CAT 2008: To write or not to write?

Schrodinger's lolcat

I am throwing in the towel. After two failed attempts at the CAT I won’t be writing the test this year. On my second attempt I had embarked on the battle with renewed strength and vigor, only to fail even more miserably. Is this someone’s idea of a joke?  It is beyond me how you can get worse at something with more practice and experience. The CAT simply defies conventional wisdom, and while that is often a good thing, such a high element of unpredictability is frustrating to say the least. Your CAT score is by no means a fair estimate of your potential to succeed in a business environment or even at a B School. As far as I’m aware, the test makers have never undertaken a research to measure the relevance or the effectiveness of the test. It is assumed that the test works simply because it assigns a range of scores and those who pass receive handsome pay packets after graduation. You may say I’m whining here only because I failed the test and its a case of sour grapes. I won’t argue with that, but I will argue that the grapes are wrapped in plastic.

MBA is the new BTECH. Engineering graduates today are not satisfied with the jobs they land after college, but little do they realize that job-satisfaction is a myth. Most people hate their job. The jobs for B School grads are no different. If you have found a job you love, good for you. You don’t have to be an MBA to love what you do, you only have to do what you love. It may be true that an MBA degree allows you to pursue the work you love with more freedom, but remember that most MBA’s end up in the business world and rarely risk following their true passions, unless their true passion is business and making money.

Lakhs of students and virtually every engineer from this country’s best colleges aspires for one of the top B school programs, chasing it like the rats of Hamelin. Isn’t it surprising that such an overwhelming number of intelligent young people are deeply passionate about business? It’s not. Most of them are not in it to fulfill their entrepreneurial ambitions, it’s obvious that they vant ze money, Lebowski and they believe in nothing. Nihilists! Where is the disciple of science who studied tomes of Dorling Kindersley encyclopedias as a kid and and who grew up watching National Geographic on TV and went on to graduate from IIT? The stock market beguiles him more than the mysteries of the universe. Space is vast, dark and mostly empty and there is definitely no money in it. The capital market is where it’s at. The child’s gone. He wears a suit now and talks out of his ass. If you are truly smart and intelligent, you have no business doing business. We need you in the vanguard of our quest to extend the frontiers of knowledge. The sorry state of scientific research in this country is no surprise, with all the best science and engineering students chasing the MBA. And what about the arts? Is it only for those kids who are no good at math. Oh, what a miserable bunch of philistines we are!

Godspeed, brave CAT aspirants! This year, come November, while you spend sleepless nights taking mock tests and fishing through your forums for the secret strategy to tame the CAT and await the result with nervous anticipation, I will sleep like a baby and read that fat novel I never had the time for and explore some new music and maybe think about what I want in life and what makes me happy.

Do you think the CAT successfully measures the skills required for an MBA?

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Previously
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Posted to Academics.
  • Khanna
    We all are escapist !
    Keep running after one or another mirage...
  • Bando
    Well yes!!! coming up with suggestions would be too easy. In fact, if you replace the "would i" at the beginning of my questions with a "Let's" or "we should" we could count 4 already. But at the end of the day all of them sound cliche 'cos i wont do them in real life and that takes away the punch.
    I guess people who have the answers and are already following them in real life won't have time to visit this blog. We will know about them some time later in a big Hollywood movie wih some nice uplifting soul music.
  • @CD, Exactly!
    @all, Digressing to Cynicism now :)
  • @ritesh, comments are moderated to keep the discussion relevant to the topic. Comments that are not in English or contain matter that does not add to the discussion will not be approved. Everyone is free to speak here. Please abide.
  • ritesh
    Everyone is not allowed to speak here , instead being a public blog it shd only open for few intellectuals.
    Coming here was a huge mistake.
  • @Bhandara, I have my own share of those.

    @Bando, Your defense of cynicism is justified. Besides this article about CAT is nothing if not cynical. A complete absence of cynicism would be immature and an excess of it would be unhealthy. It would be great if we could serve our self interests despite being idealists or believe in basic goodness despite being cynic. A healthy amount of cynicism is essential to face reality. Also, cynics usually have a good sense of humor. :)

    @Weedy, If by stereotypes you mean the people who need ready made answers from others, then I agree with you. However, I thought Bando might have a radical answer to his own questions. He doesn't, and that's an answer that I can accept.

    @Nila, thanks for sharing your ideas. You are right. I am criticizing the blind fanaticism that people display towards CAT or in general any test in India. That's how we have all been brought up and educated. I am not really concerned with people who do well on these tests. They are doing fine. But there are tens of thousands of students who naively believe in the accuracy of tests and measure their self worth based on their score. That's what I'm really talking about.
  • nila
    u guys are right.those(including me) who appear for cat are actually "out of ideas".if he is a fresher,he fears whatever he is studying wont fetch him big bucks,so he goes for a tried and tested shortcut named cat and shamelessly neglects his curriculum. if he is a guy with work experience,he is just frustrated with his job and looking for alternative career.so if u r writing cat u are most probably one of the above.bando i agree that u can be a critic without having answers.bcoz the answer to the mother of all questions "what is that i really want to do with my life " is not easy to find.but if u know the answer and do nothing about it then u lose all credibility to be a critic.
    i cant agree more with ram in his criticism of CAT.if this
    exam is someone's sole way to achieve what he really wants to achieve then i pity him.
  • @Bando & CleverDoll, let me clear it up, the settling down is what i am against, at least for myself. Sarcasm was the tool i was employing.
    "What are you going to do about it?", isn't this the same cliched question which we always have to answer just because we chose to be frank about something. The actions and the answers justify themselves in the long run, but none of us care to wait the wait. As Randy Pausch says, 'you might have to wait a long time, sometimes years, but people will show you their good side'

    Stereotypes, that has what has made a chunk of the human population, live by the definition, the rules, the time lines. Is it one of those many conclusions that one can safely derive from the few cents that each of us have shared?
  • Bando
    @Akshay, i couldn't agree more that the its our own insecurities which act the wet blanket to over any sparks if breaking free that our conscious selves generate. But maybe knowing and not knowing makes the difference. Maybe a greater realization of our fears, our yearnings and our frustrations make us more human in our chaotic world. And coming from a material point of view, maybe it makes us better judges of our peer and help us to control them better.
  • Bando
    Well what am i going to do about it ? would i quit my job to serve with the Red Cross in East Africa ? Would i start going out to pubs at night to pick up girls trying to find my one true love and resist my parents till i found one? Or would i try to work my way up the corporate ladder the hard way, doing what i do best, not relying on an MBA to nudge me forward a bit ? Or would i set out on my own way trying to find the true meaning of life leaving behind all material quests of mankind ? More questions of this sort which i would have to answer for myself for me to be a worthy critic of the society surrounding me. Some questions i could say "Yes, I might be able to" some, i could not bring myself to a say a "Yes" even for the argument's sake. I have tried to answer these time and time again and every time i realized that the answers lie within me, not my parents , not the system , not the society. It would be a contradiction of the first order if i blamed the people around me while at the same time contending myself to be rational independent human being. So i try to just be a bystander and portray my surroundings as the way i see it. Why does it have to be that the when one says "Life is beautiful" ,everyone lets it go whoosh past the ear with a smug look thinking "Hah! i know better", but the moment one says "Its harsh" that we stop in our tracks searching for answers. Why cannot i ask a question without knowing the answer? Why cannot i make a statement without worrying about whether it is construed as a question, a scathing criticism or even worse, an answer.
    As Patton once said "Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack." That's my true quest.
  • Bhandara
    I liked the word "insecurities" in Akshay's reply ... I can very well relate to it in my case.
  • @Weedy, settling down is one thing that I am not looking forward to for a long time to come. I think Bando is right when he says that in some ways settling down is like giving up. Also it's great to find some smart people on this comment thread to talk with.

    @Bando, your clear headed perspective on Indian middle class ambitions and parental involvement in their child's life continues to amaze me. But I would be keen to know your answer to Akshay's questions (what are you going to do about it?).

    @Akshay, Thanks for being practical and addressing some real questions. I agree that unending cynicism is immature and pointless. However, Bando's arguments are very insightful.

    Everyone, thanks for an intelligent conversation.
  • @Bando - Truer words haven't been spoken by a socially misfit IITian (hell, Indian). However, having realized the fallacies inherent in our social system, education system and choices of professional lives, the question is: what are you going to do about it? I agree that we have been conditioned to an extent to do things we do, but having realized this fact, one cannot endlessly blame parents/society for it. The truth lies somewhere in our own insecurities too. The road less taken is fraught with uncertainties and who likes uncertainty? All said, the choice lies with us. But compelling arguments man!
  • Bando
    "Settling down" huh? Here's a thought...To me the phrase "settling down" in its various manifestations start coming to one's mind when sub consciously one starts realizing that there's nothing more left to do , or that one is simply too tired of thrashing against the river current , more the latter than the former. The ambition is still not down and out yet and the whole thing starts coalescing with a growing despair of not having achieved what one could have. Well sometimes, a few people realize that the acceleration with which they had hurtled through the initial stages of their lives have brought them to the phase of life from where they can cruise onto their destination with ease over the next 30 40 years that they expect themselves to live. So the formers become the disciplinarian, ambitious dads who coax their kids to excel at every thing and hence their need to have a child to finish off what they once started. The latter being the cool dads who allow their sons to pursue from anything to everything in life, with marriage being a way to treat themselves for a war where victory is at sight. And somewhere in between is the Indian middle class.
  • @Bando, impressive and honest, i agree with Cleverdoll that someone has at last said it as it is!
    Have you heard about that 'settling down' phrase?
    Requirements being an MBA, an-arranged-wife, a job which pays, property, travel-abroad-to-another-office, investments yada yada! Whatever happened to life?
    "Those all night arguments are the best thing about college life. One thing I sorely miss living alone in the city is having an intellectual discussion with smart people.", ever heard of a programmed being? It is tough to find smart people!
  • Those all night arguments are the best thing about college life. One thing I sorely miss living alone in the city is having an intellectual discussion with smart people. Sadly, with our ever shortening attention spans most arguments are killed by thought terminating cliches (I have even experienced this in mba group discussions). Online discussions are no better, for when they go on long enough they are ruined by the inescapable consequences of Godwin's Law.
    What sort of featured blog are you looking for?
  • Bando
    Ya man!!! Somehow over the years i have grown deeply cynical about the marriage system in Indian clture and have actually developed a predisposition for the western system.
    That being said, i really don't know whether i would be able to abide by my views when the time comes. At least till then i guess no one would be able to shoot me down saying "Look who's talking".
    So if your blog on marriages comes up before my thoughts become viewd as worthless by virtue (or rather the lack of it) of ad hominem ..i will save the best of my radical thoughts till then.

    Currently i am mulling over the way humans make arguments/debates. Not the formal on-stage ones but the ones we have had in our hostel rooms or our appartments when living with friends. Basically the thing that really interests me is the way people commit fallacies (in the technical sense of the words)who would consider themselves as rational beings. I guess i will have to go through actual text material to get my basics right and have to go through Socrates views on engaging in a debate.

    So do you have a featured blog or something like that for lazy bums like me?
  • @Bando, your views on India's obsession with mba are brutally honest. Finally, someone has said it like it is. Also, I found your perspective on arranged marriages both insightful and amusing. I think that subject needs to be explored further and I am going to write about it soon. The Armani suit reference is hilarious. Although most Indians enjoy self deprecating jokes, I would like to think I look good outside a suit in the bedroom. The IITian’s sub conscious superiority complex is a fact of nature and has become a widely associated stereotype. It is something that I have come to loathe when present in amounts exceeding a healthy level of self confidence.
    "I solved schrodingers’s equation in the 4 dimension. How tough can Marketing be?" There is something deeply ironic about that statement and yet it conveys the state of our education system most eloquently.
    Thanks for you insightful comments.
  • Bando
    Stability is the motto of the Indian middle class i guess. If IITs IIMs help, then who cares. Anyways, we Indians look better in an Armani in the boardroom than without it in the bedroom.
    Hail MBA which at least lets us buy the freakin' suit and leaves us alone to wank off in a 5 star bathroom. Arranged marriage takes care of the rest. Who needs social skills to woo a girl when mumma and daadda have already made it their foremost priority to arrange for your sex needs on a platter. "You just go and make the money dear and dare not venture off the trodden path, our parents (from the 20's) told us so."

    I guess another probable reason stems from the sudden boomed up software industry where there are so many people employed who otherwise would have landed nowhere under less fortunate economic circumstances, coupled with an IITian's sub conscious superiority complex (dunno where that was before clearing JEE). We on some level don't want to be sharing the same office with the mediocres !!! So what do we do ? Go to Google / Yahoo ? Join MIT / Caltech ? Nah! thats too tough !!! ------------> MBA. After all i am an IITian. I solved schrodingers's equation in the 4 dimension. How tough can Marketing be ?!!!
  • @Satyam, thanks bro.
    It's a mystery why some names should sound good. There is an interesting page on wikipedia about the compound word Cellar Door, which is widely claimed to be the most beautiful sound in the English language.
    Is it just me or does 'Clever Doll' sound a lot like 'Cellar Door'?
  • Satyam
    wonderful website .... wonderful post .... and the name has a nice sound to it:- CleverDoll :)
  • Yeah man, I have heard similar stories from lots of people I know. Unpredictable or not, one thing that I am sure about is that the PBM we had after those mock tests was shit.
  • Bhandara
    I still remember the T.I.M.E tests which I wrote with you in insti and the tasteless paneer butter masala i ate after the tests :P. So after consistently putting lowest score in the wing(obviously because of putting no effort) and lowest mock cat percentile of 49.5, I gave up. Finally I went ahead to write CAT just to soothe my eyes. It just so happened that there was no girl in my sight while writing the exam. What was the outcome? I ended up putting 97.5 percentile(highest in my wing :) ) and got an interview call for IIML agri-business management. I did not go for the interview because I was too lazy to fill/think why I want to join agri-business management. So, I guess CAT is unpredictable after all like the "CAT in the box".
  • Yeah man! Exploring and venturing...that's the life. I'm planing to do some venturing in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia this year.
  • RE
    Hey, sorry about the stupid CAT. You know, i worked with IMS learning resources for a while and i never really got the whole big deal that went with the examination. (Well, students like YOU did sponsor my paycheck back then tee hee) Why does Life come to a standstill with CAT, XAT, RAT ETC. And then before it(life) even begins it ends once you get into IIM - A, B, C, and so on. Really it's almost like going up against the letters of the alphabet. Alexander the great conquers the east!

    I really admire your dedication at taking this exam at all.... Sometimes people forget their creativity and the driving passion behind anything when they aspire to become top 20 B-School grads. There's so much more out there... all you need is to open your eyes... and seeee... visualise.... explore.... venture! (and stop taking these stupid classes that make you drive yourself crazy! it's not you... it's them!)
  • I think the adaptive nature of a test like the GMAT makes your score more meaningful. Besides, business schools that accept the GMAT score usually have lots of other parameters to judge your application. It is absurd to measure a person's worth with a single test score.
  • Shady
    I agree with you on some points.

    I wont agree that CAT exam doesn't evaluates your relevant skills. It tests but in a very different way. I totally agree that MBA is not a must to thrive in a Biznez environment....
  • Yes, the reasons for the sorry state of higher education in India are manifold.
  • The admission process of IIM's is based more upon "rejection" than it is upon "selection". The admission department always worries about rejecting those extra ninety students among a hundered aspirants just to complete their job.
    .
    I am in accord with your averring that CAT aspirants are motivated only by pecuniary ends.Ask them why they decided to choose MBA or wheather it makes any sense to them and they start to stammer.

    Regarding the pathetic state of technical education I dont agree with you attributing it just to engineers chasing MBA.Lack of adequate funding, pittance given to professors, reservations and poor statutory regulations, I think are the most important causes for Engineering in India to be reduced to a travesty.
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