One sees several examples where Mentors at CAT coaching institutes, who are assigned to students for delivering personalised guidance, in fact end up misguiding them for one of several reasons.
Be it the large institutes like TIME, Career Forum, IMS or Professional Tutorials, aspirants have large number of complaints about Mentors playing truant in their CAT preparation. There are equal number of complaints about the smaller one-man shops in the B and C towns of India, whose credentials and credibilities are seldom questioned.
Siddharth from Hyderabad, who is attempting CAT 2007 took his first CAT in 2005 with support from Career Launcher, only to realise in the end that his mentor had not guided him on how to tackle an unpredictable change in pattern. He had good support in terms of preparation and theory books, but lack of strategy planning ditched him.
While Ankit (name changed on request) who took a diagnostic test and demo lecture at IMS was made to believe that his scores couldn’t get him through IIMs but a similar performance by one of his friends, in the real CAT, got him calls from 6 IIMs.
Often, students are supplied with incorrect information about sectional cut-offs required to get into a school and B-school comparisons on quality. They are often recommended to apply to B-schools that have a tie-up with the coaching institute to sell their application forms. Pagalguy.com spoke to a number of people from the CAT coaching industry to get a better insight into the problem. Many of them defined the role of a Mentor as very important in shaping the career of an aspirant.
So what do mentors do and how do they analyze every student’s case on a personal level? Gejo Srinivasan, Product Head, IMS Learning Resources, says, “As mentors we help our students to clear CAT by inculcating discipline, helping them understand their weak areas, tracking scores and after CAT, by helping them build confidence to ensure that they do not compromise on their career goals. Personal interaction is important but it gets difficult to have it with every candidate, considering the huge number of students handled by a single mentor.”
Bharat Jain, a senior faculty with TIME, Hyderabad says, “We take into account the performance across 20 mock CATs of a candidate and then depending on their goals, advice them on what to do and what not to.”
A mentor is selected on the basis of his ability to interact, his domain knowledge and strong motivation to be part of the coaching industry. He is put through a clear structured training program and mock class sessions before he starts training a real life class. Why are there incidences of misguidance still, and what steps does a institute take to avoid them? Arindam Lahiri, Director of Academics, Career Launcher explains, “Realistically, such cases of misguidance do happen but they are rare and may be because initially a trainee mentor is attached to a senior mentor. Though this can never be foolproof, we do keep a track of what is happening and if there is a repetitive misguidance we take stern action.”
On Mentors strongly recommending B-schools whose application forms are being sold by the coaching institute, he said, “It doesn’t happen and a recommendation is entirely based on the Mock CAT scores. People out here do not have overlapping functions and therefore a Mentor has no role in marketing a B-school but we are cautious and if we find something like this happening in a particular center we investigate if it has a genuine background or is it purposely done.” Also, Mr Srinivasan adds, “We never promote such activities and here at IMS. We have created a software that stores and compares the profile and the kind of institute offered to a candidate, with the previous years students.”
How can you make sure you’re not being misguided? With changing times, there are newer ways to access information about B-schools and verify how sensible your suggested strategy is. Besides guidance from your mentor, you should make it a point to network with existing students in B-schools through your peer group and online communities. Whenever in doubt, check the veracity of facts by searching on the Internet.
Also, to trust a Mentor or not, entirely depends on individual preparation styles. Like for Abhishek Narain, who is an XLRI, Jamshedpur graduate of 2006 says he was hardly dependent on his mentor for the written exam but he could get through XLRI at the interview level because of his mentor at IMS, Delhi who gave him a right direction and helped him gain confidence.