How I Got Into IIM Kozhikode — My Honest CAT Journey

I'll be honest — when I started preparing for CAT, I didn't have a clear plan. I was a B.Tech ECE student at GNDEC Ludhiana, managing a hostel student representative role, running a 12-member radio team, and leading inter-college events. Preparation happened in the gaps between everything else.

That's probably the most relatable version of the story. Most people preparing for CAT aren't doing it full-time in a coaching bubble. They're doing it while living a full life. So this post is for them.

Why I decided to do an MBA at all

My engineering degree was in Electronics and Communication. I genuinely enjoyed it — but I could feel early on that what excited me wasn't the circuit design itself, it was the system around it. Why does this product exist? Who's it for? What problem does it solve? Those questions kept pulling me away from my textbooks.

After graduation, I joined Bharat Electronics Limited as an EVM Engineer. Government-scale work, real stakes — we were literally making machines that ran elections. The precision required was unlike anything else. But within a year, I knew I wanted to move toward building products, not just manufacturing them. An MBA felt like the clearest bridge.

The CAT preparation reality

I won't give you a month-by-month study plan because I think those are often misleading — they assume everyone starts from the same place and has the same gaps. Here's what actually mattered for me:

Verbal Ability was my anchor

I'd been reading consistently for years — partly because of the content work I was doing (YouTube, radio), and partly just out of habit. This meant RC was never the problem it is for many engineers. If verbal is your weak spot, the fix isn't grinding practice sets — it's reading more. Books, long-form journalism, anything. Speed and comprehension come from volume, not from tricks.

DILR needs a different kind of practice

Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning broke me for a while. The mistake I made initially was treating it like a math problem — find the formula, apply it, get the answer. DILR doesn't work that way. It rewards people who can quickly decide what to attempt and what to skip. That's a skill you build through timed sets, not through solving every problem perfectly.

Quant — know your level honestly

ECE background meant I wasn't starting from zero on quant. But CAT quant has specific traps — questions designed to make you waste time on elegant solutions when a rough approximation would've been faster. I spent too long trying to solve cleanly. If I could go back, I'd spend more time on speed and approximation, less on perfection.

What I think actually gets you the IIM call

CAT percentile gets you to the shortlist. What gets you the offer is everything else — and this part is dramatically under-discussed.

• Your profile has to tell a story. My application connected engineering → BEL → content creation → "I want to build products." Each piece explained the next. Admissions committees are reading hundreds of profiles — a coherent narrative is rare and memorable.
• The SOP is not a resume in paragraph form. Don't list what you did. Explain why it mattered and what you learned. One real insight beats three impressive-sounding achievements.
• WAT-PI is where most people lose ground they earned in CAT. Prepare for it as seriously as you prepared for the exam. Mock interviews matter — not to memorize answers, but to get comfortable thinking out loud under pressure.

The interview at IIM Kozhikode

I walked in having prepared for the standard questions — why MBA, why IIM-K, tell me about yourself. What I didn't expect was how conversational it felt. The panel wasn't trying to catch me out. They were trying to understand how I think.

The questions that tripped people up were the ones that required genuine self-awareness. "What would you have done differently in the last two years?" is a much harder question than "What are your strengths?" Prepare for the honest questions, not just the impressive-sounding ones.

One thing I'd tell my past self

Start the application process — SOP, letters of recommendation, thinking through your narrative — much earlier than you think you need to. Most people spend 90% of their energy on CAT prep and 10% on everything that comes after. The ratio should be closer to 70/30. A 99 percentile with a weak interview is still a rejection.

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I'm an IIM Kozhikode alumna now working as a Product Manager in fintech. I mentor aspirants on CAT prep, MBA applications, SOP writing, and mock interviews — with specific experience in the IIM-K process. If any of this resonated and you want to talk through your own preparation, I'd love to help.