CAT 2014 topper Aashish Chiller: An artist who loves graphic design
Aashish Chiller
Aashish Chiller is not your regular engineering graduate. This final year student of production and industrial engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi is an artist. He loves creating designs and editing photographs.
“I have been designing since my second year at IIT,” he tells Shiksha.com.
Aashish already has a placement offer from Housing.com.
His scaled score in Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation is 134.68 (99.92 Percentile) and Verbal Ability & Logical Reasoning is 118.51 (99.93 Percentile). The overall score stands at 261.74 (100 percentile).
Listen to Aashish's exclusive podcast with Shiksha.com. You can also read his interview below:
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Q: Congratulations Aashish!
A: Thank you so much.
Q: How are you feeling?
A: I am feeling really happy. Feeling calm.
Q: Tell us something about yourself.
I am pursuing production and industrial engineering (final year) at IIT Delhi. I like to read books, design on the laptop. I like taking photographs.
Q: So you are a creative person.
A: Yeah.
Q: Is this your first attempt?
A: Yes, this is my first attempt at CAT.
Q: Do you have any placement offers?
A: I have an offer from Housing.com.
Q: How long did you take to prepare for CAT 2014?
A: I had enrolled in TIME coaching institute and attended their classes regularly. After that, I seriously studied for about a month and a half for CAT.
Q: When did you start with your preparation?
A: Since I attended the classes regularly, it helped me a lot. At the end, I was mostly giving mock exams. I think, while you have covered all the basics, the actual studying time should be around a month or month and half. Before that you need to study regularly to cover the basics like grammar, quant, etc.
Q: What did you do to improve your weak areas?
A: I practiced on the identified weak areas with modules provided by TIME. And for my strength areas, I mostly tried to increase my speed.
Q: Is it necessary to join a coaching institute for CAT prep or any MBA prep?
A: I had been attending regular college along with preparing for CAT. It helped me by making me much more regular with preparation than I would have by myself.
Secondly, the material provided by TIME was really good. So that also helped me.
If someone has good basics and is self-disciplined, I think they will not require coaching institute to prepare. They’ll only need the material.
But I personally benefitted from the coaching institute.
Q: What’s your dream institute?
A: IIM Ahmedabad would be most preferable. I haven’t asked around but from what I hear, IIM-A would be the best.
Q: Do you any back-up plan?
A: I don’t have any back-up as such. I have a job offer (placement) and I am yet to decide whether I want to pursue my MBA or go for the job.
Q: Tell us about your family.
A: My mom is a housewife and dad teaches at Swami Shraddhanand College, Delhi University.
Q: Any siblings?
A: Younger brother. He’s in Class 12.
Q: Is he also aiming for IIT?
A: (laughs) Yeah.
Q: What are your hobbies? What do you like to do?
A: I like to read books. I like to make designs on my laptop, edit photographs. I’m into graphic designing – have been doing this since second year at IIT.
It’s really enjoyable. You don’t really have to draw really well to produce something good (laughs). So that’s what I like. I am basically a lazy man…an artist.
Q: Any tips for the future CAT aspirant?
A: I think they should focus on improving speed. So take lots of mock exams and cover all the areas/topics.