Sambit Mohanty, IIM Calcutta student shares tips to score 99 percentile in CAT, IIM admission & more

Mohanty shared his admission experience at IIM Calcutta, tips to ace CAT, his transition from an engineer to an MBA student and more. Check out some interesting excerpts from the interview below:

Q: Congratulations! Are you satisfied with your CAT result? How much score were you expecting?

A: Expectations have been a ride as wild as that of the actual exam. I had been sure about a 99.3-4 score for a while before CAT, for a couple of months. But post the actual exam, for a couple of hours, I thought I had tanked it and the results were going to be somewhere close to the 95-97 mark. Ultimately, a few coaching institutes brought out predictors and I was somewhere around the 99.7 percentile range. When the actual score of about 99.76 happened, I was quite excited because I was sure I would be able to get a call from IIM Calcutta, though conversion was a whole different story. I am satisfied with the score I have.

Q: What was the key part of IIM-C’s MBA program that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you?

A: IIM Calcutta has been one of the very few IIMs that does not focus on who you have been pre-MBA as much and gives you a second chance at life to make it big. Having lost hope in JEE once, this was the best shot I could have had to make it to a tier-1 institute and their bare bones approach to selecting candidates over the other IIMs is something I respect Joka for. Also, the ability to select electives for the second year with no mandatory courses was a big draw. You can customize the entirety of the year to your liking with loads of fun electives and excellent faculties, both in-house and visiting, to make the most out of your academic callings.

Q: Please share your WAT-PI experience.

A: IIM Calcutta only had an interview round during my year of selections, but I was pretty sure that I would be able to make it through the WAT rounds had they been conducted. As for the PI, I tried to be the most brutally honest self of myself that I could be. I was clear about my priorities and when asked about it, I placed my personal life and improvement for my family over everything else. The first part of my interview was entirely around my decisions and I stuck to the approach that Kenneth Serrao  (IIM-A, 2000) explained about life in an interview at the Conversations event that InsideIIM held and he said that you can have 3 kinds of problems in life out which financial is one aspect and doing an MBA from the IIM ABCs of the world pretty much gives you a 33% haircut on the problems front because you won’t have to worry about financials a lot. I said this in my interview and how it was important for me to be financially secure after a very bad phase in my personal life post the death of my father. I did not feel an incentive to lie in the interview about anything because an alum from my UG who went on to do an MBA from IIM Udaipur, Aaditya Mohapatra, said that a lot of people realise how big the gap is in experience between both sides of the interview panel, but very few realise how vast and profound it is. I respected him and IIM Calcutta too much to even bother about lying in front of the panel. Post that, for the second part of the interview, I was grilled on academics from UG because one of the panel members, Prof. Bodhibrata Nag, was an Electrical Engineering AIR 2 in UPSC ESE, but thankfully, due to a persistent group of friends I am blessed with, I was able to answer most of the questions. Shout out to all of them who connected with me over Gmeet (COVID years) and explained all concepts that I had been skimping, very very patiently. Prof. Nag helped me with a couple questions too and in the end, I think it was my resolve to be my most honest self in the interview that got me through

Q: Please share how your academic profile helped you in getting shortlisted for IIM Calcutta's MBA programme?

A: My academic profile did not have much to boast about, but then again, IIM Calcutta evaluates you for who you are and who they think you could potentially be as opposed to clinging to the past. The latter half of my interview was focused solely on my academics and I think I only have my friends to thank for to be able to make it through it. I never had the slightest idea that the Electrical Engineering would make this big a cameo and I would actually be able to answer questions that I did not have the slightest idea about till 2 months before the interview. My friends Abhishek Padhi, Sandeep, Rakesh, Dibya and Sourav Muduli helped me more than I could have possibly imagined. Everyone else brought in their own form of motivation and small sacrifices to help me sail through.

Q: Which one habit that you followed during your CAT preparation helped you crack the management entrance exam?

A: I can break it down into sections. For VARC, I followed Rajesh Sir’s advice (2IIM) and read fiction books. I read close to 40 of them over the course of the year and it helped me ace the section and was a small part of my interview as well. For Quants, revise, revise, and revise. I followed this routine almost every day. As for DILR , the only thing that sailed my boat was the consistent and incessant effort that I put in the section by solving a couple timed sets, from DI and LR each, from past mocks every single day until the exam.

Q: Was this your first attempt at CAT?

A: Yes, this was my first CAT attempt. I am a GEM-Fresher (The irony of being a GEM in CAT is brutal.)

Q: When did you start preparing for the CAT exam? What was your overall prep strategy?

A: I started preparing for CAT generally over a period of about 6 months, but only got seriously invested in it when the exam was about 3-3.5 months away. My prep strategy at a macro level was based on not letting any of the sections slip out of my hands while strengthening the others. Regular practice and consistent efforts, both in prep and in mocks was a very important factor.

Q: Which books did you refer to for CAT preparation?

A: I understood early on that any single set of sources that could comprehensively cover the syllabus for the exam would be good enough. I did not spend too much time gathering resources and focused on the most ubiquitous and tested one, TIME materials. Apart from the fiction books that I read and the TIME materials I had; I did not use any other material for the exam.

Also Read: Best books for CAT preparation

Q: How many mock tests did you attempt and how important is a mock test series?

A: I attempted all the mocks that TIME provided along with the ones from IMS. Both had their own merits and demerits, but at the end of the day, all of them offer you a chance to improve your scores if you utilize them properly. Fascinatingly, I was one of the few exceptions who scored really high in their first mock (99.94 %ile) and ended up with a lower score in the actual exam attempt.

Also read: CAT preparation tips and strategy

Q: Did you join any coaching institute? How does the coaching institute help in CAT preparation?

A: I joined TIME for prep in general and IMS a little later for the GDPI process. I think the access to material was the most important thing since I did not attend any class whatsoever. But as for IMS, the live classes on various topics, specifically those by Nandu Sharma for current affairs and Girish Khare for economics and Fin, were extremely helpful. I also had mock interviews with the panel from IMS where Rahool Deb Sir helped me a lot. I owe him a big thanks for all the effort that he put in. A coaching institute helps if you need to learn concepts from scratch and of course, with the strong set of materials that they have, alongside the mocks. But the benefits of enrolling in their GDPI programs are commendable.

Q: What was your exam day strategy?

A: As for the exam day strategy, there were multiple ones floating around. Some were the skim and do type while others were analyzing strength type. However, since I went in with a target of 100 percentile, I knew I had to try to solve all that I could lay my hands on, especially in DILR. I slept for 8 hours, wore the most comfortable clothes, had a bowl of cornflakes, and went into the mine field.

Q: Describe your educational background.

A: I am a fresher with a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from VSSUT, Burla and graduated with a CGPA of 7.86, equivalent to about 73.6%. As I tell my friends, I am a B.Tech graduate, but not an engineer. My 10^th score was 10/10 CGPA and 12^th was PCM with CS, pegged at 91.4%, both CBSE. The latter two did not matter for IIM Calcutta though, since they assigned the same scores for everyone scoring above 80%.

Q: How MBA would help you to transform your skills as per industry?

A: An MBA gives you the opportunity to explore a lot of different fields and that was the most important rationale I had, career wise because I have always been interested in several different segments and organizations and an MBA gives you the bandwidth to deal with challenges across industries. Having been a part of the first year of MBA with some of the best minds of the country, the best take-away was that you can always dynamically improve yourself as the environment requires to level up in skills and get the best done.

Q: What led you to pursue an MBA at this point and what is the next milestone you want to achieve after graduation?

A: In crude terms: Money and IIM tag. Let me put that in context: I already had an offer from Deloitte to work as a business analyst, but the situation I was in was particularly precarious. I had to handle all the responsibilities of my mother and younger sister while expecting a regular graduate level growth. I knew that once I joined a job, I would never be able to come back to do an MBA because of the rising load of liabilities that would come facing forwards. If I had to bag a degree and pivot, this was my chance to stand out from the herd with a pay and growth trajectory that could take care of all that my family and I could face. While an MBA was going to give me all of this, the IIM Calcutta tag gives you a very strong safety net to bounce back when things get tough, with the industry respect and the strong presence of alums. I did not have a strong UG to do that for me and hence the IIM tag was important. As for what next, I would like to work across multiple fields and get to know what makes big businesses as successful as they are. I am looking forward to be a part of the industry, work in an established track and try my best to rise up the corporate world in a well-defined management ladder.

Q: Important advice for aspirants aiming to gain admission into IIM-C?

A: I have said this to multiple candidates who have approached me, be yourself. The panel is not there to judge your life, they are excellent professors who have seen a lot more than what you could possibly imagine and will definitely try their best to understand you. Don’t throw around terms you don’t know or a fancy course that you got a completion certificate for. Know your stuff like the back of your hand and have clarity about your decisions. They don’t expect all the answers from you, they just need to see that you are trying your best to do justice and strongly desire to be a part of an institute with an unparalleled legacy.

Q: Any tips for future CAT aspirants?

A: Try to enjoy the process of prep. Don’t just take it as another bitter pill you might as well swallow but fall in love with what you do. Try to align your daily activities to match what you aspire, and you will see it working wonders for you. All of this might seem like MBA talk, but trust me, it is worth it. Best of luck.

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