Name: Fall 2011 Section: Exam # 3a For Ma 201: Fill & Download for Free

Answer in a single sentence - stop overthinking and stop taking CAT and similar exams so seriously. At the risk of sounding like I'm bragging about my marks, following is my story which would help me explain things better:1st attempt - 2009-10:Preparation: Prepared like anything during the final year of my engineeringScore: CAT (98.7 percentile) XAT (98.1 percentile)Calls: IIM Raipur (skipped), XLRI (attended interviews) and XIMB (skipped)Final result: Waitlisted at XLRI but never got converted - was third on the remaining waitlist when they closed down the admission process2nd attempt - 2010-11:Preparation: Left a lucrative job offer to prepare for CAT; this was a do-or-die situation for me as I didn't have a fall-back option now, so I ended up preparing day and night for the examScore: CAT (95+ percentile) XAT (94.6 percentile)Calls: NONE! (due to sectionals in CAT and due to an abrupt change in the pattern and selection criteria in XAT - atleast that is what I believed back then)Final result: No calls, no job; the only option left for me was to try and convince my erstwhile employers (the job that I had left) to take me back - sadly they didn't. I was ruing the decision to not even attend the other 2 interviews I had skipped last year - I would have taken anything at this point of time. I ended up joining an analytics firm with half the salary of the initial job offer. But, as things turned out, this was the best decision I took in my career till date.3rd attempt - 2011-12:Preparation: Preparing during the first year of my job turned out to be more difficult than I had initially thought. Although I did put in a number of all-nighters towards the end, but still I had a feeling that I could have done betterScore: CAT (97.3 percentile) XAT (after the pattern last year, I didn't have the courage to take the exam again)Calls: A couple of the new IIMs through their pooled driveFinal result: Skipped all interviews as all the colleges had just started operations; moreover, I was being recognized for some good work at my organization (the analytics firm mentioned above) and I knew that with better preparation, I could definitely score more4th (and last) attempt - 2012-13:Preparation: Even though I had more or less settled in at my workplace and had plenty of time, I simply didn't feel like preparing for the exam. I did fill up the form but was sent for an onsite engagement outside the country 3 months prior to the exam. I took CAT the very next day after returning from the said engagement, without any preparation and with literally no pressure on my headScore: CAT (99.2 percentile) XAT (skipped)Calls: IIM Lucknow, Shillong and 4 new IIMsResult: Didn't get through L despite good movement in the waitlist; converted Shillong and 3 of the new IIMs - ended up joining ShillongThe reason I've quoted the numbers above is for you to realize that many a times, there is no correlation between the efforts you put in and the actual results. Take that in your stride!The after-story:The 2 years at IIM Shillong turned out to be a life changing experience for me - both personally and professionally. I know many of you might not think of IIM-S as an established name, but it does get counted as one of the 7 older IIMs in the academic circles. And in many ways, it was the best fit for me as an MBA college in India - the student driven atmosphere similar to a new IIM and a good faculty base (mostly, top VFs from across the country) similar to an established one. I ended up getting a job offer that was one of the more coveted ones, not only on our campus but across all the top B-schools in the country. But more than the final placements, the experience I garnered through those 2 years would go a long way in helping me realize my dreams of becoming an entrepreneur some day (yes, I'm one of those guys!). So you might get the impression that I ended up doing the right thing; well there's a catch here too - a colleague of mine who joined the said analytics firm with me in 2011 never left the job and is now settled in the US with an enviable salary. Does that make me jealous? NO! I ended up getting what I wanted and he ended up getting what he wanted - but to a third person, I can be perceived as both a loser (when compared to the "US-settled" colleague of mine) or a winner (compared to so many people out there who never get to see their CAT dreams materialize). What matters in the end is what you make out of it - stay positive, things have a weird way of figuring themselves out!The learnings from all of the above:Like many of the folks around (most of whom won't admit this), what drove me towards taking so many attempts at CAT was that feeling of having not made it to an IIT in the first place (despite getting close on 2 occasions) - somehow, the Indian mentality prompts you to always strive for those double 'I's. What they don't tell you is that luck plays a major role in such cases; but at the end of it all, once you look back at all of this after 5-10 years, you would realize the true meaning of the phrase 'Much ado about nothing'.And especially, as far as CAT goes, you can always take another attempt next year. However, it is the 'job' part of your description that worries me. One of the pre-requisites of scoring well in any exam is to make sure that you are in a good/positive frame of mind. If you are not relaxed enough, you are more likely to screw up the most trivial of problems just by overthinking and putting extra pressure on yourself. My suggestion - find a job (without much consideration for pay etc.) where you see yourself happy first. This works two ways - firstly, it relaxes your mind to take up competitive exams like CAT, XAT etc. in the right spirit, and secondly, you will have a fall back option in the worst of cases.Sorry for the long answer; it's just that seeing this in my feed just brought back all those memories from the past 5-6 years.

76 people are following this question and I think it is worth writing answer to.Let me talk a bit about my background during my school days.Class 1st and Class 2nd: I studied in an okayish school of Kanpur till class 5th. In this school, my ranking was average. My mother has kept all of my report cards safely, right from class 1 and from what I remember, I used to be ranked around 10th in class at that time. Not bad, but not exceptional either.Class 3rd and Class 4th: School decided to create a new section and I was also made a part of it. Average students from the other 2 existing sections were pulled out to create this new section. Somehow I ended up with 1st rank in class 3 and this continued in class 4. I was pathetic at mathematics at that time. I remember in standard 4th, I topped the class, but performed poorly in mathematics. The class teacher was herself a maths teacher and so, she was scared of being questioned that how can the class topper be weak in the subject of class teacher. So she called me up and asked me to ‘erase’ the answers that I have written and dictated me the correct answers. Back in class 4th, I used to write with pencil (pen started in 5th standard). I was too young at that time to understand what was going on, but now I can correlate it well.Class 5th: A new student got admitted to school and he was allotted the same section as mine. He was damn smart - very intelligent. He always knew all answers and was always the first one to solve any question given by the teacher. Rather than learning from him, as a child, I became jealous of him - I could see myself getting ‘dethroned’ from the first position. I knew that he was smarter than me, but my child ‘ego’ didn’t accept it and so, I became over-confident. End result - 8th rank in class.Class 6th: My mother wasn’t quite happy about a sudden fall in my rank, but she realized that I can do better in a better school. My school was changed and I was admitted to arguably the best school in Kanpur - Dr. VSEC, as I have mentioned elsewhere in my other answers. During the interview with principal madam, my mother was told, ‘it is easy to top in an average school. Let us see how he performs in VSEC’. As a child, I was very naughty and teachers at VSEC screwed the hell out of me. I never used to set my school timetable - my elder sister used to do that for me. She used to forget 1 or 2 book almost every alternate day. End result was that I had to spend the class on the floor or outside the classroom :P. Due to my mischievous behavior, my scores went down and I ended up with 23rd rank in class. Of course parents were slightly disappointed, but they were never concerned about academics. The environment at my home is pretty relaxed and no one really gives a heed to scores and ranks. My mother rather was concerned about my increasing mischiefs :PClass 7th: I was quite well known as one of the most misbehaved and mischievous student of the class. Grades/scores were not too good - no even in top 20s. Things weren’t going too good. But it all started changing when my class teacher made me sit with one of the most well-behaved and intelligent students of the class - my friend Aniket. Aniket was my opposite. Opposite in almost all aspects - I was not too good at academics, he was smart. I was mischievous, he was quiet. I used to misbehave with other students of the class, he used to respect others and talk properly. We were as I said ‘opposites’. With time, I started learning good things from him and gradually became serious about my academics. He used to be consistently among the top 5–10 students of the class - which is superb when you are in VSEC ! By the end of the year, we became good friends and at the same time good competitors. If I recall correctly, he was somewhere near top 5 while I stood 13th in class.Class 8th: I had become serious about my academics by now. Aniket and I competed in all subjects and it was fun to enjoy the challenge of beating him. I became friends with Aniket’s other friends who were all well behaved, intelligent students. I started improving and gradually became more academics focused. In the mid-term exams, I stood 4th in class - going ahead of my friend Aniket. I remember casually mentioning to the 3rd ranker girl - ‘next time I will secure the 3rd rank’ and she replied sarcastically - ‘for that you have to study’. Nevertheless, I could not keep my words and ended up with 6th rank in class. Aniket was 4th.Class 9th: In class 9th, my life took a serious turn. Sections were all shuffled as per Commerce and Computer Science. I opted for CS and we had some of the smartest students of all 4 sections in my section. Competition was fierce and there were some new faces whom I knew by names because they used to score approximately 10% more marks than me. I knew I had to study hard else I will be kicked out of the race easily. Also, I didn’t take any tuitions or coaching like many other did, so, self study was extremely important and I had realized it well on time. In the first term examinations, I ended up with 4th rank in all 4 sections - missing the first rank by just 7 marks out of 1100. This created a massive impact on me, both positively and negatively. I was sad that I missed the first rank by such low margin. At the same time, I was happy that this margin could be easily covered. I studied harder and in the mid term exams, I topped all 4 sections with a double margin of 14 marks. I had worked hard to improve my maths and had managed to score 99/100 in maths. Note that it is very hard to score good marks in VSEC. My percentage marks were around 79%. In the final exams, I again managed to keep the first position among all 4 sections. I remember that same ‘3rd rank’ girl standing next to me during the prize distribution ceremony and asking me - ‘Aman, how do you study to get such high marks’ :PClass 10th: By now, I had well realized my potential. The aim was to score 95%+ marks in ICSE 2011 and get a top rank in not only VSEC, but also in Kanpur city. I studied hard. Aniket and I as usual competed like anything. End result was that I topped the school with 97.4% and he was second - 97.2%.Class 11th: Aniket left VSEC immediately for JEE preparation. I was quite confused. I continued with VSEC. I had pledged myself to secure a top 100 rank in JEE 2013. This was coming after Aniket’s brother got AIR 125 in JEE 2010 - which was a huge motivation for both of us! I had always seen 4 digit JEE ranks in the school magazine. A rank close to 100 was something I saw for the first time. I realized that if he can do it, I can definitely do better than 125. I had enrolled in FIITJEE Kanpur for my JEE preparation. After about 2 months, I realized that there is no point in continuing with VSEC further. In VSEC, things change drastically when you move to class 11th. The attitude of teachers completely changes. The faculty members are very unsupportive when it comes to competitive exam preparation. All they want is board exam result. They hardly care if you get into IIT or not. They want 95% marks in board exams. Being the topper of class 10th, I faced enormous pressure from teachers in terms of expectations in class 11th and subsequently in 12th board exams. I had to give explanations of missing even a single class. Moreover, Shakespearean English was something I hated from the bottom of my heart. I never appreciated literature, particularly the type taught in ICSE. Moreover, FIITJEE + school was causing a burnout. All of these factors made me leave VSEC after 2 months and I went on to enroll in a CBSE board based school. My parents were quite against this decision of mine. There is a long story involved here and if you are interested, you can read the blog I wrote: Dummy school or not? Cut long story short, I was now in serious JEE preparation mode, enrolled in FIITJEE Kanpur and admitted to a CBSE board based dummy school.Class 12th: In class 11th, I wasted a lot of time in GTA, cricket, Facebook and many other useless things. In class 12th, I had realized that if I don’t study hard, my dream of a top 100 rank will remain a dream. As a result, I worked quite hard - dedicated almost all of my time to JEE preparation. You can read about what all I did here: Aman Goel's answer to How hard did you work to get into IITs? In fact, by October 2012 (almost 7 months to JEE), I realized that top 100 is something I will definitely be able to achieve. This realization was based on my performance in FIITJEE’s all India tests. It was then that I decided that if I work hard, I can easily make it to top 50s. I started taking FIITJEE AITS seriously. FIITJEE AITS is quite infamous for containing out of JEE and unnecessary difficult problems which are irrelevant for JEE. I realized that more or less my main JEE preparation was complete and that these ‘out of JEE’ and ‘unnecessary difficult’ problems are the ones that will change the game from top 100 to top 50. As JEE was coming closer, my working hours increased - going up to 16 hours a day. The rest of the picture was a game changer - AIR 33 in JEE 2013 and getting into IITB CSE completely changed my life.I hope this answer helps you in understanding that I was an average student during my school days. Right motivation at the right time helped me perform well in JEE. I am sure everyone else can do it too :)All the best for your JEE preparation!If you found the above answer to be useful, you might want to check out my blog: Aman’s Blog on JEE Preparation.

I got a threat by a fake profile after writing an answer about Anand Kumar that asked me to remove the answer followed by a phrase:Sudhar jaao abhi bhi time hai.(Mend your way, there is still time.)The note I want to make is that anyone who is thinking to send such texts, be cautious about your words since screenshot is a powerful weapon, also threatening someone online is a legal offence and I will miss no chance to enjoy filing cases in case I get the real identity of the person. I am having holidays and it will be a great fun.Further, I am writing because I have been a victim of another coaching institute working on same business model under two banners xyz super 30 and abc classes. I am glad, I left midway and saved myself from more depression and frustration. I don't want any student to fall in the trap of Patna coaching institutes since students from rural background having barely any knowledge of the mafias are getting fooled. They are taught nicely for a few months and when they cannot join anywhere else, the teachers stop caring on them and ruin their life, ironically charge them for ruining their life. They publish fake results /bought results frequently to lure new kids.To understand accusations on Anand, you need to dive a bit into the extensively commercialized and corrupt coaching business of Patna.I am a resident of Patna and my entire locality is surrounded by coaching mafias who have exploited poor rural students miserably who are not even aware of existence of acts like Bihar Coaching Act (2010)!I guarantee the readers that more than 70% (this is a safe percentage, however I expect it to be 99%) of coaching institutes in entire Patna don't follow the coaching act and are punishable by law. An RTI information of 2017 says that there are 978 coaching institutes in Patna (and I expect it to be above 1200).They have properties beyond your imagination. Although a not so famous teacher travel in modest luxury cars like Santa fe, Elentra, Endeavour and scorpio but the wealth they have is something you just cannot imagine.A normal coaching institute have around 400 students in one batch and you can multiply this number by 20,000 to get an idea about an institution teaching only one subject. A mafia with a decent fame has 1000 students and some nearly 2000. Bazar Samiti, Boaring road, Bahadurpur, Rajendra nagar, Ramna road, Bari Path are the most crowded coaching belts.Two mafias, one in my colony, another just in the adjacent colony have around 600 students each while their accommodation is not even suitable for 400 students. I used to see students sitting on window rails in class from my terrace! Further, they used to get thrashed for asking doubts. Many of the teachers hire thugs as bouncers who beat students! Trust me, I am not joking, even one of the guy in my coaching was beaten terribly by the two joint directors who were the owner of the coaching, although for a different reason. He texted a girl of my coaching without her consent. They could have made him understand or could have warned him or at most could have told the police but they chose to beat him mercilessly. The teachers even went to hostel to beat him for two days and he was unable to walk. The third time, when the teachers were going to beat him, other students saw them coming and helped the guy escape hostel before they came. It’s a 2012 incident. The whole hostel was scolded for letting him escape.I know institutes who don't provide payment receipt to students or provide a payment receipt of lesser fee paid openly. Need not to mention, they evade taxes.Anand Kumar's Ramanujan School of Mathematics is like any other generic local coaching institute but it has gained enormous unethical advantage of Super 30 that has also made his image of messiah world wide.Here starts the story:Anand Kumar’s Ramanujan School of mathematics existed prior to the existence of Super 30 programme, on a very small scale near Jakkanpur Patna that is one of the slum areas of Patna. It was a monetized business of him.There is no doubt that he has done a lot of hardships and missed the chance of studying in Cambridge University because he had no money and had to face a hell lot of hardships in his initial days. He was a columnist in TOI in early 2000s as well who used to generate mathematical challenges for the fun section of the newspaper .Mr. Abhyanand, an I.P.S officer came to know about him through the senior editor of TOI who happened to be his friend.Abhayanand sir guided his own kids for strategic preparation for JEE and they cleared it. He loved strategic teachings and wanted a platform where he could teach since those days he had free time after his duty and that is how the Abhyanand-Anand duo came in existence.Abhyanand sir wanted to teach it as a philanthropic initiative since he was already into Prestigious I.P.S service and needed no monetary benefit however he was always clear on funding: You raise fund, you control the management, I will just provide my experience and time. Since he had already faced U.P.S.C exam, had guided his own kids so he knew the difference between teaching and coaching. Teaching can make you solve all the JEE questions, coaching will make it do within 6 hours! He was more focused on giving strategic guide to unprivileged students who couldn’t afford coaching. Super 30 program initiated in 2002.In 2003, they obtained a decent selection: admission ratio that made some news. This apparently increased the popularity and demand of Super 30.For consecutive few years, it used to produce descent results however Abhyanand Sir was not feeling comfortable because the popularity and demand of monetized Ramanujan School of mathematics also increased drastically in the cloak of Super 30.By then, Abhyanand Sir was the A.D.G.P (H.Q), Bihar and was laden with the responsibility of law and order of the entire state. He couldn’t give much focus on incidents happening in Super 30 or Ramanujan School of Mathematics (RSM) although he was getting suspicious about the fact that Anand was misusing the Super 30 name which was for pure philanthropy.Abhyanad Sir finally disassociated with Anand when in a CNN IBN program, mumbai, Anand accepted a donation of rupees 0.5 million INR from Mukesh Ambani which Abhyanand Sir was opposing in 2007.He separated because for him, teaching was philanthropy and for Anand, it was a profession. Abhyanand sir, in his recent interview (that is extremely unsung, however I will provide the link in footnotes) said that he believes that you cannot do philanthropy in the same field which happens to be your profession and he probably disliked the fact that the name of super 30 was misused extensively.Nonetheless, by this, Super 30 was world famous, documentaries started being made on it and Anand got nearly all it’s credit! Abhyanand was D.G.P back then. IMHO, he was too sober to say a word about it.Now Anand was independent to do whatever he wanted.I can understand his strategy very well because my coaching had the same strategy, inspired by his only. I did not know from when it is happening but it is happening from past many years because my friend himself was in RSM back in 2011 who was not poor (Was the son of an I.A.S officer who is now retired).The top batch will be called the super 30 batch however all the admit cards that will be issued will be issued under Ramanujan School of Mathematics. Students will appear for the entrance exam for RSM and will get admission in the same and then based on performance, they will be sent to the Super 30 batch. Some poor students will not have to pay fee (Most of the time, in interview, Anand used to asked about questions like family income, caste etc and not to mention, Schedule caste was more preferred). In a nutshell, The selection process was not transparent.The strength of Ramanujan School of Mathematics is more than 700 and since last year RSM got a GST number, the income is clearly more than 2 million INR per yer (It is more than 20 million though) since the fee for RSM is some 33K per student.Also, RSM and Super 30 are like two different boggies, one A.C, one Sleeper and if someone from Sleeper clears JEE, he is automatically granted the status of A.C on hoardings and banner. So the total students that Anand has is not 30. Its’ more than 730!The entire world is unaware of his tactics. He is a pure businessman who has misused the name of Super 30! Also, he never mentions Abhyanand Sir’s contribution. His Wikipedia page too didn’t mention it.The only difference between him and FIITJEE is that FIITJEE does not says that FIITJEE is a saint. FIITJEE’s or Allen’s scholarship program is analogous to his free teaching of some students albeit in the name of “educating underprivileged student”.Further, the allegation of only 4 students out of 30 clearing JEE shouldn’t be surprising because neither he made the list of 30 students of super 30 batch public before exam, nor after the exam. Also, students in Patna fear saying a word because most of them fear these thugs. There was a severe retaliation in Feb 2010 by students in entire Patna and students put many coaching institutes on fire because they were deceived, mistreated, abused fatherly and motherly, misguided by these goons alias coaching mafias.Rest, you can understand.I leave upto you to decide what was Anand and what he has become or was he the same from beginning.Footnotes:The first time when Abhyanad made things clear in an unsung interview recently: