So where was I? Oh yes... CAT just got over. So I reach home early in the mornin and the first thing I do is go online and go to the TIME, IMS and Career Launcher sites. I compared my answers with those given on the sites. I ended up with scores ranging between 122 and 128. And acoording to all three sites, I was going to get multiple IIM calls. But according to another site called PTindia, I was getting only 9 for verbal. Which basically meant I was screwed. But still the score of 128 was much lower than what I had expected (which was around 150). And so began the agony. I went to the TIME office and spoke to Mr. Krishnakumar and told him that I was worried. And there are no words to express how grateful I am for his words that day. But still I wasn't too sure. And so i prepared a little more before my SNAP exam. The worst part of the wait for the results was reading people claiming on the net that they were scoring above 200 and that "they knew atleast 4 other people in their college who were getting above 200!" That just added to my fear. And hearing the scores of some of my friends din't help much either. The entire time after CAT was spent deep in regret. I regretted doing those last few questions in the quant section and getting them wrong. I regretted not attempting one more set in the LR section. And I basically felt that I had messed up CAT. And so I felt I needed to do well for SNAP.
SNAP happened on the 17th of December and my center was in Cochin. It was a fun journey with some of my good friends. We went roaming around Cochin till the exam was about to start and we left for Trivandrum as soon as the exam ended. SNAP turned our pretty good by the way, I got a score of 98.5, with 87.5 or so being the cutoff for SIBM. But I did not apply to the institute.
And then I had my stupid 7th semester examinations which seemed to get postponed forever. And before I knew it, January 2nd had arrived. The D-day. Most of my friends and I stayed up late waiting for the results only to our disappointment. So then the only thing to do was to write that day's exam and check out the results in the evening. So after the exam was over, I ran to the CAD lab to check the results. The only site that had any update was that of IIM L and that too only to deliver news that the results would be out only by the 8th or so. And so disappointed, (I have no idea why I was disappointed because I wasn't expecting any IIM calls), I returned home. After a nice nap, I went online once again only to discover that the IIMK site was down. And that meant only one thing, the results were out! (Unlike the other kazillion times the IIM sites went down). So started the extremely long and tedious process of hitting the refresh button until something showed up. Finally I got the site's home page and went uptil the page where you enter the CAT Reg. number and then it din't budge an inch. And so again the refresh spree continued. Finally I was able to get my result at the IIMA site.And here is what it looked like .
And that shattered all my small hopes of an IIM call. And so I sat there depressed. I simply logged on to the TIME website to see how others had fared, when I noticed that IIMA results were out. The first link I clicked on was a link to the shortlist criteria for IIMA. And I've posted a screenshot of the page (PS, if you guys think that it's a waste, me putting up screen shots, well Im doing it so that someday I can see it once again :D ).
And then I took a few moments to re-read and re-re-read and then re-re-re-read so that I understood completely what was written. By what was just there, I had made it past the IIMA cutoffs and by a whisker! And for the first time, I didn't regret the choices I made during those two and a half critical hours. My decision to spend more time on the verbal section at the cost of the two other sections did pay off. I had a balanced score. But I wasn't sure of it until I confirmed it from the site.... This was what it looked like. (Click on it to see it properly if you want to :D )
I was good enough for IIMA. And that lead me to the natural conclusion that I was sure to get at least 3 calls (I,L and K), if not all 6, now that I had been called by A!! But how wrong I was!!
The next day, IIMC released their results. And frankly I wasn't too surprised when I read the following :
IIM Calcutta FP PI 2006 Call List Result:
Sorry, as per the details entered, you have not been shortlisted for the Interviews by IIM Calcutta.
Please confirm that the information provided by you is as given below.
And that set of a sequence of rejects. IIMB, IIMK, IIML, IIMI. I did not make the cutoffs for any of them! I expected atleast a few more calls. But no! And then I went into being sad all over again.
Because the way I saw it, I had extremely bad scores for IIMA standards, and I would be competing with 100 percentilers for those 192 seats. My chances were slim.
And so I looked forward to XAT. It was held on the 7th of January, 2007 at Loyola School, Trivandrum. Again saw a lot of friends. But the atmosphere was different this time. Almost everyone there was upset. XAT was the last glimmer of hope for everyone. And the exam thoroughly dashed all those hopes. I thought I performed extremely badly in the exam but apparently not. My XAT score was 99.41 and I got a call for the general management programme.
I also got called by MDI for both the PGPM and PGPHR courses. And by NITIE for their PGPM course. And so there I was. 5 calls. And my order of preference was then IIMA,XLRI, MDI PGPM, NITIE, MDI PGPHR. And now it was time for me to roll up my sleeves and get to work. This was my chance. In Mr. Krishnakumar's words, "You have been given a golden opportunity. Lakh's of students across India would give anything to trade places with you. So make the most of the opportunity."
And you guessed it alright ! The second phase of my CAT story begins with part 4 !! woohoo ! another part !! will this never end?? :P
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