Siddharth Matta

Converted IIM A

My affair with CAT started when I was in my final year of graduation at IIT Roorkee. Just like many other confused friends, I too thought that the next logical step after engineering would be doing post-grad in Management. I appeared for CAT and XAT , managed decent percentile in both and secured calls from IIM I, K and XLRI. With great written score, I believed the process would go smooth and I would be able to secure admission. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The interview process weightage is similar to the 40 percentage weightage they used to give Board Marks in calculating JEE Mains rank. Although it is less than that of the written score weightage, It played a much more significant role than the written score. Interview is another ballgame altogether. It requires a different technique to crack the interviews. Thus without any formal coaching, I was only able to convert one college.

After taking up job in the analytics industry and working there for almost a year, I realised the importance of management education. It prepares you for survival in the corporate world, gives you the right kind of approach to handle critical problems and enables you with just the right amount of confidence to sail through the cut-throat competition. I decided to take CAT again. This time I managed to get 99.95%ile in CAT and 99.995%ile in XAT. With such great scores, comes great responsibility. I wanted to convert the Holy Trinity and didn’t want to take any risk. I had already heard too many stories about 100%ilers who weren’t able to convert even a single college out of the trinity. This time I decided to go for formal expertise and enrolled myself with the CL PDP programme. They allocated GP sir as my mentor. In my first mock interview with GP sir, I remember I discussed everything, even remotely related to my profile, with him. The objective was to develop a meaningful pitch that would help me convert my A/B/C call. This way I discovered some important points which I had ignored before. In fact these were the points which eventually helped me during the interview and were able to distinguish my candidature from the rest. At the end of this “season” (CAT aspirants are familiar with this term), I was able to convert IIM Ahmedabad (WIMWI) , IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, XLRI (BM) and IIM Shillong. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to GP sir for guiding me through the interview process.