CAT 2015 was my first attempt at CAT and I had a lot of unanswered questions :
Coaching institute or not ? Which test series, colleges, exams ?
Beauty with curiosity is that it never ends; once i got an answer to these questions, i was faced with how many mocks ? how often ? when to start for GD/PI ? etc.
During the course of last year I worked with some really talented faculties, befriended a lot of aspirants and mostly did a lot of Google search.
So everybody here who is making a debut with CAT and is Curious, Bring it on
One of the first questions which captured my attention was which are the best colleges in India ?
There are multiple websites ranking different colleges according to different parameters. Many such lists are not updated regularly and each one has mentioned a different average placement figure for the same college.
So I visited the official website of each college for their official placement reports of past 2 years and made a ranking for my reference based on a single criteria: "Avg. Placement"
Just for reference I have added Fees column in the list as well.
I ll share the list with you guys shortly. I will try to add expected percentile required for each college as well later.
Coaching or Self Study ?
One of the first questions which comes to everybody's mind while starting for CAT preparation is "Shall I join a coaching institute or shall I do self study ?"
In my opinion joining a coaching institute is anyday better than self study for the following reasons:
A. Focus: Unless you are exceptionally disciplined you will need focus in your preparation to finish the syllabus on time.
Many people start with a topic and keep on solving questions of that topic for more than a month.
B. Shortcuts: Join any coaching institute and they will equip you with plenty of kick ass shortcuts and ways of looking at a question which would never occur to you otherwise and which you will not find in any solution book.
C. Doubt Clearing: You will get a personal touch with these.
D. Exposure: Your classmates will not only help you out with questions when the instructor is not available, they will keep ur spark alive by constantly engaging in conversations regarding all the latest happenings in CAT world and the comparison of ur mock scores and strategies will really help u out in improving.
E. Logical Reasoning: This is a part in which students of a coaching institute excel when compared to self studying students.
A typical LR set consists of some 10+ conditions and four questions. Jotting down all the conditions in a systematic and structured way so that everything gets connected and all the unknowns get deduced from known is the only way a difficult set can be solved in 10-15 minutes. If you don't get the structure correct, u might spend more than 20 minutes and still get no answer. This is a thing which is difficult to learn from a solution book.