AIMCATs 1115, 1114, 1113, 1111

Was on a break so could not post the details of 4 of the AIMCATS that have passed since I last posted my score of AIMCAT 1112 (which was basically 1116 but the name was changed due to a typographical error by someone at TIME and hence the confusion).

I'm not going into individual analysis at this point but just posting a snapshot of the last few weeks.

AIMCAT........VERBAL........QUANT........LR/DI........Overall

1115.................99.35.................86.88................68.xx............ 96.25

1114.................89.98...............55.8(Sigh).........54.3(Sigh)......74.81 (Deplorable performance)

1113.................99.63................64.9....................93.8................97.57

1111..................98.16...............75.xx.................68.xx...............90.7

One reason for not going into individual analysis is that nothing much has changed. It is pretty clear that only Verbal is doing the trick for me and I still have miles to go in both QA and LR/DI. I'm taking a different approach now and limiting myself to 2-3 sectional tests in both of them per day (from C.Ls Test Gym) rather than trying to solve the entire study material. Planning to switch to one mock test per day by the end of this month.

Have to do something quickly to deal with my apparent revulsion for the quant section particularly. Whether I'm able to do it or not is another thing but one promise I definitely intend to keep : " I'm going to eat, sleep and drink quant from this moment till the time the last entrance examination is over. "

The ill effects of procrastination..!!

In all the hullabaloo over AIMCATs and completing the application formalities of certain "Early Bird" institutes like IIFT, IRMA etc, I almost forgot about an important test that I had enrolled for nearly a month ago. I'm talking about NSE's Certification in Financial Markets or NCFM as it is commonly known as. It is an online testing and certification programme introduced by the National Stock Exchange over a decade ago to test the practical knowledge and skills required to operate the financial markets.

I have initially registered for two modules - Commercial Banking in India & Currency Derivatives. This whole idea has been filled with hiccups right from the start where there was payment trouble initially (The amount was debited from my card but was not credited to NSEs A/C). After sorting this out, I did not get my study material in the duration prescribed by the NSE (7 days for the curious lot), in fact I did not get it for 15 days from the time of payment. After hours of incessant calling, I got to know that NSE had dispatched the material well on schedule and the fault was with the courier company which said that it could not deliver the material for 3-4 days because of, believe it or not, rain. Now you may get the idea that there was some kind of a deluge in my city of residence, but the truth is the rains the courier guy was talking about was just few odd drizzles. Sigh! Except for 2-3 odd courier companies, the Indian Postal Services are much more timely and accurate guys.

Anyways. Got my material around 17th and in my usual procrastinating way, stacked it up to study later and forgot all about it until today when I heard the word "NSE" from someone. I have the exam on 4th for the Commercial Banking module and am skimming the study material as I'm writing this.

The material is to the point and has oodles of information on the banking industry. A must read for everyone who is from the Non Banking & Finance background but is interested in the same. Great thing is, the material is available free of cost at NSE's website and is open to everyone (no registration required even).

Still no consistency........

Okay, I admit. Consistency is not my niche right now. I had written in an earlier post how my preparation was progressing in a "One step forward, two steps back " mode. Well, AIMCATs 1117 and 1112 were no different.

AIMCAT 1117 :

Same old story. 98.xx percentile in Verbal, couldn't quite manage to clear the cut off in either Quant or L&DI. Although results don't show it as yet, I believe I am making some progress in both Quant as well as L&DI. The answers that I mark now are more precise than the random guesses until a few months ago. A lot still needs to be done and I have a specific plan of action to increase my attempts to a comfortable threshold level in the next one month.

AIMCAT 1112 :

One of the key changes in this one was the use of 4 different sets and normalization by TIME. Normalization is the way of equating scores across papers of different difficulty levels (i won't get into the details primarily because I don't have a clue and also because I think the topic has been expatiated enough after the CAT 2009 fiasco).

Just when I thought that I had seen it all, in came a stinger in the name of AIMCAT 1112. Consistent with my "One step forward, two steps back " theory, the percentile had to drop to the 70's and it did. But the overall percentile of 73.xx was not the end of humiliation. the icing on the cake was the 61.xx percentile in Verbal section. (you may recall that i got 98.xx and 99 in two of the previous three AIMCATs.) Couldn't clear the cutoff in any of the three sections. Still praying for some consistency [ hopefully in the upper 90's :) ]

Down but not yet out..!!

PS : Had a decent AIMCAT 1115 scoring 79 in a 60 question (+3, -1 marking scheme) paper. Hoping for another 90 + with this score. Results are not yet out.

Ever heard of Early bird? Now face the EARLY CAT..!!

Rumour has it that CAT will be held from 27th October to 17th November this year. This is a good 2-3 weeks earlier than the usual third Sunday of November. Notification will be out on 30th August and I expect a mad rush for booking slots towards the end of the window, i.e. near 17th November (I intend on joining the mob on this one :D ). While one week or ten days may not make or break 23+ years of aptitude building and 1+ year of assiduous preparation, there are other factors to be considered while choosing the slot.

• CAT 2009 was marred with technical glitches especially in the opening few days of the test taking window. Although I have full confidence that such a thing will not be repeated, why take a chance?
• Once the examination season starts, I prefer it to be continuous rather than discrete. If one goes for an early slot, there would be a month gap between CAT and the next scheduled exam (read IIFT) on 28th November. While this may suit some people and give them more preparation time, I would definitely prefer to complete the entire season in a single adrenaline rush rather than short bursts (Let’s say I’m a momentum driven guy).

One interesting thing is that the IIMs have doubled the test taking window from 10 to 20 days. This will have a huge impact on the overall difficulty level of the question paper. The difficulty level of the paper is expected to come down a notch because it is extremely difficult to prepare around 60 tests on a difficult pattern (around 3000 difficult questions which is a gargantuan task indeed). Something for the underdogs like me to cheer about. This is my personal view, and of some experts from some leading coaching institutes but heck, with Prometric coming up with normalization techniques and all (and keeping them under wraps, even from the RTI), who knows?

Other management institutes like IIFT have come out with their forms. The last updated status of some Examinations I have goes like this (not all are confirmed dates):

CAT : October 27th – November 17th
IIFT : November 28th
SNAP : 19th December
FMS : 5th December
XAT : 2nd January 2011

Time to buckle up the seat belt and press the accelerator.

One Step Forward TwO sTepS bAcK - 1119 and 1118

Ever seen a drunkard stuttering and sauntering towards his destination? This is exactly how I feel regarding my CAT preparation. Its like every time I take a step in the forward direction, something drags me two steps backward.

AIMCAT 1119 :

Back at the right track with 96.6 percentile in this one (after a disappointing AIMCAT 1120). It was a respite from the tough questions in 1120. Verbal section (moi stronghold) had 25 questions while the other two had 20 each.

Scored 99.67 percentile in verbal, which is my highest so far in CAT / Mock CATs.
Missed the cut off in QA and LRDI by 1 and 5 marks respectively though. Still working on that.

AIMCAT 1118 :

Saturday, the 17th of July 2010 was a day which I was pretty confident about. After a good performance in AIMCAT 1119 and about 10-12 days of more solid preparation than I had done before, I was pretty sure of my chances.


"NOT SO FAST you moron!" said the people at Triumphant Institute of Management Education.


Next came 2 hours and 15 minutes of unimaginable torture. AIMCAT 1118 was a massacre of a scale that I had never experienced before. It seems as if the paper setters knew what all topics I had left out in my preparation and desperately wanted me to pay for that. At one point of time, even the monitor stuttered and went blank, with just one green light blinking lazily as if mocking my despair. Even the verbal section which has traditionally been my forte seemed to have deserted me.


The result was a paltry 54 marks out of 240, a mere 22.5 percent (wayyy under the 50 percent mark I have set for myself before AIMCAT 1110). Expecting around 75 to 80 percentile in this one. :(

I just hope that this is the nadir and that there are no more surprises along the way. Consistency will help a long way in boosting my morale right now.

Waiting for Divine Intervention????

Off Topic but I couldn't help but quote these lines from Eldest (Author- Christopher Paolini) :


" Ask yourself this : If Gods exist, have they been good custodians? Death, sickness, poverty, tyranny and countless other miseries stalk the land. If this is the work of divine beings, then they are to be rebelled against and overthrown, not given obeisance, obedience and reverence.... "


"It seems a cold world without something....more."


"On the contrary, it is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our own actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment....."


Something to think about......

AIMCAT 1120 - Moi Mockery..!!

Here comes the first shocker of the season. After securing 97 percentile in the first AIMCAT, I was pretty sure that I was on the right track. It seems that the paper setters at time had other thoughts in mind which brought be right back down to earth. It seems a mouse and monitor work better for me than a paper and pencil. AIMCAT 1120 was a Paper and pencil based test which was free and open to anyone interested (TIME usually comes out with these once or twice a year to offer performance based scholarships and to increase the No. of registered test takers).

Analysis :

Verbal Ability: Traditionally, the section in which I should have done well. It had 11 VA and 9 RC questions. RCs were easy to comprehend and VA section too had some sitters. Just managed to hold my head above the cutoff line but Accuracy in VA is one of the main things that I plan to focus on in the coming AIMCATS.

Quantitative Ability (My Achilles-heel): I have been putting a lot of effort in this section and am pleased to see that pay off. Managed to clear the cutoff this time (had missed it last time by 4 marks). Accuracy is good enough though lot of work still needs to be done on the grey areas like P&C, Probability, Quadratic Equations, coordinate geometry etc. The difficulty level of this section was easy enough where 10 – 12 questions could have been easily attempted.

L&DI: Only one word comes to my mind – Carnage. It was my worst performance till date in any section of any exam. By far the most difficult section of the test, data sets were complicated and tricky. Only a good accuracy would have seen an average student going above the cut off score. Wrong guesses to some confusing questions meant my accuracy plummet below 45 and my score to a reprehensible all time low of 8 marks.

Overall, the test was patterned on CAT 2009 with 20 questions in each section. Barring L&DI, all other sections were easy enough. A good approach would have been selecting fewer questions to crack and achieving a good accuracy within those questions.

AIMCAT 1119 is two days away. Haven’t been able to study anything this entire week due to some factors. Hope it goes well.