“Getting admission into a business school is neither too easy nor impossible. A thorough preparedness must precede your attempt to crack the Common Admission Test (CAT),” said B.S. Raman, Regional Manager, IMS Learning Resource Pvt. Ltd., here on Monday.
Addressing the final year engineering students of P.V.P. Siddhartha Institute of Technology at a “CAT preparatory workshop” organised in association with The Hindu Education Plus, Mr. Raman urged students to decide early in life their career goals.
“If you want to do an MBA, go for it now. Understand what you want to do in life. This is essential in view of your chances of securing an MBA degree getting shrunk every two years,” he said, explaining that an MBA would empower a person with the structural way of looking at business.
Speaking about the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management at Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kolkata, he said close to 20-30 business schools in India were on a par with these IIMs and the Indian School of Business at Hyderabad was one among them.
Focus
Mr. Raman said one needed to focus on almost all areas to be able to crack the CAT, which includes three categories – the quantitative, the LRDI (Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation) or the analytical round, and the most crucial but equally neglected verbal section.
“Engineering graduates across the country have one common peculiar trait.
They don't read unless they are forced to read,” he lamented, advising students to read newspapers and improve their grammar to add on to their vocabulary. “You are not expected to be linguistic experts but you need to make operational use of English language.
Make it a habit to speak in English with your friends and make constructive use of the Internet,” he suggested.
Mr. Raman said choice of the right institution was essential and there were many ways of ascertaining facts.
Infrastructure, advice of the alumni of that institution and more importantly, employability were key factors. “People trust IIMs mainly because of their ability to place their students in reputable companies,” he said.
He then explained about the CAT ‘percentile', the need to imbibe the abbreviation CAT. “C is for concept, ‘A' is for application of the concept and ‘T' stands for test-taking skills. “Don't chase success just because you want to make money at the end of the day. Do it for the sheer pleasure it gives, for the sense of satisfaction it gives,” he advised. Regional General Manager of The Hindu, Vijayawada, K. Chandrasekaran and others were present.
