A Journey from juggling between job and CAT preparation to IIM K, Ft. Arijit Goswami | How To Prepare For CAT PDF Download

“Never believe anyone who tells you that you can't do something. Our loved ones are not working against us, nor is the entire world against us. Through my path of CAT Preparation, I discovered how to convince others of my dreams. I hope my experience can do the same for you!” ~ Arijit Goswami

This story revolves around the accomplishments of Arijit Goswami who lived up to the expectations of his family and thrived CAT with 99.12 percentile which led him to IIM Kozhikode. 

A quick flashback to Arijit’s college days: Being born in a family of ambitious and success-driven people, Arijit was raised as an achiever. He has always been a bright child during his school & engineering days. Even, his inclination toward MBA was seeded during his 3rd year in college and eventually he joined famous coaching in the final year of his college. However, destiny had other plans for him. During his final year of his college, he got placed at Infosys, eventually joining the same to pursue his career as a System Engineer and put a pause on his MBA dream.

Working at Infosys: In his role as Senior Systems Engineer at Infosys, he actively contributed to several initiatives and corporate events on a national level. He was the runners-up in InStep Business Plan Competition 2016, where he presented a new business line to Infosys executives and received appreciation from Mr. Narayana Murthy. Additionally, he was the recipient of the Best Volunteer Award and was an active contributor to the Eco-club and Toastmasters chapter in Infosys Bangalore. All these achievements at Infosys helped him become quite famous among his peers and also kept reminding him of his long-forgotten dream of doing an MBA. 

This was the time when he decided to pick up his notes from the coaching & started preparing for CAT on his own. He was loving it because he was working for something that he really wanted to do. Though he was able to revise the concepts through his notes of coaching, he missed the testing environment of coaching. 

So, he started exploring online options for the same & even discussed with his peers who were also preparing for competitive exams and that's when he discovered the EduRev App. As soon as he attempted a Mock test for CAT on the EduRev app, he immediately subscribed to it for the Mock test series. 

He claims that a focused six months is all it takes to succeed on the CAT. It wasn't easy for him to study for the CAT exam, judging by the context. He was working at Infosys and studying for the test. He was forced to stay up late studying because he had an office during the day. He occasionally found this juggling of work and school to be draining. But he overcame it because of his perseverance, confidence, and regular practice of tests with the EduRev App. The app gave him the freedom to study from anywhere & now he could leverage all the buffer time in his day to practice. 

In his words, "EduRev has helped me to take small steps each day, which eventually helped me achieve the real success of clearing the CAT exam"

There were nights of despair and dejection, but he managed to overcome them with his hard work. He analyzed his performance on a daily basis on the EduRev app where he discovered his mistakes and weak areas. He then worked endlessly on those mistakes and flipped the coin by turning his weak areas into strong ones. 

He strongly believes in the right strategy over the right timing. He uses an intriguing method to examine the three letters in CAT. 

He claims that the C in this sentence refers to "concepts." Conceptual learning should be the major priority for everyone getting ready for the CAT.

The letter A indicates “Analysis”. Preparing without analysis is just like going into a battle without knowing your enemy. 

And lastly, the T stands for “Test”. For a CAT aspirant, giving tests is as important as clearing the concepts.

Arijit believes, a CAT aspirant should give considerable time to practise tests, including topic-wise, sectional & complete mock tests as well. He used EduRev for the sole purpose of solving tests and analyzing his performance. According to him, the last two months of the CAT preparation should all be about giving mocks and solving various sectional tests. The more one practises, the less the scope of error. 

All these tips and strategies led Arijit to the whopping success of getting admitted to the IIM Kozhikode. Receiving a letter of acceptance from IIM K was a dream come true for him. His success didn’t just take a seat here, later, during his days in IIM, k, he represented IIM Kozhikode in Global Business Challenge 2019 in Brisbane and emerged as the global 1st runner-up in Harvard Impact Challenge 2020 in Boston. All this added up to the milestone where he is today. Arijit works with Capgemini as a Manager as of now!

Arijit’s words to future aspirants: First and foremost, it is crucial to begin your CAT preparation early on so that you have time to hit and try your methods and recover from any setbacks. Second, progress cannot be sudden or quick. One must maintain motivation to work diligently and shrewdly because it is gradual. He just has one message for all aspiring MBAs, both current and prospective, “Be Consistent and Be Confident”. 

Regular practice of tests has been one of the reasons for the success of Arijit. If you're wondering, where to get all the topic-wise, sectional & complete mock tests, EduRev offers all that, to help aspirants like you crack the CAT exam. 

EduRev offers a variety of tests including 100+topic-wise tests, 50+sectional tests and 20+complete mock tests. In addition to this, a complete exam analysis after each mock test is provided where you can analyze your weak and strong sections and process accordingly. 

Also, the best part is that all these courses are available in a single package of EduRev Infinity for CAT

Here’s a link to an interview video of Arijit Goswami with EduRev Team, where he has explained on how to prepare for CAT quickly: