Interviews: Part 1: Cracking the XAT-- Arnab Poddar

(This interview was first published on University Beats website)

We would like to congratulate you on your brilliant academic accomplishments thus far. JU is proud to have you as a senior student, and it is an honour to be interviewing you.

1)    Please tell us a bit about yourself.

Firstly, it’s a great pleasure to share my experiences with you guys and you all are doing a splendid job indeed. About me- I am from Kolkata and I did my schooling from Baranagar R K Mission High School. I am currently pursuing BE in Computer Science and Engineering from Jadavpur University. I managed to score 98.80 percentile in CAT 2014 and 99.81 in XAT 2014. I am from a business family and it is the key reason that I’m more interested in entrepreneurship in future in spite of the huge opportunities in CS field.

2)    Were you focused solely on MBA or was it a fair competition among GATE, GRE etc?

GATE and GRE were never my area of interest. I was totally focused on MBA (at least until I got a job). As I have already mentioned that I have a dream of exploring myself as an entrepreneur in future and GRE/GATE would not have served this purpose.

3)    When did you start preparing for MBA entrance examinations?

I started my preparations from the end of my 2^nd year of engineering. But I do believe, MBA preparation is something which starts from your childhood. Whenever you read a good novel, an article or watch a good movie, those can add to your MBA preparation. As far as formal preparation is concerned, the sooner you start, the better. As there are a wide range of subjects to cover in Quant and DI, You must prepare for at least one year rigorously.

4)    What was your preparation approach? Did you enroll with any coaching institute?

Yes. I absolutely did. I enrolled in Vistamind, JP.  You must enroll in any of the reputed coaching institutes because MBA preparation is something which really needs  guidance. Apart from joining an institute, I also bought some of the Quant and Verbal books available in the market. Some of the good books are Face to face CAT (Arihant Publication), Quantitative Aptitude Books by Nishit sinha, Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis etc.

I have not been a voracious reader in the past. So for the verbal part, Barron’s GRE word list was a must for me to improve my vocabulary. For the Reading Comprehension (RC) preparation, nothing can be better than regular newspaper reading (especially the most boring articles on Economics and politics from The Hindu). 

In the quant section, the standard of questions in CAT has unexpectedly deteriorated  big time this year. But as we did not have any clue about it, we prepared hard for the Quant section with a tendency to avoid the verbal.  But from now on, all you need to do is to gather the very lucid concepts of all the chapters, sharpen your expertise in trick questions, and concentrate solely on speed. Speed is the factor that’s going to make the difference.

I have also taken the Mock CATs from Vistamind and Career Launcher which also helped me rectify my faults and improve my speed.

5)    How did you overcome the CAT disappointment and bounce back in such an emphatic manner a couple of weeks later?

CAT disaster was something which I was pretty sure of. It did not come to me as a surprise at all. With the sudden change of standard of questions in CAT, it became very difficult for the students who aimed entirely for the Quant section to rule out others. But this year, verbal section became an area of utmost importance because Quant was doable even for the not-so-good-at-Quant students.

On the other hand, XAT maintained its usual standard and eventually was much predictable. I wrote 2-3 mock XATs and went for the test. The burden of expectations which an MBA aspirant has to carry while writing CAT was not there during XAT. So I could write it in a very casual mood which I had not been able to in CAT.

6)     “How to crack the XAT”….

CAT and XAT are different ball games altogether and will keep being more different henceforth (CAT solely focusing on speed with too many easy questions and less time. On the other hand XAT giving an ample amount of time solely checking your abilities with tougher questions).

 So, from now on, if you are too much focused about CAT concentrating more on solving easier questions with speed and accuracy than solving quality questions and thinking of cracking the XAT with the same, then you are in the wrong path. XAT will definitely need exclusive preparation at least in the Quant section. Apart from a clear idea of the basics, you must solve quality questions from every chapter and on a regular basis.

Another area of pain in XAT is decision making. This section is exclusive to XAT and it comes in no other MBA entrance exams of my knowledge. I have seen many students doing pretty well in other sections but fumbling in this one. So you must prepare this area at least in the post-CAT days to get a grasp in it. Solving last 5-6 years’ decision-making questions from XAT paper should suffice.

Lastly, in the verbal section, the preparation for CAT and XAT are pretty much the same.

7)    We tend to focus a lot on CAT,XAT and the likes. What has been your preparation approach for the WAT and GD/PI rounds?

The preparation for the personal interview generally starts after getting a call because it is mostly B-school specific. For example, why IIM B over IIM C, why XLRI HRM etc. Although you must have a clear idea from the start about why you are doing an MBA, where you see yourself in 10 years, your strengths, weaknesses etc. and you have to be ready with all the answers of the counter questions your previous answers may invite.

The preparation for WAT/GD must start from the very beginning of your CAT preparation. I have been following the news papers to keep myself in track with the latest changes in politics and economics. For GD, I only had a scope to participate in 2 of them during campus placements. The more GDs you take part in, the more confident you become. Even participating in debates, elocutions, on-stage hosting should serve the purpose.

8)    Apart from an emphatic achievement in XAT, you got placed in a company like PWC. How did you manage your placement preparation along with entrance studies?

I have never been enthusiastic about campus placements. I knew my limitations and my goal. Although I appeared in the recruitment process of some of those top-notch software companies, I also opted out from some behemoth companies like Microsoft, Adobe etc. PWC, being a consulting firm was a fascinating offer for me because owing to my interests and my abilities, if I were to choose something other than management education, I would go for a career in consulting or analytics. As I was an MBA aspirant, I used to get an extra edge over others in the aptitude rounds. Although for the interviews I had to prepare a little bit of departmental stuff like DS, DBMS, OOP, OS etc for a month. 

9)    Please tell us about your time spent in JU.

My life at JU has so far been awesome. I have got a big friend circle from not only my department but also from other departments. We used to have a multi-department group called ‘Chillar Party’ in the first year and we had the fun of our life. Soham, Aritra, Anish and others--I want to thank all of you for your constant support and motivation, especially Shruti and Debarghya – I owe you two a lot. 

10)    What are ways in which you think Jadavpur University can instill an entrepreneurial culture in its students?

As JU houses three faculties in the same premises, it has got an enormous opportunity to let students participate in exchange programs with each other.  The technical knowledge of the engineering students, the holistic economic views of the Economics students and the perspectives of the arts students can be put together in great use.  It will definitely open up a lot of ideas from promising minds of the JU students and develop an entrepreneurial culture in JU.

11)    If you were to sum up your JU experience in one sentence, what would it be?

All’s well that ends well.. no regret!

(Interviewed by Chandrashis Mazumdar and Soumik Ghosh, on behalf of Team JU IMG)