The new year brought its cheer for many IIM aspirants. The media is agog with success stories of CAT toppers. The press cannot help but feature toppers of the CAT race. But everyone seeks chronicles that inspire aspirants to aim for the top.

One such account is that of twenty-three-year-old Vishesh Garg who scored 99.99 percentile in the Common Aptitude Test held in November last year. 

Vishsesh hails from Solan in Himachal Pradesh. He is an electronic and communications engineer from NIT Hamirpur, currently pursuing a job as a software engineer at Bangalore. He had come back to Solan during the Covid19 pandemic to work from home.

Vishsesh is the elder of two siblings. His younger brother is pursuing engineering from NIT Hamirpur. His father is a businessman and his mother a homemaker. 

Vishesh used to work twelve hours a day, so he set aside the weekends for CAT preparation. He attended online lectures and solved mock papers.

He had missed the interactive classroom study while preparing from home owing to limitations of internet connectivity. Instead of stressing about the preparation, he kept his cool, taking walks, listening to music, or watching shows on Netflix between preparatory sessions. 

Vishesh is an alumnus of St Luke’s Solan. He attributes his reading habits to the well-equipped school library. He continued reading novels while revising the questions.

He had taken the CAT before, but the reduced timing made him shift his strategy. He was quite confident of the verbal section and concentrated on the Data Interpretation and Logical reasoning section. 

Vishesh had found the QA section tougher than the DI/LR or VA/RC sections. Despite the alarm some people had felt before the test, he said the test went smoothly. He was content with the safety precautions for Covid-19 at the center. 

Mock tests Vishesh had taken helped in improving areas like speed and devising an effective strategy to enhance scores.

A linear approach that he had adopted in the first attempt resulted in skipping easy questions. He found his potential reflected in the mock tests and focused on brushing up topics in logical reasoning.

Vishesh hopes to pursue his graduation at IIM or FMS. He is preparing for the next round – the Group discussion, Essay Writing, and Personal Interview.  He advises CAT takers to remain calm and stay focused. Leaving expectations behind helps you stay on top of the test. 

No less than Sunder Pichai and Satya Nadella who head tech companies Google and Microsoft inspire Vishsesh to do something extraordinary in management. 

Although Vishesh does not know yet what he will be doing, he hopes to emulate Indians who lead big tech companies, even if not as big as the bigwigs.

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