VJTI Boys Crack the Cat..

Heres the Times Of India's 9th Jan's article on CAT. In the photo posted below are guys from electronics whom i shared classes with and guys who make VJTI and me proud....Congo to them..One more thing 11 students from VJTI received IIM calls.Truly remarkable!!

COOL CATS OUT OF THE BAG

Mumbai Lad Is One Of 10-Odd Students Across The Country To Top One Of The Toughest Indian Entrance Exams

Hemali Chhapia | TNN

Mumbai: Gourav Bhattacharya of Mumbai has shown what it takes to bell the CAT. He — like only 10-odd other management aspirants all over India — has scored a 100 percentile in the entrance examination to the Indian Institutes of Management (this means that Bhattacharya and the others like him have scored better than everyone else, topping the exam).
On Tuesday, as the Common Admission Test score flashed on his cellphone, Bhattacharya allowed himself a smile. A few other Mumbaikars, who scored above 99 percentile, were smiling along with him but it was Bhattacharya’s feat that was being talked about across campuses. Management coaching centre TIME (Mumbai) director ARKS Srinivas confirmed Bhattacharya was among the 10-odd students across India who scored 100 percentile.
What makes Bhattacharya’s feat even more creditable is the fact that the metallurgical engineering and material science student at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay has achieved it without any coaching. “I did not even study specifically for CAT,’’ the 21-year-old, who scored 99.9 percentile in Maths and Data Interpretation and 98.9 in the Verbal Ability section, said. So was it luck? “I took the MBA mock tests and
those helped me a lot,’’ he said. Bhattacharya recently took his GRE, too, and scored an impressive 1590 out of 1600.
Bhattacharya does not feel that management studies are only for engineers. “A management degree lets a company offer a wide range of job profiles to the candidate,’’ he said. This, actually, is one question IIMs ask every engineer they short-list in the personal interview round. So one could say Bhattacharya is half-prepared for his next round. But the 21-year-old was not allowing worries about the group discussion and personal interview to cloud his day.
Following Bhattacharya closely were Amogh Bhole and Srikanth Viswanathan from the electronics engineering department of the Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI); they scored 99.96 percentile and 99.5 percentile, respectively. Though both registered themselves with a coaching institute, it helped them little, they claimed. “I feel CAT does not involve learning. You basically need to align how you think,’’ Viswanathan said. Both of them, like many others at VJTI, took the exam in the middle of their final-year semester exam. But they were confident of success.
Ashish Makhija, who scored 99.88 percentile, was another confident IIM aspirant who started preparing for the group discussion and personal interview as soon as the written exams were over. A jubilant Makhija trekked to Siddhivinayak temple in the evening on Tuesday. His parents stay in Iran and he stays in the city with his grandmother. “CAT is one exam that requires more smart work than hard work,’’ he felt.
But some felt help from a coaching class would get you started. Ninad Rajpurkar, a student of Career Forum who scored 99.4 percentile, believed that it was “proper mentoring and clarity of concepts’’ that helped him get to his target. “I also feel the practice tests help tremendously,’’ he added.
WHAT NOW
Candidates who have cracked CAT will get couriers from the Indian Institutes of Management, telling them the date and venue of the group discussion.
The IIMs will release the final list of candidates selected to study in these institutes on April 11. THE OTHER ‘CAT’ COLLEGES
124 other institutions also take in students on the basis of CAT scores. Each of these institutes pays
Rs 75,000 to the IIMs plus Rs 100 for a student’s score-card.

A JOB WELL DONE: Srikanth Viswanathan, Ashish Makhija and Amogh Bhole (left to right) chat after getting to know their CAT scores. All three scored more than 99 percentile