Applying to
As
the season for the CAT exam draws nearer, students are forced to apply to many
colleges even before giving the actual exam. This is very troublesome since 9
out of 10 students over estimate their ability and end up spending shit loads
of money on forms etc.
Lets
just take a look at various exams for MBA in India .
IRMA
IIFT
CAT
XAT
SNAP
CMAT
TANCET
etc etc
SRCC
GBO
Most
of these exams have a number of colleges under their umbrella and students end
up coughing more than 20K on forms every year. Let’s label these exams based on
difficulty
IRMA
is easy except for the GK part, and that is basically the make or break section
for this paper. The paper is of easy level and students normally find section
easy overall.
IIFT
is a difficult exam by any standards. The paper level is moderate to difficult.
One should give some past exams before coughing up 1500+ on this exam as it is
not for everyone.
CAT
– Moderate to difficult, we will talk about this later below.
XAT
– Equivalent to CAT or slightly higher. However, lack of that intense a
competition ( in comparison to CAT) helps students with cut offs
CMAT,
TANCET, SRCC – Easy to moderate with high cut offs. SRCC has GK also which of
moderate level
This
should give you some idea as to which paper you should or should not give.
Going through past exam papers would also help clear the air.
Now for choosing the
college –
TRY
THIS APPROACH.Just give past papers and determine the range within which you
expect to score. Now make slabs of 5%ile and apply to 1-2 college within this
slab. Lets do a demo to clarify this further -
Lets
say Mr. M expects his percentile to be around 90%ile this year. So in the
optimistic case, he wants to apply to 95%ile colleges at max and till 80%ile or
slightly below to prepare for worse.
He
divides this range into slabs of 95-90, 90-85, 85-80, 80 and below…now start
picking colleges which accept these percentiles. Here is a rough idea –
Around 95 -
BIM,
Trichy – Awesome college, underrated due to lack of that much publicity
IITs,
NITIE for engineers only
MDI,
Gurgaon
IMT, Ghaziabad
MFC,
Awesome college for finance at Delhi University .
Around 90 -
FMS
BHU, Varanasi
FORE, New Delhi
LBS, New Delhi
IMI, New Delhi
UBS, Chandigarh
Many
many more
IFMR, Bhopal
NIT,
Trichy
Around 85
MNIT, Allahabad
The
above stated colleges lesser courses like International Business and others
SP
Jain – However, its way above the league due to profile constraints.
Below
80
SDM
IMD, Mysore
UPES,
Dehradun
BIMTECH,
Noida
Many
many more. Ideally, for Mr. M, I would choose BIM, MDI from bracket 1. NIT
Trichy, LBS/FORE from bracket 2 and MNIT from bracket 3 and finally SDM IMD
from bracket 4
FMS
BHU, MNIT, NIT Trichy and Lucknow university are
healthy options for fee constrained students.
Hope
this will help students in choosing their colleges wisely and making correct
decision. This way you can direct your resources in the right direction and
save some money while keeping a wide range of options open. Tweak the strategy
according to your liking and make sure you choose and invest with your mind and
not your heart.
(IIMs
and FMS, Delhi deliberately kept
out of this post.)
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