Frequently Asked Questions: 1) What is a good time to start preparing? Students must start preparing in the pre-final year of their graduation. Some are also known to begin preparing in the early part of their final year. In this case, however, one would need to spend more time and effort over a shorter span of time. 2) How many months of preparation does one need to perform well? This depends on one’s ability to grasp concepts and to learn. Anything between 8 to 16 months is good for preparation, depending on the average number of hours invested per day and the quality of preparation. 3) How should I begin? Getting the fundamentals in place is the first and the most important part of your preparation. This requires a considerable amount of time to be spent with the course material provided and within the classroom – taking lessons, revisiting them and solving problems. It is important to pay special attention to vocabulary building. The best way for this is to develop a good reading habit. National and international dailies (particularly the edit page and the finance sections), famous speeches and English literature should all find a place on your reading list. This will also help you improve your speed of reading. Grammar is another area that you need to focus on – both the rules and their application. In the Quant section, management entrance exams measure your ability to apply basic Math, learnt at school, in problem solving. Therefore, you should focus on the fundamentals taught to you in Std. IX and Std. X. Since these exams also feature a section on Reasoning and Data Analysis, it is important to get comfortable with numerical data. Make it a point to read and analyze the business and finance sections in newspapers. Do not shy away from Mathematical Puzzles, Sudoku et al. Also, practise as many analytical reasoning questions as possible. 4) What are the various stages of exam preparation? Remember that management aptitude tests are not about memorizing formulae but about their application. Thus, once you have brushed up on the fundamentals, the next step is to start applying the concepts learnt to solve problems. This is the time to practise as many questions and exercises as you can. The natural corollary of such practice is that it would help you increase your speed of solving questions. And, considering that the exams test you under the constraint of time, speed building is a crucial component of your preparation. Focus on developing the knack to process numbers at a good speed and employ simple but reliable tricks to arrive at faster solutions. After you have solved the practice material comes the time for mock tests and analyses. Taking full length mock tests under actual test conditions helps you prepare for D-day. However, please also note that taking tests alone is not sufficient. If you take a test for two hours, you must provision for at least four hours for analyzing it. Such an analysis will help you gain new insights into solving problems and also reinforce existing concepts. 5) What is the best time to begin taking full length practice tests? Once you have revised the fundamentals and have applied them in solving a good number of questions, begin taking full length tests. 6) There are quite a few MBA exams in the country. Which ones should I prepare for? CAT, XAT, IIFT Admission Test, IRMA Admission Test, SNAP Test, CMAT, TISSNET and NMAT are the major management entrance exams in the country. Most of these exams test aspirants on Quantitative Ability (QA), Data Interpretation (DI), Verbal Ability (VA), Analytical/Logical Reasoning and General Knowledge (GK). Other than these areas, a few exams have specific sections on which they test students. For example, XAT has a Decision Making section and IRMA has a section on Issues of Social Concern. 7) I have no work experience. What are my chances of getting into a top B-School? A common misconception among aspirants is that freshers stand little chance of making it to the top colleges in the country. However, around 27% students who made it to the 2011-13 batch of PGP at IIM-A had no prior work experience. The batches of PGP at IIM-C & IIM-L for 2012-14 had approximately 24% and 29 % students respectively without any prior work experience. The 2012 -14 batch of PGP at IIM-K had around 40% students without any prior work experience. Most B-Schools look for a diverse batch and a pool of fresh graduates is an attribute which contributes to this. 8) Other than a good percentile, what are the other factors taken into account by the top B-Schools to admit students? The selection criteria vary from one college to another. For example, IIM-A assigns a 70% weight to the CAT score and 30% to academic performance & work-experience, if any, to shortlist students for Personality Assessment Stage (PAS). On the other hand, IIM-B, without mentioning the relative weights, uses a combination of the CAT score, academic credentials & work-experience to shortlist candidates for PAS as well as admission. Additionally, the top 10 candidates with the highest score in any of the sections are also invited for the PAS. IIM-C is known to assign a 77% weight to the CAT score, a 10% weight to each of the Std. X and Std. XII marks & a 3% weight to gender diversity to shortlist candidates for the PAS. 9) What has been the placement scenario across the top B-Schools? The starting salary for 2010-12 batch of PGP at IIM-A was Rs. 8 lakhs per annum with the highest package being Rs. 40 lakhs per annum (domestic). For 2009-11 batch of PGP at IIM-B, the starting salary stood at Rs. 8 lakhs per annum with a maximum package offered at Rs. 30 lakhs per annum (domestic). The average package for 2009-11 batch of PGP at IIM-K stood at Rs. 13.3 lakhs per annum with the highest package being Rs. 31 lakhs per annum (domestic). Most Cluster 4 B-Schools attract offers at an average salary of Rs. 7 lakhs per annum. The figure drops considerably as we go below Cluster 5 (as per the CL B-School rankings).
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 20:16:14 +0000
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