IIM aspirants resort to crazy methods to crack CAT

Snehil Jaiswal / TNN / Jul 25, 2006, 02:32 IST

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With the time for belling the CAT drawing nearer, panic buttons have already been pressed by many students in the state.

IIM aspirants resort to crazy methods to crack CAT

PATNA: With the time for belling the CAT (Common Aptitude Test) drawing nearer, panic buttons have already been pressed by many students in the state.
Memorising the entire Oxford dictionary is one of the many "crazy" methods that students are adopting to crack the country's toughest management entrance exam.
"And why shouldn't we when memorising some 3,000 words can be our passport to the IIMs," reasons Vanisha, a diehard IIM-A aspirant.Her friends are also taking to a few interesting habits to score a high percentile in the English section.
"Everyday I pick up a thesaurus, mug up 100 words and then incorporate those words in a short essay which I write on the most burning issue of the day," confides Shristi from Patna.

She says doing this not only enhances her vocabulary, but also her writing skills and general knowledge. And apart from these English brushing up techniques, mathematics also has a fair number of crazy aspirants struggling with it.
All of a sudden there have emerged students who have taken up the responsibility of maintaining the household budget. "I've started keeping track of the money being spent for day-to-day household requirements. That's how a future manager emerges, right?" says Ateet from Munger with a chuckle.

But his mom, unaware of his real motive behind helping her out, thinks that her son is becoming responsible towards the household. Gone are the posters of film stars and sports cars in the rooms of IIM aspirants.
And giving these film stars a tough competition are charts of mathematical tables, squares, square roots and cubes of numbers which are reverently put up on the walls.
Every morning the first thing many of these "future managers" do is to take a quick glance through the figures in those charts. "Early morning is the time when the mind is most receptive and lets you memorise quickly," says Sauransh from Muzaffarpur, adding that he wants to leave no stone unturned for cracking the exam.
And students who were till a few days back flipping through the pages of magazines for catching a glimpse of their favourite vacation spots, accessories, celebrities and masala, now have given their hobbies a back seat.
"I'm now more concerned with any data in magazines in the form of graphs, tables and pie charts for honing my calculation skills," says Samridhi, a Gaya-based movie buff who has recently switched over from film magazines to business ones.
"The stress," she says, "is worth taking for getting into an IIM." With the CAT exam scheduled for November 19, the grit, determination and desperation of these IIM aspirants are evident from the unusual means that they've taken to.
"Cracking CAT is no child's play. One needs to give one's heart and soul to the test," says Ruchita. Indeed, students in Bihar seem to be working hard for IIMs that they've set their hearts on.
And their minds are also working in synchrony with their hearts.

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