Karan Agarwal from Amity Business School and a regular user of Complore.com is our Complorian of the week. We will regularly publish interview of our users in this section where they will share their experience and plans.

1. Tell us something about yourself.

I did my graduation from Amity Business School in 2007 and after that joined my family business of manufacturing and exporting handknotted wollen carpets. After working in the family business for about an year, I started my own firm , the purpose of which was to sell carpets directly to the consumers located in US/Europe thereby reducing middlemen and offering them a definitive price advantage. So, in all I have 3 years of work experience, which is good enough for most B-Schools.

2. Why do you want to do MBA?

The kind of atmosphere I have worked in is very informal and has been in the unorganized sector. It has a very central concentration of power and responsibility and this redcues the efficiency and productivity of any organization. By doing my MBA , I will be better able to understand how to organize things in a proffesional manner, interacting with peers from different industires/backgrounds will broaden my understanding of business in India , and guidance and mentorship from top-notch faculty in a good B-school will better my understanding of the fine nuances of business which I may currently overlook.

3. What is your Strategy for CAT Exam? How much time do you devote for preparation?

I started my preparation in Feb 2009 by joining classroom programme of Career Launcher. Initially my prepartion was restricted to completing the sheets which corresponded to the subjects taught in class. I also started reading a variety of topics such as books of Sigmund Freud, Stephen Hawkings, literature, then Red Herring documents of Insurance policies, mutual funds, editorials of Times of India, Hindu, Economic Times, etc.
From July onwards I started preparing seriously by devoting 2-3 hours every day to my preparations which I slowly increased to 6-7 by September . which is when I took a sabbatical from work. I solved a total of 35-40 mocks in the process, solved last 5 years of CAT papers (beyond that the format is irrelevant to today's format) and solved CAT questions of last 16 years from a book published by Oswal Publishers.

4. How much Complore.com has helped in your preparation?

I started using complore in around June and the experience has been good. The daily questions / puzzles / tips were something I used to check & solve first thing in the morning. Every now and then I took the daily tests which were a good warm up and since it gave national percentiles as well ,it was a good indicator of where my preparations were going. The CAT papers of previous years which I solved , I solved them on Complore only as it was the first site to have them in CBT format. Overall it helped me quite a lot.

5. Any message for future CAT Aspirants?

If CAT continues the way it has been this year. I feel I wasted about 10 months. Just 1 month of dedicated preparation will suffice. It is now more of an aptitude test rather than preparation/strategy/stress-management. Just chill and you will get through.

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