Preparation for MAH-CET (MBA)

I completed my engineering from Government College of Engineering Pune in 2006. I got selected for Atos Origin and joined the same in September 2006.

Some of my friends were appearing for CAT in November 2006 and at that time, to be frank, I was totally unaware as to what MBA is all about. I thought I was happy with my job and should not get into studies again. But as the time passed I felt that somewhere the career was getting saturated and to move ahead I need to go for higher studies. So I started preparing for entrance tests of management studies.

In the year 2007 I applied only for CET (Maharashtra). I did not do any studies at all. I wasn’t really serious about MBA till the time I took CET for the third time. In 2007 my percentile was 94.

Then I again took CET in 2008. I also took CAT in the same year. However my decision to take CAT was too late and so could not do justice to it (78 percentile). But then I started preparing for CET in November. For the basic concepts I used Chandresh Agarwal’s book. I managed to solve the book in a month’s time as I had little time left after working in the office. Many of my friends advised me to join test series so that I could know where exactly I lagged and which were the areas where I could score well. But I did not listen to them ( a big mistake for which I paid heavily). Having done with my basics I thought it was enough and did not do much till the exam. I was on leave for 7 days before the CET exam. I went to Pune and enjoyed those 7 days with my friends. Took CET and came back to Mumbai. I got 94 percentile. In 2007 I did not even go for GD PI but this time I went for it and got 17 in PI and 8 in GD. So I could hardly have got into PUMBA with that score. However for some reasons (which i can not disclose on the blog) i avoided getting into any institute.

After two failures I decided to give my best and get into some good college. So I took CAT and CET again. Once again I failed to do justice to CAT and ended up getting 92 percentile. But this time I had prepared for CAT. I started preparing in June 2008. I collected some test papers from friends. I revised the basics from Agarwal and from Notes of a private coaching class. It took some 20-25 days to do that. Then I started solving sectional tests which I had got along with the notes of the private coaching class. After having done with those tests I solved 2-3 full length tests and then the bad days started. I had to take some extra efforts at my work place due to which I faced time constraints and could not prepare much for CAT .

So in October 2008 I decided to give it up and take CET 2009. So I started preparing for it. I was already done with the basics so I started solving full length question papers straight away. My typical day used to be like start solving question paper at 7:00 am finish it at one stretch. And then evaluate the same using answer key. This time I had joined test series as well so on Sundays I used to take those. The test scores used to vary anywhere between 98 and 146. We (a friend of mine and me) collected some 60-70 test papers of various coaching classes. Solved them together (I used to solve the papers in Mumbai and he used to solve them in Pune and then we used to discuss where can we improve the scores and believe me it helped me a lot). We paid special attention to visual reasoning and it forms a major part of the CET question paper.

So in all it wasn’t much that I did other than solving question papers and then discussing the areas of improvement and working on them with someone who was equally interested in getting into some good college.

I will keep writing as and when I find something that will help JBIMS aspirants. And about GD and PI preparations I will post separate artilcle.