My experience with CAT preparation is also very same to other people here. I attempted CAT 2 times with serious preparation but every time one or the other factor thwarted my way to top MBA colleges. Getting admission in a good MBA college in India is seriously a tough nut to crack for a candidate with average background (with respect to IIMs) like me. Every one need to work hard to achieve something big but If we talk about lifelines then such person got no other lifeline than luck that too don’t works in winter ? ,I guess. One need to work hard before writing CAT and then ones luck has to work hard for getting a good percentile after normalization. Once both succeeded one have to enjoy most challenging part of MBA admission journey GD-PI where you need to go through many hurdles like reservation, extracurricular activities, Educational background, English proficiency, GK etc. If you missed any of the steps of this ladder there is no stop before falling back to ground. After realizing these many things and with parallel software industry work I decided to move on and thought of changing my destination to MS form MBA.
I know GRE is also not easy but in that I am feeling lesser uncertainties with lesser number of steps in the ladder for reaching the top. I am not sure about my success in GRE but I am more confident about getting success in GRE, even after my poor performance in Verbal section, than in CAT. I don’t know which part of my preparation or background leads to this confidence is but I feel, my journey more certain and my goal much achievable, now.
I know many of you will say MS in not MBA or perusing something and then just running from it because of failures is not a solution but I believe the day you realize your suitability for something its worth changing the destination and aiming for that. Same thing I am doing and now I am feeling at least initial steps towards this new destination are more suitable for me than older one. I don’t know what future got for me but with the hope of getting something worthy enough I am now perusing for MS.
P.S.-This is my first article for public review so please ignore anything that is not proper or well in place