Cat preparation strategy

Aha.. quite a few questions you have there, beta :) I will answer them all. But before I begin, I have to tell you that always feel happy meeting students who take their preparation seriously from the first year itself and don't try to rush it in the final year. Now, your profile is on the weaker side and you might read it on many places that you need to strengthen it in order to convert a good b-school. Please don't waste your time on that, because you can do very little to improve your profile as long as you are still in the college. Indian b-schools (almost all of them), look at only your 10th/12th scores, category, gender, graduation stream (sometimes marks as well) and work-ex in the name of profile. Except for 2-3, almost no other b-school gives any kind of weightage to your curricular, internships, certificates or other similar things in this entire process. What they do give a lot of value is - your personality and knowledge. But that also happens only in the interview room. I hope you can see that being a college student, you can only control three things now - your college score, your personality (communication skills) and your knowledge (current affairs and global outlook). A smart student would focus only on these three things if he is really serious about CAT. Most students, however, find all these 3 very difficult and so, they instead focus on gathering certificates and when b-schools rejects them, they blame it on the selection process. I see it happening every year and I find it ridiculous :) So, coming to your questions one by one : 1. No. 2. Communication skills (a lot) and global current affairs - economics, politics, international relations etc. (basically, if you prepare really well for VARC, your interview will be a breeze) 3. I will come to it later. 4. No. It does not matter even one bit. I have known many students who did their graduation from local colleges in Tier III cities and converted big name colleges. The only real advantage a student from a big name college has is this - usually, students from big name college have great communication skills and personality. Their confidence level is usually much better simply because of the college culture. But their reason of selection is never the name of their college - it's their own personality. I have seen many students form DU and IIT fail while some other student from a small town college got selected simply because he had an amazing presence in the interview room. 5. I will explain it in a separate message.

Thankyou sir for clearing my doubts