HOW TO BELL THE CAT?

Completing a management diploma from an Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and getting a job where your salary reads in six figures is a dream worth pursuing. But success, they say, is 98% perspiration and 2% inspiration. And getting into any of the coveted IIMs demands intense and focused preparation.

The Common Admission Test (CAT) conducted by the six IIMs (Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Lucknow, Indore, and Kozhikode) is scheduled for this year on December 18 2007. It attracts thousands of aspirants from all over the country. Besides IIMs, there are 20 other institutes like MICA, Nirma Institute of Management, SP Jain Institute and others, which draw candidates based on the performance in CAT.

Fuelled by dreams of sky-high salaries and cushy jobs, more than 2 lakh graduates, engineers and other qualified professionals, appear for the entrance test hoping to make it to a top IIM institute. So how does one bell the CAT?

Private coaching
Joining a coaching institute is not a bad option. It definitely makes you stay in touch with the CAT syllabus. Vaibhav Nagpal, a student of Pegasus course at Career Launcher, who cleared the CAT in 1 2005 and is currently working for Polaris Software, Delhi, says, "Coaching actually made me know where I was heading. Starting from the basic fundamentals, I knew exactly where I stood. I had a daily task schedule set out for me."

Pitched competition has led to a mushrooming of coaching institutes - each claiming fantastical success record. The Institute of Management Studies (IMS), with branches all over the country claims to have clocked 750 students out of the near 1000 IIMs seats this year. It claims that the percentage of its students clearing CAT as compared to other institutes is quite high.