Here’s the Interview of CAT Topper Charchil Jain who cleared CAT with 99.38%ile and converted IIM Indore
Q: Today we have with us an aspirant who hails from Indore, did his schooling from Indore, under-graduation from Indore and now is going to do his MBA also from Indore (IIM Indore). Charchil, let’s hear about your Journey.
CHARCHIL: I hail from a business family from Indore and as you mentioned I have done my schooling and graduation from indore itself. From the past year till last month I was working in an analytics firm in bangalore.
Q: What motivated you to appear for the CAT exam?
CHARCHIL: As I was not in the IIT or NIIT, So I was not able to get the placement and the amount of money which I wanted to get from a job. I wanted to grow in my career and from there I got the motivation to start preparing for CAT.
Q: So, as you mentioned that your motive to prepare for CAT was to earn good money, So what was the salary that you were getting from your job?
CHARCHIL: It was only 23-24k and I was staying in Bangalore so sometimes it was hard to manage the expenses.
Q: How much percentile did you score in CAT and what were your sectional scores?
CHARCHIL: I scored 99.38%ile overall and it was around 90%ile in VARC, 99%ile quant and 99.99%ile in DILR.
Q: How did you prepare for CAT, what were the strategies and what were the resources that you took for the preparation?
CHARCHIL: I started my preparation last year in the month of june or july and initially I joined the iQuanta group, which is the most wide group or have the most number of aspirants so I used to follow the groups and used to see a lot of people posting different kinds of questions in the group and the students who opted for iQuanta were able to solve those questions in very less amount of time. So, that was the thing that fascinated me and I joined the Batch 2 of iQuanta where I followed the strategy suggested by Indrajeet Sir. I used to take all the classes and after that used to follow the definite pattern and used to take the mocks, take guidance from Indrajeet Sir and then analyze the mocks to know about my strengths and weaknesses which helped me to score this much percentile in the CAT exam.
Q: From where did you get to know about iQuanta?
CHARCHIL: When I started my preparation, I was searching for a good platform that could help me in my preparation, stay motivated and get peer to peer learning so iQuanta was the best for it.
Q: A lot of people are very skeptical about online coaching. So, what are the benefits that you found in the online coaching of iQuanta against the traditional offline coaching which are there in the market?
CHARCHIL: Yes, there are a lot of benefits I got from online coaching as I am a working professional. I will say that I can visit the class at any point of time. If I get the time at night at around 2-3am I can visit the class at that time as well as there are recordings available of the classes. So, this was very beneficial for me. If I am not able to understand any concept then I can revisit the classes again.
Second point was the 24/7 doubt clearing. In an offline coaching, what generally happens is that there is a fixed timing where the faculty will be available and at that time only you have to clear your doubts. But in iQuanta, there are 24/7 doubt clearing sessions available where I can post the questions and within a few minutes the doubts can be clarified.
Q: So as you mentioned that you scored 99.9 %ile in the DILR section, where a lot of aspirants face a lot of difficulties. So, what was your strategy that helped you to tackle this particular section?
CHARCHIL: See, every subject has its basics. So, I practiced for the basic sets like arrangement, pie chart and bar graph. After that I used to solve the past year papers of CAT and the mock questions because for DILR, there is no specific book or something available which we can follow and ace in the CAT. So, I used to solve all the diversified sets from past mocks and also I used to solve the sets posted by different students of iQuanta.So, after some point of time the sets that used to come in the mocks and even in the CAT past papers, were repetitive for me. So,in this way it was easy for me to attempt and solve that section.
Watch Charchil’s full interview here :
Q: What was the study material that you used to prepare for all the 3 sections of the CAT exam?
CHARCHIL: I will start from VARC. So, for VARC I used to read different articles of different zones. So, this helped me to understand the essence of the passage or what the author or the poet wants to say. So, firstly we should read about different zoners and after that you can go for RCs, para jumbles and all the other things and analyze why you are eliminating any options and why this is not correct. What generally happens with all the aspirants is that they can eliminate two options easily and then it happens like 50-50 which is on their luck. We should not go with luck, we should identify which is correct and which is not correct.
For the DILR section, as I mentioned earlier, past mocks and the past year papers are the best study material for DILR.
For quant, we can divide the strategy chapter wise. There will be some chapters which we are good at and there will be some chapters in which we are not good. For me, probability and PNC part was tough, so the shortcut provided by Indrajeet sir was very helpful. It is that we can divide the section in the manner that we can practice first those topics in which we are weak and then see how much we are improving in the mocks.
Q: What are the challenges that you faced in your preparation journey?
CHARCHIL: One major challenge was my working hours. It was around 12 to 12. So I used to come home at around 1 am in the night. So, it was very difficult for me to do the preparation after that. So, daily in the morning I used to study 2.5 hours in the morning and the main part of my preparation used to happen on the weekends only where I used to attempt and analyze it. So, time management with work life was the toughest part of my preparation.
Q: So talking about mocks, what according to you is the importance of mocks and what is the ideal number of mocks one should appear for?
CHARCHIL: Mocks are the most important thing because only theoretical preparation is not necessary for the CAT exam. You have to decide how you should attempt the mock or the test within the 3 hours of time. I attempted around 30-35 mocks and after that you must focus on every section like how you should ace that section if your one of the sections is not good. Like in the last CAT exam, VARC was a bit tough but when you go out of the VARC, you should have a fresh mindset because sometimes one section destroys the other two sections as well. So, that’s the mindset that one should have while giving the mocks.
So, according to me I think everyone should give around 30 mocks because in some mocks our scores are not that good and we have to identify our mistakes and then we have to improve it in the other mocks. So at least 10-15 mocks, we identify what are our weak sections and then we can give 5-10 mocks more.
Q: As you started your preparation in the month of June. So, do you think that 5 months of preparation is enough to crack the CAT exam?
CHARCHIL: Yeah, I definitely feel it is more than sufficient because CAT generally tests our basic knowledge of the 3 sections and how we can manage our stress on the d-day. So, it’s not about the knowledge or that we have to read all the books and complete the material of study, it’s just about the basic concepts that we follow and how we can manage our time and stress on the exam day.
Q: How did iQuanta help you in your overall preparation journey?
CHARCHIL: Indrajeet Sir guided me a lot. He helped me in making the right strategies which improved my scores in the mock. Apart from that the peer learning that I got from iQuanta was great because in iQuanta what happened was everyone was posting some tough questions which they were not able to. In this way, we were able to prepare for the toughest CAT exam which can happen. So, I would suggest everyone to enroll for iQuanta to get proper mentorship and peer-to-peer learning.
Q: Let’s say you get another shot at the CAT exam, so what’s the 1 or 2 different things that you would like to do this time?
CHARCHIL: As VARC is the weakest for engineers, so DILR is good so i would try to improve my VARC score because what I feel is that i scored 90 %ile in VARC while other were around 99 plus so if i score around 98 or 99%ile in the VARC then it will lead me to score around 99.9%ile.
Q: One last question, what are the few tips that you would like to give to all the other CAT aspirants?
CHARCHIL: It’s not that every aspirant starts from 99%ile in the mocks. You score 90 first then move on to 99. Even in my initial mocks, I was scoring around 90, 91 and somewhere around 90 only. So, it’s a journey of ups and downs. So, you should not get demotivated, practice consistently and improve your mistakes.
