NMAT2017, CAT2017, SNAP2017, TISS2017, XAT2018, CAT2018, NMAT2019, CAT2019 and multiple interviews later, finally I have gotten into a good B-School. This is not a story of hard work, determination, inspiration or any of the newspaper worthy material. It’s just a plain vanilla story, but I like vanilla.
It was the year 2017 and I was just one of the 7.5 million Indian engineering students, due to graduate in 2018. With no sense of direction about the future, I enrolled for coaching classes for CAT, just because I had heard that managers are grossly overpaid in India. Isn’t that what it’s all about in the end, ‘Money’. I joined the batch a month later(June), and two weeks later gave my first mock. I scored 111, which was the highest in my class of around 30 students, despite being a month late, and that’s where the trouble began(those marks, those damned marks :P). I was ecstatic. I gave the second mock without studying, and again got the highest in my class. Now I was overconfident, stopped attending VA-RC classes, felt everyone’s intelligence was beneath me. Little did I know that the everyone I considered, was just 30 out of a pool of 2 lacks+ candidates who gave the exam every year.
I gave 5 mba exams that year, and didn’t even clear the cut-offs of 3 exams. Got 94.5 percentile in CAT and yet another result of my overconfidence, hadn’t filled any college except the IIM’s. My only chance was Symbiosis, in which I had scored a 99.7x percentile. I gave the interviews of both SIBM and SCMHRD, used the sympathy card in the interview(my dad expired in August 2017) and cleared it. But for some vague reason, didn’t join. Two years later, and I have even forgotten the reason I didn’t go.
Next came CAT 2018. I didn’t prepare for it one bit. I wanted to have a reason for my rejection this time. ‘I didn’t prepare and that’s why I couldn’t score’ YES!!! I had found the perfect excuse. I didn’t want to prepare and get rejected, so better to not prepare. Better to lie to yourself. Better to think that I could have scored 99.9 if I had prepared, rather than accept I was just another mediocre 95 percentile scorer. I gave the exam and scored a 93.5 percentile, while expecting nothing more than 80. I wanted to be at the bottom, just so I could rise.
In my head, I was a two time failure now. Maybe this was the motivation I needed. I had to get out of my bubble now. I had to face the reality and started researching on my chances of good b-schools, even after having 74 percent in 12th and engineering from a private college. In B-school terms, I am a GEM(general engineer male) but treated the exact opposite(Fellow GEMs might relate). With my profile, it was almost impossible to get into the top IIMs and FMS and I shifted my focus to MDI, NITIE and the top IITs. I again enrolled for a classroom course for cat, gave one mock a week. To avoid the overconfidence from getting into my head again, I started skipping the VARC section while giving mocks, and it worked brilliantly, as I rarely scored 100+ marks again. I took a 3 week leave from my workplace before cat 2019, lying blatantly that it was a family emergency and gave one mock a day and numerous sectional tests. Two failed attempts and 18 months of work-ex later, I was prepared to give CAT2019.
I checked my result in January, 3 hours after it was announced. I didn’t want to be a loser 3rd time, but I couldn’t take the nervousness anymore and opened it. My eyes went BIG, I started punching myself on the leg, started throwing punches in the air. I had scored a fuckin 99.43 percentile.
Direct Proportionality sucks. I had scored marks, and the overconfidence was back yet again. This time, it was on another level. I had got 99.43. I had my pic in the newspaper. Now all I have to do is appear for the interview, and colleges would be begging to take me. I am a prodigy. I am a boy genius, and numerous other thoughts constantly hovered in my mind. As a result of the insanely high pedestal my mind had put me on, I didn’t prepare for the interviews.
My first interview was for IIM-CAP. Trust me when I say this, but it couldn’t have gone any worse. Socialism, capitalism, constitution and so many other big words I had blatantly blurted out, but had no answer to the counter questions asked. It was the worst interview ever. Next day I had my IMT Ghaziabad interview, and yet again, I made a blunder, by incorporating Pvt. in front of my company name, when it shouldn’t have been there. The interviewer just wouldn’t let go of this blunder. Next came MDI, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Kgp. Three of these went average, but IIT Delhi went awesome. I had impressed the interviewer so much and she seemed so happy, that in my mind I had already started imagining going over there. Lockdown came into effect and I gave my NITIE interview online, which went really good. After two good interviews, overconfidence came back, and I decided to skip the IIM Amritsar and IIM Vizag interviews, just because I was sure of getting IIT Delhi. As luck would have it, IIT Delhi ended up scrapping the whole interview process due to covid19.
It was end of June now, and anxiety kicked in. All the colleges had declared their results, and I had huge waitlist numbers in all of them. It looked like I had to settle with a baby IIM, or do the thing which I dreaded the most i.e. give CAT again. I had become a failure at 99.43, I will always remain a failure, were my only thoughts. I started spending hours at stretch on pagalguy forums, barely sleeping 2-3 hours a day, looking for a ray of hope from strangers, looking for some kind of vague assurance from strangers that I will make it to a better b-school. Then, IMT Ghaziabad happened and I heaved a sigh of relief. It wasn’t exactly what I expected while preparing for CAT, but I could make this happen. True, I didn’t have any interest in marketing, but it was my best option.
Out of the blue, one day I received a provisional admission mail from NITIE. I was shocked. I logged in to the website to check if it was true, as NITIE had never had this much movement in the past. It was TRUE. I had just got admission to a dream b-school.
In that moment, I said thank you. I don’t know to whom or even why I did it, but I just did.
akshit2708 