Here’s the Interview of Mihir Kapse who cleared the CAT exam with 99.97%ile Despite all odds and converted IIM Ahmedabad.
Q: Today we have with us a CAT aspirant who cleared the CAT exam with a mammoth score of 99.97%ile despite suffering from autism, resulting in completing his engineering in 6.5 years. With his hard work and determination he converted 2 of the Top B-Schools of India – IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore. Mihir, please tell us how it feels and tell us more about yourself.
MIHIR: Yes, it really feels great to convert both of these top IIMS ( IIM Ahmedabad and IIms Bangalore). Converting one of them is a dream come true, but converting both of them is something beyond that.
Q: Mihir, you were very confident about these Top 2 Institutes, that you didn’t fill the forms of any other institute. So, please tell us how important goal setting is while preparing for the CAT exam?
MIHIR: Initially, I believe goal setting is very important because it creates focus on exactly where you want to be. But at the end of it, your target should also be realistic. One needs to introspect before he needs to set any target. You can give mocks and that’s where you will get to know where you stand and what you can actually expect. So, IIM Bangalore and IIM Ahmedabad were my dream colleges but I had an idea that I could convert them.
Q: Mihir, as you were preparing while having a full time job, I would like to know what a day in your life looked like on this journey and what advice would you like to give to other aspirants who prepare while having a job?
MIHIR: I’ll start by telling about how a day in my life looked like on this journey. My office timings were from noon 12 to evening 8:30. I had to leave home in the morning at 10am and reach the office by 12pm and then after the office I used to reach home at 10 in the night. And then I would start taking my classes for CAT. I used to attend the classes for a couple of hours till 12 and then used to self-study for another 2-3 hours daily, sleep at 3am in the night, wake up at 9am in the morning and then repeat the same cycle everyday.
The advice that I would like to give to the working professionals is that you don’t need to study the entire day for the CAT exam.The thing is how much you can retain, that is the most important thing. For me personally, 5 hours a day was enough. So if you can study for 5 hours then quite easily you can get the time to work and travel for the rest of the day.
Watch Mihir’s interview here :
Q: Let me slightly move on to your nitty-gritties of preparation, for you what was preferable? Did you go for an online coaching for CAT or an offline coaching and why?
MIHIR: I went for an online Coaching as I said that my office hours were from 10am to 10pm so the online offline coaching available for me at that time was from 7 to 9 in the morning. So, I knew that this would not work for me and then I decided to search online classes and from there I found iQuanta which had its classes starting at 10 in the night. So, it was ideal for me to go for iQuanta.
Q: As you chose iQuanta for your preparation, can you mention 2-3 points on how the online classes of iQuanta helped you in your preparation?
MIHIR: The first that I would say is that the type of classes that they had was good. It was a facebook event that I had attended as a class where the mentor used to post the questions as notes for us, which were saved there only and even if I joined late, I could go through them once again. So, that was the best thing that I found in iQuanta classes which helped me in what was required intellectually.
Q: I would like to know that from your point of view and the help that you got from iQuanta, what do you think is the range of score that you added more because of these classes?
MIHIR: I would say about 30 to 40 marks more.
Q: After clearing the CAT exam, how did you prepare for the interviews of IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore?
MIHIR: I again joined iQuanta for the GDPI preparation. Actually I read a lot, I have a habit of reading newspapers, So I was already up to date and I also self read a lot of things that I most probably thought would come in the interviews. Other than that, the most common questions that were asked, I almost prepared all of them but yes, all those questions did not come in the exam.
Q: One is the CAT mocks and the other one is the Interview Mocks, So I want to know from you how important are both of these mocks?
MIHIR: I think they are the actual things that matter the most because For CAT, giving the mocks and analyzing them helps the most because you get to know on which questions you have to work and on which you don’t have to. So, that helped me in strategizing what are the questions that I need to attempt and what I don’t need to attempt because generally you cannot solve all the 100 questions in the CAT exam, given 3 hours of total writing time.
For interviews, I would say mocks are equally important because mock interviews prepare you to give the correct answers that the interviewers are looking for and also the mocks help you in finding the correct answers. You can have a situation where you don’t have the answer of the question asked in the interview but in the mock interviews you can prepare for those questions that can be asked.
Q: Final question Mihir, if you would have to give just 1 advice to all the fellow CAT aspirants, what would that 1 advice be for them?
MIHIR: Not 1 but I would like to give 2 advices. The First and most important advice I would like to give is that the CAT exam is a mentally challenging exam so you have to be mentally strong and focused during the exam. As I said before it is not that easy to solve all the questions in the 3 hours of time, so you have to analyze what questions to attempt and what not to.So that is one thing that you have to remember during the exam.
And Secondly for the preparation part, I would say that being focused and dedicated is the key. You should give at least 1 mock in a week, that’s a bare minimum that one should do and should study for at least 3-4 hours in a day and even more if possible.
