores.

But if at all I want to judge him, I would want to look more closely at how he has been as a person - overall development. I might want to see him involved in say some extracurriculars.

Similarily for a person who has just a mediocre IInd class from an average University, I might want him to prove his academic credentials better with a stellar CAT score. I want him to prove he has it in him, to stand the rigors of the first year at any of the IIMs.

I hope you know what I am getting at ? But as usual, most of these discussions stop being healthy once it gets into an ego issue between the haves (IIM calls) and the have-nots (no IIM calls). That is why I waited to get some responses before I posted.

Arun

PS: I agree IIT and IAS are not similar to CAT in many ways. For starters, you cannot prepare for them in a few months.

[pooran_pooran]

Hopefully this is my final post for this thread . Now read these -


1. A father and his son are waiting at a bus stop in the evening. There is a lamp post behind them. The lamp post, the father and his son stand on the same straight line. The father observes that the shadows of his head and his son’s head are incident at the same point on the ground. If the heights of the lamp post, the father and his son are 6 metres, 1.8 metres and 0.9 metres respectively, and the father is standing 2.1 metres away form the post then how far (in metres) is son standing form his father?
2. Each family in a locality has at most two adults, and no family has fewer than 3 children. Considering all the families together, there are more adults than boys, more boys than girls, and more girls than families, Then the minimum possible number of families in the locality is --------------
3. A rectangular sheet of paper, when halved by folding it at the mid point of its longer side, results in a rectangle, whose longer and shorter sides are in the same proportion as the longer and shorter sides of the original rectangle. If the shorter side of the original rectangle is 2, what is the area of the smaller rectangle?
4. Coach John sat with the score cards of Indian players from the 3 games in a one-day cricket tournament where the same set of players played for India and all the major batsmen got out. John summarized the batting performance through three diagrams, one for each games. In each diagram, the three outer triangles communicate the number of runs scored by the three top scores from India, where K, R, S, V, and Y represent Kaif, Rahul, Saurav, Virender, and Yuvraj respectively. The middle triangle in each diagram denotes the percentage of total score that was scored by the top three Indian scorers in that game. No two players score the same number of runs in the same game. John also calculated two batting indices for each player based on his scores in the tournaments; the R-index of a batsman is the difference between his highest and lowest scores in the 3 games while the M-index is the middle number, if his scores are arranged in a non-increasing order.
5. A study was conduced to ascertain the relative importance that employees in five different countries assigned to five different traits in their Chief Executive Officers. The traits were compassion (C), decisiveness (D), negotiation skills (N), public visibility (P), and vision (V). The level of dissimilarity between two countries is the maximum difference in the ranks allotted by the two countries to any of the five traits. The following table indicates the rank order of the five traits for each country.
I am not delving into the complexity level of these questions, but does a manager get to solve these questions everyday in his office? How many permutation/combination problems will he have to solve daily as a manager? How many problems related to number system, factorials, reciprocals, time-speed-distance, ratio and proportions, probability does a manager have to solve during his entire tenure in a string of companies? How many RCs will he have to read? How many sentences will he have to rearrange to form a logical paragraph? How many words from the wordlist to be mugged for CAT will be used by him on a daily basis – in all probability he may not get to solve these type of problems at all. If need be, he will find someone or something efficient enough to solve these problems.

What if the CAT aspirant is a veterinary doctor or proofreader or a B.A. in gondwana literature..etc..and happens to see business potential in his field and wishes to capitalize on that by getting certified through IIMs? Does he have to prove his academic credentials by getting good scores out of 50 marks of quants, 50 in DI and 50 in VA?

It is my observation that in the levels of higher management, one rarely has to face convoluted problems posed in CAT. There will be problems, highly stressful ones, but of different nature altogether. It would suffice if you know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide with reasonable accuracy and speed. Even English, when you reach that level, whatever you speak is English. But it goes without saying that you should have good knowledge of your field coupled with common sense.

I have nothing against CAT – personally, I enjoy appearing for Mockcats and the actual CAT, and I do get a rush trying to compete against myself, and I also note with childlike glee the improvements that I have made since preparing for the CAT. But I also wonder if one needs to be a superhuman calculator and a thesaurus to be a good manager. I also have reservations about the idea that pressure cooker situations bring the best out of a manager – in fact I think it is bullshit (sorry). A pressure cooker situation is the last thing that a manager will consciously get into.

Why do I keep trying to get a foothold into the IIMs you might ask – its for the brand name, the awe it inspires, the attention it draws from others and more importantly it gives you the credibility to state certain facts/opinions without fear of ridicule when you are a part of the management – not for the education – others can give the same if not better.

Drupada wanted his prospective son-in-law to hit the fish-eye and Janaka wanted his prospective son-in-law to lift the bow – I thought both were silly, ……ditto for the CAT, but if that’s what they want, I will try just that.


-pooran

[imgonnacrackthistime]

Originally Posted by pooran_pooran @ Mon Nov 29, 2004 5:37 pm

Hopefully this is my final post for this thread * * . *Now read these -


1. A father and his son are waiting at a bus stop in the evening. There is a lamp post behind them. The lamp post, the father and his son stand on the same straight line. The father observes that the shadows of his head and his son’s head are incident at the same point on the ground. If the heights of the lamp post, the father and his son are 6 metres, 1.8 metres and 0.9 metres respectively, and the father is standing 2.1 metres away form the post then how far (in metres) is son standing form his father?
2. Each family in a locality has at most two adults, and no family has fewer than 3 children. Considering all the families together, there are more adults than boys, more boys than girls, and more girls than families, Then the minimum possible number of families in the locality is --------------
3. A rectangular sheet of paper, when halved by folding it at the mid point of its longer side, results in a rectangle, whose longer and shorter sides are in the same proportion as the longer and shorter sides of the original rectangle. If the shorter side of the original rectangle is 2, what is the area of the smaller rectangle?
4. Coach John sat with the score cards of Indian players from the 3 games in a one-day cricket tournament where the same set of players played for India and all the major batsmen got out. John summarized the batting performance through three diagrams, one for each games. In each diagram, the three outer triangles communicate the number of runs scored by the three top scores from India, where K, R, S, V, and Y represent Kaif, Rahul, Saurav, Virender, and Yuvraj respectively. The middle triangle in each diagram denotes the percentage of total score that was scored by the top three Indian scorers in that game. No two players score the same number of runs in the same game. John also calculated two batting indices for each player based on his scores in the tournaments; the R-index of a batsman is the difference between his highest and lowest scores in the 3 games while the M-index is the middle number, if his scores are arranged in a non-increasing order.
5. A study was conduced to ascertain the relative importance that employees in five different countries assigned to five different traits in their Chief Executive Officers. The traits were compassion (C), decisiveness (D), negotiation skills (N), public visibility (P), and vision (V). The level of dissimilarity between two countries is the maximum difference in the ranks allotted by the two countries to any of the five traits. The following table indicates the rank order of the five traits for each country.
I am not delving into the complexity level of these questions, but does a manager get to solve these questions everyday in his office? *How many permutation/combination problems will he have to solve daily as a manager? How many problems related to number system, factorials, reciprocals, time-speed-distance, ratio and proportions, probability does a manager have to solve during his entire tenure in a string of companies? *How many RCs will he have to read? *How many sentences will he have to rearrange to form a logical paragraph? How many words from the wordlist to be mugged for CAT will be used by him on a daily basis – in all probability he may not get to solve these type of problems at all. *If need be, he will find someone or something efficient enough to solve these problems. *

What if the CAT aspirant is a veterinary doctor or proofreader or a B.A. in gondwana literature..etc..and happens to see business potential in his field and wishes to capitalize on that by getting certified through IIMs? Does he have to prove his academic credentials by getting good scores out of 50 marks of quants, 50 in DI and 50 in VA?

It is my observation that in the levels of higher management, one rarely has to face convoluted problems posed in CAT. *There will be problems, highly stressful ones, but of different nature altogether. *It would suffice if you know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide with reasonable accuracy and speed. *Even English, when you reach that level, whatever you speak is English. *But it goes without saying that you should have good knowledge of your field coupled with common sense.

I have nothing against CAT – personally, I enjoy appearing for Mockcats and the actual CAT, and I do get a rush trying to compete against myself, and I also note with childlike glee the improvements that I have made since preparing for the CAT. *But I also wonder if one needs to be a superhuman calculator and a thesaurus to be a good manager. *I also have reservations about the idea that pressure cooker situations bring the best out of a manager – in fact I think it is bullshit (sorry). *A pressure cooker situation is the last thing that a manager will consciously get into. *

Why do I keep trying to get a foothold into the IIMs you might ask – its for the brand name, the awe it inspires, the attention it draws from others and more importantly it gives you the credibility to state certain facts/opinions without fear of ridicule when you are a part of the management – not for the education – others can give the same if not better.

Drupada wanted his prospective son-in-law to hit the fish-eye and Janaka wanted his prospective son-in-law to lift the bow – I thought both were silly, ……ditto for the CAT, but if that’s what they want, I will try just that.


-pooran

I sort of agree with you. but going by this logic refutes our whole education system.

Tell me why does one need to solve all those mind-boggling questions of Physics and Maths for JEE preparation when everyone knows that there is an iota of chance that these problems will replicate themselves in our career. Why do u need to cram History,Geography n etc when u know that they wont help u reach anywhere. I agree that Managers wont be solving those geomerty questions or deciphering the parajumbles but same is the case with engineers , doctors , CA's or any other field.
Its just like that. We haven't come up with any thing subjective coz other ppl, however big studs they may be, dont possess skill to guage anyone's subjectiveness. everything is objective. u gotta prove urself...

even I stand very little chance to get thru this time. I am also not happy with this scenario where everything boils down to those 2 hrs.but thats the way it is.
and if u see aptitude or intelligence wise, I bet those ppl who are getting more than 99 percentile are more logically sound or more intelligent than ppl who r hovering arnd 95-97 percentile, save some few exceptions when there r bad days and good days. and i dont know a good manager needs good logic or something else like experience to make it big.

Till the world go subjective, this is the way, this is the life.

[shrikanthk]

Well,
Extending pooran-pooran's logic,we can even cast aspersions on the iit selection
procedure.After all,the JEE tests our knowledge of pure sciences(phy/chem/math)
which may not be that useful while studying applied sciences like Comp-engg.
I have a classmate here who is a stud in programming /logic,but didn't bother to study Phy/chem during his 12th and as a result couldn't make it to iit.

I don't know why people here are cribbing about the CAT process.
The fact that iims churn out freshers with 6lac pay packages is in itself testimony to
the effectiveness of the selection process.

[talk2teenz]

Hi ppl..... really interesting discussion you've got here. I like the thinking behind it all. My CAT performance this year has been pretty bad ..... but I'm trying not to let it worry me too much.
Shrikanth, I do agree that prep in all the required subjects (however unnecesarry they may seem to us) is essential for any entrance exam. But don't you think an IIM grad's (fresher) pay packet has also got a lot to do with the IIM tag??? Isn't it possible that an equally capable (and similarly placed) fresher may have to settle for a lesser deal, because he comes from a non-IIM school? Would like to hear your views on this.
Teenz

[ketanm]

Originally Posted by Psychodementia @ Mon Nov 29, 2004 4:13 pm

So you mean to say the logistics are the only problem ?

Think about it. Also, something the OP had put up : If CAT were to be held several times every year, a la GMAT style, we would actually get a better pool of applicants.

Also, I am not trying to demean the efforts of someone like tdubey (I'm sorry if Im taking the same names but I cannot see a better examples). To get the kind of scores they have is certainly impressive. But do you think that someone like him should be allowed to exibhit some other "qualities". If I see a guy who has been in IMO and an IIT-JEE 111 rank, I know his academic capabilities already. I don't want him to slog anymore for CAT now I would be tempted to give away that IIM seat without looking too much at his CAT scores.

But if at all I want to judge him, I would want to look more closely at how he has been as a person - overall development. I might want to see him involved in say some extracurriculars.

Similarily for a person who has just a mediocre IInd class from an average University, I might want him to prove his academic credentials better with a stellar CAT score. I want him to prove he has it in him, to stand the rigors of the first year at any of the IIMs.

I hope you know what I am getting at ? But as usual, most of these discussions stop being healthy once it gets into an ego issue between the haves (IIM calls) and the have-nots (no IIM calls). That is why I waited to get some responses before I posted.

Arun

PS: I agree IIT and IAS are not similar to CAT in many ways. For starters, you cannot prepare for them in a few months.

I differ with your opinion. And its NOT logistics I am talking about but the supply-demand ratio. Applicants to IIMs are 1.5 lacs while the seats are mere 600-700. Imagine the ratio. What in your opinion would be an impartial way of scrutinizing these 1.5 lacs aspirants. I can suggest you few paramters and the obvious problems with them:

1) Academics : Your argument is based on a very narrowed approach.... do you really think that an IITian has proved his academic brilliance by cracking the JEE, then you havent heard about the Kota's IITian churning factories...what they have proved is their "slogging" capability NOT brilliance/smartness(CAT test ur smartness...you cannot crack CAT by slogging for 2-3 years but you can crack JEE)....and if IITians are really "brilliant" then why NOT make them prove it once again...assuming that their brilliance didnt got rusted in four years at IIT ....

With such a preferential treatment dont u think you are missing out on a vast majority of better candidates(they might have been unlucky in JEE) .......also imagine the kind of rush into IITs and pressure on JEE's integrity would be considering the preferntial treatment for entry to IIMs too...... ... ..There are people I know who have scored only average marks in engg [around 5 CGPA becoz of involvement in extra-curricular activities but if you meet them you would realise that they are class apart...I have also known people from IIT with JEE rank 1 (IITK CSE to be precise...an isloated case i agree but there may be others) who was told in many job interviews that he has poor communication skills and was unable to land a good job...] And what about the other undergraduate studies....BCOM, BA, BSC, etc etc How are you going to filter out between them? Wouldnt IIMs have to put up a list of colleges they prefer and who's students need not give CAT while others have to... imagine the fight into these colleges.... Its not viable at all....

2) Extra-Curricular : Who doesnt know how to get fake certificates? Even academic certificates could be a fake ..... If you are a good sportsemen then you can'nt prove it in the interview except thru certificates....(and nobody with a fame like Narain Karthikeyan or Koneru Humpy would pursue the MBA)

3) Essays : There are lot many editing services...you know about them right (and if the demand rose..these will crop up all over India too just like it is for US bskools)

4) Experience : Then how do u judge the freshers.....

So the only way to weed out so many people (that too fairly ) would be to take a test. I do not think taking the test multiple times in a year would improve the quality...then it would be issue of logistics which can be solved only through a private company (like GMAC for GMAT) entering the scene and for IIMs this is an inherent loss of control over the exam and in Indian scenario possibility of corruption in that exam (given the fact that people like Ranjit Don exists who can even interfere given the IIMs stringent control).....if you think that GMAT score should be taken then you are again back to square.....(Do you think the GMAT is an objective and quantitative measure of a person's ability to be a manager ?)

If we agree that a "test" is essential then we can have a discussion about the pattern of exam and yet we would NOT reach the consensus. Should be a 2hour test or should it be spread over one month (like IAS) or mulitple exams like screenCAT and then actualCAT (a la JEE) so on and so forth.....

So my personal take is yes CAT is the best we have to maintain the quality and brand of IIMs. It may NOT truly represent "objective and quantitative measure of a person's ability to be a manager", but atleast it weeds out the people who dont deserve a seat in IIM simultaeneously filtering out the unlucky deserving candidates... but thats the best IIMs could do....

Ketan