The dream of doing a postgraduate degree in management was there from my engineering days. Before doing my MBA, I wanted to have an exposure on the working culture and business strategies of an organisation. So I have worked in an MNC after my engineering for around 3 years. In March 2017, I have decided to write the XAT exam and there were 9 months to prepare for the exam. XAT is one of the difficult exams and requires serious efforts to be put for getting a good percentile.
Below are the strategies I followed for preparing for the exam,
- Join a coaching Centre
The first thing that I did after deciding to write XAT was to join a coaching centre. The main reason behind this was to brush up my math concepts and to know more about the tricks and tips that can be used in the exam.
- Prepare a schedule
The most important factor that determines a good percentile in XAT is the effort we put in. The next thing I did was to find a balance between work and study. For this, I have prepared a schedule on a weekly basis based on the topics to study and the amount of office work that had to be completed. I have always tried to complete the studies as per the schedule.
- Write Mock tests
After attending a few classes, I have started to write Mock tests. Initially, I was not able to perform well in the mock tests and my score was very less. Gradually my scores kept on rising as I wrote more and more tests
- Understand the weak areas
After attending each mock tests, I used to spend some time on analyzing the mistakes that I made in the tests. This has helped me to understand my weak and strong areas and to allocate more time on my weak areas. After every new mock test, I checked whether my performance was improved or not. Based on that I updated my schedule accordingly.
The last stage was to perform in the actual XAT exam. Before the exam date, I had gone through the important things that I learned. It was just to jog up my memory. Also, I have gone through the previous XAT papers. On the day of the exam, I kept my mind calm, confident and refreshed and wrote the exams.
These strategies really helped me to perform well in the exam and I was able to get into one of the premier B-school in India on my first try itself.
Author- Venkidesh H
System Engineer , TCS,Banglore