Cracking CAT: It's not how good you are but how fast

Abhishek Mande 

Srikanth Lanka, a student of Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai scored 99.99 percentile in CAT 2011. Here's how he did it.

When he appeared for CAT 2011, Srikanth Lanka was confident of cracking the CAT. He just didn't expect 99.99 percentile.

The final year student at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai has already received calls from IIMs across the country including Ahmedabad and Calcutta, which are his top two choices.

In an interview, Srikanth Lanka tells us how he prepared for CAT in five months... and cracked it!

So what is the secret? How did you get this fantastic a score in your first attempt?

When I first started preparing for CAT, I enrolled in the IMS classroom programme. I studied through the material and gave the 12 mock tests. Besides this, I also came across a website called Testfunda.com that had some very good mock tests.

I appeared for 15 of those. The mock tests on Testfunda.com were really tough. That helped me prepare harder and better.

By the end of five months, I had appeared for 27 mock tests in all. I suppose somewhere along I knew I was prepared.

Did you think you'd crack the CAT in the first attempt?

I was scoring 99.5 percentile in most of my mock CATs so yes I did expect a good score but never once did I think I'd get a 99.99! That was a bit of a surprise.

I was part of IMS classroom programme. I did all their material. Besides, there is a site called testfunda.com took that their tests very good quality. They were challenging prepare you better for CAT harder but made you better equipped.

Could you tell us how you planned for CAT in those five months?

The idea was to give as many tests as possible and perform optimally and analyse the results.

What sort of feedback did your counsellors give you during this time?

Since I was scoring 99 percentile and above, they just pretty much told me to keep doing whatever it is I was doing. I was however weak in the verbal section.

I suppose Quant (which a lot of students find difficult) came naturally to me because of my engineering background. On the flipside like many engineering students I too struggled in the verbal section but I basically kept at it. I read a lot -- newspapers essentially -- and tried to practice solving those areas particularly.

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