Adarsh Singh Profile

• Graduation College: IIT BHU
• Programe: B.Tech Mechanical
• CAT score: 99.83
• Year of Passing Out: 2023

When and why did you think of appearing for CAT?

Adarsh Singh: It was during the month of august when I was finalizing my preparations for campus placement when i got to know that less number of companies will he visiting our college and as i was preparing for analyst roles where almost all companies take test which are of same.format as CAT so i had good preparation of those topics so i thought it would be a good backup option in case i don't get a good placement. Although i managed to get a good placement and most probably i won't be going to IIMs for now. May be in the future i will but currently i am going to focus on my job.

Did you join any coaching institute ? If yes, which one and why ? If not - Why did you go for self preparation?

Adarsh Singh: I had taken a mock test series of career launchers because they reached out to our college students and offered discounts on the test series. I prepared on my own because I did not find the topics that hard to join a coaching.

What was your preparation strategy for Verbal?

Adarsh Singh: I have always been decent in verbal, the only problem was my speed while.reading Rc for that my strategy was to give as many mocks as possible. That was all I did leading up to cat exams. I always picked the option which was my gut feeling and just stuck with it. The only weak topic.left was jumbled para sometimes which i honestly had no time to better myself in.

What was your preparation strategy for DI and LR?

Adarsh Singh: My preparation strategy for DILR was fairly simple . I first started by solving all previous year LR sets. Then I proceeded to some tougher lr questions. And my strategy for cat lr di was to leave the toughest LR set for last because most of the time the first lr set is the toughest and takes most of the time so i simply left it to better solve other lr di sets.

What was your preparation strategy for Quant?

Adarsh Singh: I had no worries for quant as it is my strongest zone and the only thing i had to focus on was speed and not getting caught up.in longer questions. I brushed up some tougher topics like probability through some random youtube videos and i was good to go.

How were the last few days before the exam?

Adarsh Singh: My last few days before the exams were very hectic . I had my semester exams from 22 nov to 28 nov and my b.tech project submission on 29th nov and placement interviews phase 1 starting from 1 dec so i had no time to give for CAT and had no mock test in the last 10 days and was going with very less flow which resulted in me not being able to solve last 5 ques of quant.

Which mocks helped you crack CAT?

Adarsh Singh: I only had mocks of career launchers and they were fairly good. The difficulty on them was fairly equal to actual mock although the expected percentile shown there used to be very low. Talking about analyzing. I used to look at ques i did wrong then before seeing the solution i attempted them again to see where i did wrong.and then go to see the solutions which helped me a lot.

One mistake which you think you should not have made (During the exam or during the preparation phase)?

Adarsh Singh: The mistake i should not have made was leaving the practise of mocks all together leading to the exam and in exam i shouldn't have stuck on large ques of quant just because i thought i could solve them.

Please recreate the moment for us when you first saw your result?

Adarsh Singh: I was just chilling at my home.during winter break when i saw a whatsapp message from the coaching i took mock test of..i saw the result and i could believe as in any mock i had never ever crossed 99%ile and in past year papers my score also lied in range of 99%ile and never above that so it was a shock for me . There was no anxiety as i had already been placed in very good company and.there was no need for the backup.option.of mba but the result was very good .

What next? Which colleges are you targeting based on your profile and percentile ? And how do you plan to clear the GD PI?

Adarsh Singh: Currently i am just thinking of going for GDPI of iim a if call comes just to see the experience of it. I am not preparing for it and will go only to have a feel which will help me in further years if I again decide to do MBA.

What are your long term goals and how do you think getting into your dream college will help you achieve that?

Adarsh Singh: My long term.goals are to be Product manager at a leading global company like google, facebook. Although my current placement will help me become product manager within 3 years at sprinklr but getting into iim abc will help me go even beyond that.

What should be an ideal 6 months strategy to prepare for CAT?

Adarsh Singh: give one or two full mocks just to see what are your weaknesses.

- identify the weaknesses like speed ,accuracy , picking easier questions, topics.

- start working on them while giving weekly full mocks as well-

During lats two months give a full mock.daily and analyze daily..

Do this and you are good to go