Saritha is mega thrilled after the recent MBA counselling when she got a seat allotted in one of the better MBA colleges in Hyderabad. She thought that life is easier now and there is no looking back. However, her happiness was short lived. Two days into the college, she came to know from her seniors that the placement is not good and there is anxiety all around. The general feedback is that the college did not train the students adequately so that they can safely land in a lucrative job.

Ramakrishna is a middle level Executive in a private insurance company. His dream was to secure his son a decent job in one of the multi-national companies. He motivated his son to study well and personally paid attention to his studies. But his son Sudhakar got a very low rank in MBA Entrance Test and ended up in a MBA college attached to an Engineering College not having good reputation. Ramakrishna’s enquiries revealed that the college does not have proper infrastructure and the quality of faculty is below the required standards, so the aspirations of students are pretty low. He cannot afford to put his son in well known business management schools. He is worried that his dream of a lucrative career for his son in a multinational company may not come true.

Now that MBA counselling is over and the classes have commenced for the MBA program, experiences such as the above are common. A realty check is all that it takes. Many of the MBA colleges in the State are below par in terms of infrastructure, academic facilities and placement support. Quality of faculty members is suspect. The institutions do not have focus on developing well rounded management graduates who can secure placements in reputed corporates with minimum hurdles. Most institutions lack industry orientation and cutting edge curriculum. Generally colleges do not focus on student development to cater to the industry needs. Instead their focus on passing the examinations and award of a degree. As a result of this, the proportion of suitable graduates who are employable is abysmally low.

Should the dreams of the aspiring students taking professional studies be shattered due to lack of focus on quality of MBA education offered in your college? Should parents be disappointed and leave it to the fate of their wards. The answer is ‘no’. Students who are aspiring for professional courses in general and MBA program in particular need to have a plan of their own, should the plan of college in which they are studying does not work. It is always the early bird which catches the worm. If you want to be successful and not settle down for disappointments, you should be proactive and keep your plan ready. Here is a map for drawing your own plan for success.

Begin with the End in Mind
When we begin with the end in mind, we have a personal direction to guide our daily activities, without which we will accomplish little towards our goal. It helps to take control of our own lives. It helps us to take responsibility for the outcome. According to Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, “Management is doing the things right; Leadership is doing the right things.” Whether it is managing your life or managing a business, you need to focus on three major aspects.  First is leadership – what do you want to accomplish? Second is management – how best can you accomplish? Third is productivity – doing it. A good starting point is beginning with the end in mind that will help you develop a personal mission statement. It will help you to be focused and drive you to achieve what you want to be.

Visualise what you want to be
Remember that you have joined the MBA program for a purpose. It could be to join your family business, to start your own business, to serve the society by joining a non-governmental organization, to serve corporate sector or government sector organization. Whatever it is, you need to package yourself with the needs of your dream career. Be clear about the purpose of your joining a professional course such as MBA and stay focused. If you keep on visualising your goal all the time, it sets your direction and pace of progress right.

CAT is approaching fast. You must be anxious of Quantitative Section at this time. We shall deal with Quantitative Section only here. The general approach to the remaining sections would be more or less similar. Here are a few tips to make your preparation more productive in building and fine tuning your Quantitative skills.

1). There is no clear syllabus for CAT. Solving CAT papers gives you a reasonable idea of the scope of the test. There is a huge feeling built on CAT as one of the toughest tests. It definitely is. It is the time pressure and the mix of tough and easy that makes CAT a challenging set, not because it has conceptually tough questions. Moreover, the balance of the three sections gives it the overwhelming reputation.

So no preparation is complete without looking at the past papers. These papers are available in the public domain. If you have already gone thru some amount of preparation, August mid is the right time to spend on the CAT questions. If you are just starting, there is no better way to start than to kick it off with the CAT papers.

2). Look for these specific things: A). Scope and depth of the questions in various topics. You would realize that depth is never an issue in CAT. Maybe, that would give you the confidence.  B). There are some concepts that appear very often. You must be fairly good at these topics. C). How a concept evolves into a variety of problems over time. The effort would give you a very good return on the investment of your time. You will learn to utilise your time more efficiently, and not focus on unwanted stuff.

3). If you look at Geometry of CAT, the biggest chunk of questions would be from Triangles and Circles. If I go one step deeper, the concepts of similarity and Congruency in truancy is often repeated. So to ensure that you are prepared for this topic, you must go back to your material and pick all the good questions of this topic and revise or review them. Do a topic at a stretch. It helps build the connections better.

You may be worried about Probability. But do you know that there has hardly been any question in the past 10 years. Of course, it is one of the favourites of XLRI. These are some of the questions that would be answered by this exercise.

4). For many, test taking may just be taking Mock Tests, and feeling dejected. Of course, you would. You are no Sachin to be able to walk into a test match and perform well. Anyway, that is not what he does. Even after 20 years, he does not skip his nets. Maybe you need to learn from him. Mock tests must be aptly supported by regular testing at home. Else, your performances will not improve.  Time your tests. Start with topic Tests. Keep deadlines to finish your material. Then move to Section tests. This process must continue alongside 135 min tests.

5). When you look at quant questions make sure you do these 4 things. A). Find the fault that you did in the question.  It is possible that the solution provided also tells you about why other choices are incorrect, and what mistakes could lead to the other choices. It is essential to know this to make sure that you do not commit an error in future that you are not conscious about now.  B). Think if there is a way of solving the question through choices. C). Try to find out alternate methods.  D). Solve the questions that you possibly will not or did not. Skip only if you are sure you would not like to do the topic. For example:

Q. How many even integers n, where n ranges from 100 to 200, are divisible neither by seven nor by nine?
a. 40         b. 37         c. 39         d. 38

What are the mistakes that can be induced in such a question?

1) Ignoring Even numbers. Doing it for all numbers
2) Counting from Even numbers from 100 to 200 as 50 and not 51
3) Mistake in counting the number of even multiples of  9 as 5 instead of 6 You would see that atleast 2 choices are designed for these mistakes. So when you do analysis of any question, identify if it is possible, the reasons for arriving at the other choices. That is the learning that you can derive from analysis of any section.