My Journey to IIM Calcutta, Class of 2025 – SK Shahryar Saify CAT 99.75%ile, Converted IIM Calcutta, XLRI Jamshedpur. Graduated form IIM Calcutta.

It’s often said that if you believe you can, you have won half the battle. I didn’t really connect with this saying at first. When I first set my eyes upon entering a B-school, I was in the 3^rd year of college. I researched on the statistics of what percentile was required to get into which college. The ABCs are the dream of every MBA aspirant, and when I saw that I needed to score higher than 99.5%ile to even get an interview shortlist from these behemoths, I was skeptical of scoring that high. Nevertheless, I took some coaching, studied quite a bit, and sat for the exam. When the results were declared, I had obtained 96%ile. While this looked good on paper, it was nowhere near the percentile needed to get into the colleges I wanted. In any case, I was shortlisted for interview at some of the IIMs, and even converted a few. I was debating on whether to take admission into these institutes or go forward with the job offer I had from my undergraduate placements, when I witnessed something that helped me made up my mind.

I saw some of my close friends, seniors, and others I have known for quite some time get into some of the top institutes. And this made me realize that I don’t want to settle for anything less than what I aspire to.

This is when I made my first real plan of getting into the top B-schools. Since I was not taking up MBA right then, I decided to accept my job offer. I decided to take CAT after gaining a year of experience and take the interim time in building my profile and have a good understanding of the business world. I have always had an interest in debate and public speaking, so when I found out that there was a corporate toastmasters club, joining it was a no brainer. I went on to serve as VP of the club in two separate roles, which have since then helped me quite a bit in some of the interviews. I was also interested in exploring some of the management fields. I joined a live consulting program where I worked on an actual business problem faced by an international company, and this too was quite an eye opener for me.

Around March, it was finally time to kickstart the CAT preparation. Following the recommendation of some friends, I decided to join Career Launcher’s night classes, where I was taught by the core faculty of Gejo, GP, Shivku, and Ravi sir among others. To say the coaching was exemplary would be an understatement. Let me elaborate.

I started my preparation by first taking a mock test, without any sort of preparation. This was to gauge the initial level where I stood. I knew from past experience that I was decently good at VARC, owing to my habit of reading books, and the Quant section, but I was really lacking confidence in the DILR section. It felt as if it was next to impossible solving those questions in mere 40 mins. In the first test I couldn’t solve even one question completely. I knew acing this section was going to be a challenge for me.

In the subsequent months, apart from practicing sets daily, I paid close attention to the DILR classes conducted by CL. There, I picked up some valuable advice that went a long way in improving my performance. Advice such as, selecting which sets to attempt in what order. Getting this right is extremely crucial as it can make or break your chances. Learning how to choose a set, how to determine its difficulty level, and especially when to leave a set to minimize losses and move on to the next, were all hard lessons I learned at the CL classes.

Although I was fairly good at solving the quant questions, in this section too, the CL classes were instrumental in providing tips and techniques that ultimately helped me to score beyond the 99^th percentile. Almost everyone knows how to calculate percentages and ratio-proportions, but in these classes I learnt how I could leverage these two concepts to solve a wide array of problems very quickly. This is just one example of many other small things, that ultimately added up to provide an enormous edge.

A big part of how all these were made possible was the focus on continuous mock tests, followed by the live analysis sessions on YouTube. After every mock, 2 or 3 of the core faculty would get on a live YouTube session and discuss in depth how each question should’ve been attempted, which should’ve been left. In DILR, they would discuss how the sets should have been judged and selected in order to maximize marks. They would also continuously compare the mocks with previous CAT papers and provide predicted percentiles, which really helped in gauging our relative performance.

In this manner I kept up my practice. I started taking up DILR sets for two hours every morning before office work began, took up mock tests every other weekend, and practiced my weak points at night, followed by attending the night classes. And perseverance proved to be the key. By the time September rolled around, I was quite comfortable with DILR sets and had gained good confidence. My performance in VARC and Quants were also up significantly. I cannot stress how important the mocks and subsequent analysis sessions were in reaching this level.

Finally, the D-Day came around. I paid no attention to whether the paper was easy or difficult, whether questions were lengthy or short etc. I simply focused on the strategy I had built during mocks and tried to solve as many as possible while maintaining accuracy. I had also gained good confidence in the DILR section by then, and this mindset proved to be very handy in tackling the sets.

When the results were declared, it was an absolute dream. I had scored 99.75%ile, and the icing on the cake was that I had absolutely no incorrect answers in DILR and Quant sections of the paper! Of course, I had known that for quite some time having used CL’s answer key and percentile predictor but didn’t really take it for granted until I had the official result in my hand.

Then began the interview preparation. I opted for CL’s Personality Development Program Personalized (PDPP), which essentially is a program that deep dives into ones personality and life, to help each one of us understand our own self, our purpose, our choices, to fine tune our interview preparation. The interviews are a whole different ballgame, requiring a completely different knowledge and skill set.

There were a series of sessions on world economy and how policy decisions affect markets and economies. These concepts, combined with mock interviews, turned out to be immensely helpful in answering some interview questions I personally faced. For example, in quite a few interviews, I was questioned on the fiscal budget. They weren’t interested in the facts of the budget, as almost everyone knew about that. The questions asked were analytical in nature, and I could provide effective answers only because I had gained an overall understanding of how the economy works and the micro/macro factors at play. I also received plenty of advice from my mentor Shivku sir on how best I can put forward my profile, which helped a lot, especially in dealing with the profile-based questions.

Mock interviews and mock GD/WATs were also conducted which helped hone the interview mindset. Another intangible benefit to being a part of this program was getting a focused peer group. There were quite a few interesting discussions on telegram about current topics such as implementation of e-rupee, ONDC etc. from which I was able to derive accurate opinions.

Once the interviews were over, came the long wait for the results. Post CAT I had moved to Bangalore from Kolkata because work from office was resuming. I took this free time to travel to some of the popular destinations and catch up on some books I’ve been meaning to read. If I were to mention just one book that I found the most interesting, that would be “Never Split the Difference” by Chriss Voss, where he talks about the art of negotiation.

Finally, one fine evening, just a few days ago from me writing this, I received an email from IIM Calcutta beginning with congratulations! And that’s when I knew that I made it to one of the most premier MBA institutes of India. It’s a dream come true!