The Common Admissions Test (CAT) is the entrance examination for various Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) programmes across the country. The English Press Club interviewed Chiraag Thakur and Anirudh Menon of the 2018 batch, both of whom secured 99.97 percentile in CAT 2021, which was conducted on November 28, 2021. 

The test has traditionally been of three hours, but since 2020, it has been reduced to a duration of two hours. It is divided into three sections—Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC), Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR), and Quantitative Ability (QA). CAT 2021 had 24 VARC questions, 20 DILR questions and 22 QA questions for 198 marks. 

Chiraag started his CAT preparation after the end of his third year—preparing for a period of about six months before the exam—whereas Anirudh started his preparation around three months before the exam. They managed their PS-II alongside their CAT preparation, which involved studying upto two to four hours a day with a focus on solving plenty of test papers and attempting mock tests. They signed up for the test series offered by T.I.M.E. for the same. Both agreed that special coaching for CAT is not necessary. Anirudh pointed out that JEE and CAT are nothing alike since there is nothing new to learn for the CAT exam. One needs to learn to manage time properly in the actual exam. Comparing CAT to the examinations at BITS, Chiraag said that, ‘exams at BITS provide you with resources but focus on complexity of the problems, whereas in CAT the resources are barebones, but complexity is lower.’ He also insisted that analysing mock test results is key to improving weaker topics.

Both of them found the QA section to be the most challenging, whereas they were pretty comfortable in the other two. They explained that while the QA section is not as difficult as engineering-level mathematics, CAT is essentially a test of exam day presence. Anirudh and Chiraag both felt they could have done much better in this section.  

Chiraag has started preparing for the personal interview round by signing up for a course offered by T.I.M.E. Anirudh is yet to apply to any IIMs and is focussing on placements right now. He says that if he gets placed in a good company, he would defer his admission and gain some work experience instead.

Chiraag feels that one must know their “Why” to succeed in CAT—why exactly are they writing CAT? For him, it was because he saw it as an opportunity to make an impact on the operational side of the electric vehicle sector, a field he is greatly interested in. In closing, Anirudh offered an analogy to contrast between JEE and CAT. He said that while JEE can be compared to learning to play the guitar from scratch, CAT is like picking up the instrument after a while—one does not need to learn it again, one just needs ample practice.