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HOW I CRACKED ITToppers Say Its All About Discipline and Confidence

SHREYA BISWAS & SREERADHA D BASU KOLKATA | MUMBAI

Siddharth Sharma,in hisfinal year of electricalengineering at IIT Kanpur,owes his success to regularity and loads of practice.The topics are easy,but you have to be thorough to crack CAT, he advises.On an average day,he wouldput in about 2-3 hours preparing for the test,while during weekends and vacations it would go up to 8-9 hours.Preparations at his end started about eight months before CAT,building up intempo as the exam approached.Hisfather,an associate professor of sociology in NAS College,Meerut;his homemaker mother and his younger brother encouraged himevery step of the way.Whathelped too,was his love for reading,which explains why,unlike manyother engineers,Siddharth was as strong in verbal ability as he was in quantitative.In fact,he says,he scored 100 percentile in verbal ability and logical reasoning,compared with a 99.17 percentile score in quantitative abilityand datainterpretation inthe test.A keen athlete and a mediumdistance runner,Siddharth,supplemented his studying with a classroom programme at Career Launcher over the weekends as well as the test series at TIME once a week.Hesays he willbe happy to get selected at any of the top three IIMs.I can only decide once I go through the process.The thing I knowfor sure is that ultimately Id love to take up a career infinance, he says.

RAVI TEJA PALLA,22,ASST MANAGER,COMMERCIAL VEHICLE,TATAMOTORS,PUNE

Cracking CAT is allabout being disciplined and confident.I appeared for the test last year as well while studying electrical engineering at IIT Madras,but couldnt clear itdue to weak verbal ability.I worked on itrigorously and followeda simple strategy.I improved my verbal ability with a lot of reading and practice.I took two mock tests every week and analysed the answers for three hours to understand where I went wrong.I never went by the mock test scores,asthat is not the parameter to assess your performance with.Instead I would check for the accuracy of my scores to monitor my progress.Anybody can crack CAT if given enough time,so the secret is to be accurate and confident atthe time of answering the test.WhileI attempted all the queries,I answered those I was confident about.Thisis the rule of thumb,else you might waste a lot of time.I prepared for 12 hours aweek,which is a talltask for a workingprofessional.So,I would divide the hours six hours on weekends,writing the test,analysing and preparing the test seriesof the coaching institutes and clarifying doubts,if any,with faculty.The rest of the six hours I would reserve forthe weekdays.You have to be disciplined to do that;my three-month-old job at Tata Motors demanded a lot of attention too.I am happy I could do it as are my parents my father is a police inspector inVishakhapatnamand mymother isa homemaker.

SIDDHARTH SHARMA CAT Topper

AP students clearCAT instyle

105 CandidatesFrom The State Secure 99 Percentile

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Hyderabad: CAT (Common Admission Test) result isout of the bag and students fromthe state have fared well yet again making Andhra Pradesh the fourth state inthe country to have highest number of candidates who havescored over 99 percentile.

A totalof 105 candidates who took the test from the state secured over 99 percentileasthe results of the top Bschooltest were released here on Wednesday.States including Maharashtra,Delhiand Bangalore lead the list which was compiled by IIM-Kozhikode.

An IIT-Madras alumnus from state,Ravi Teja Palla,has scored 100 percentile.He is currently working as an assistant manager at Tata Motors,Vizag.

I reworked on allmy weak areas and concentrated on the same to better myself.Between work and its pressures it was difficult to study but I finally made it big, a proud Palla said.

A student of TIME coaching centre,Palla said that mock tests helped himmuch in scoring well.Three studentsfrom the state secured 99.99 percentile,making APs CAT victory even better.As per the IIMKozhikode records,a total of 1.91 lakh candidates had written the examination fromacross the country.Officials at IIM-Kozhikode said the number of women candidates who scored well this year has increased.Four girlstudents had scored 99.99 percentile this year,said Debashis Chatterjee,IIM-Kdirector.Currently most IIMs inthe country have initiated 35 per cent recruitments of female students to improve gender diversity on campus.In all255 girls and 1,640 boys scored more than 99 percentile.For most students fromthe state it was their hard work which finally paid off.Amit Pandey,who secured 99.87 percentilein CAT said that it was his rigorous training schedule which helped himscore well.Whileworking for a firm from9 am to 6 pm,I had found time to attend classes and take mock tests almost every day.Since I dedicated over 2 hours of my time studying for CAT every day,I got ascore which might land me an IIM

call,he said.Coaching experts from the city stated that APhad always done well in CAT.Most IIMs inthe country have a good percentage of students from AP.This year the IIMs gave out a consolidated listof candidates who have scored over99 percentile and hence APs performance standards came to light, said Ramnath Kanakadandi,CAT coordinator,TIME coaching centre.