A CAT topper reveals how he cracked one of India's toughest exams while doing a full-time job

Meet Abhishek Sambangi, a CAT topper who scored 99.32 percentile. Scoring a 99 in one of India’s toughest exam is a big achievement in itself, imagine doing it alongside a full-time job. That’s Abhishek for you.

While advising fellow aspirants recently, he narrated what the CAT preparation journey was like for him – “I had started my preparation from July last year and I believe three months are well enough for the preparation to one who is thorough with the basic concepts.”

He, however, shared the two biggest challenges in CAT exam - managing time between sections and choosing the questions within the section.

“My test taking strategy was mainly to choose the right questions to answer first. That came from knowing my strong and weak areas very well. This can only be achieved by enough practice and analysis of mock exams,” he said.

Despite a job which demanded around 10 hours a day, Abhishek would make out some time for to take mock tests and practice in areas where he found himself to be weak.

“During the weekdays, I was left with 1-2 hours to prepare for CAT. My weekly schedule was to take a mock exam every Saturday, analyze it on Sunday and work over the required areas over the week. I believe analyzing your exam to know your weak areas is the most important step of the preparation which is the only way to improve the scores,” he said.

But the D-day performance won’t just depend on your practice. A presence of mind is as important as the whole preparation when you are in the exam center.

“Being in Chennai last November when the city witnessed heavy rainfall, I reached the exam center a day before, made some good friends and stayed with them in a hotel room nearby. This reduced a lot of stress and helped me in going to the exam center with a cool mind,” Abhishek said.

He was offered admission to all the new IIMs and MDI Gurgaon. After going through various sources of information about the colleges, he finally chose IIM Ranchi owing to its extensive placement report, student achievements, colloquium speakers from the industry and corporate partners.

This CAT topper, an inspiration for many CAT aspirants now, signed off saying- “Knowing your weaknesses is as important as knowing your strengths…”

(Image credit: Insideiim.com)