Tac

Anxious, thinking, nervous, thinking, impatient, thinking, quirky, thinking, stuck, thinking, lost, thinking, ill-tempered, thinking, light-cold, thinking, nowhere, thinking ... ... ...

That summarises the last 36 odd hours. The most interesting day in every CAT is its eve. Every advice, shouts to you from all corners - 'do nothing' 'relax' 'freeze'. I find this a stupid advice given to any CAT aspirant. This is in short telling to kill one's 'Nervous Energy'. To halt is like this is anti-life. The most amusing poster I saw at the CAT centre saying - "Seize the Day", while the same institute advises to freeze everything and cease to exist on the eve of the test.

This is totally dichotomous and obviously the worst thing to do. I'd say - continue to bounce ideas, do light works, nothing to stretch or tax the brain for long hours, nothing to exert too much load leading to exhaustion. But for God sake, be alive.

I live with two other CAT aspirants, religiously following this advice and doing nothing. For a while it was all right, but this creepiness was eating into my mind-space. Still it was a nice chance to observe, what a man does, when asked to do 'nothing'.

I myself was at my fidgety best. Bouncincg around in my mind-space, doing 'stuff' on my machine, soaking some regular television dose, and some random chatter. But this 'not do anything' thing made me think of what should I do now in order to maximise my chances in tomorrows CAT. I could'nt find anything, CAT being such a hilariously/ridiculously non-standard entrance test.

This was my third CAT. As preparation for the first I gave 65 Mock CATs and got 91 percentile. For the second I gave none, didnt open any book, didnt solve any question, I got 99.89 percentile (missing maths cut-off badly, therefore no selections). This time I gave 8 Mocks.

Anywhich way, these were some of my after thoughts on thinking CAT backwards, therefore the title - "Tac".

Finally Cat is over. And I just finished my looooooooong analysis on the answer keys supplied by the four leading institutes. Here it is -

English
	CL	TIME	PT	IMS	Utopian	Pessimistic	Hopeful
Cut-offs	21-25	18-20	30-32	28-32	0	100	25
Score	23	18	33	38	53	8	33
Corrects	100%	75%	50%	25%	0%
	6	1	4	6	5
Statistically	(6+1+2+1+0)*4 - (0+0+2+5+5) =					28
Maths
	CL	TIME	PT	IMS	Utopian	Pessimistic	Hopeful
Cut-offs	36-40	32-34	38-40	36-40	0	100	33-36
Score	36	36	36	36	36	36	36
DI
	CL	TIME	PT	IMS	Utopian	Pessimistic	Hopeful
Cut-offs	34-38	26-28	32-34	32-36	0	100	25
Score	44	44	44	44	56	44	49
Overall
	CL	TIME	PT	IMS	Utopian	Pessimistic	Hopeful
Cut-offs	110-115	92-96	100-106	104+	0	300	105
Score	108	110	113	118	300	0	110

*Note - The same and answer key for 111 by all 4 institutes is in this excel sheet.
Legend - Green - Cleared, Yellow - Marginal, Red - bust

In terms of attempts
English - 22/25 - I know 6 are right and 8 wrong for sure. Rest are subject to IIMs judgement.
Maths - 14/25 - 10 are right.
DI - 16/25 - 12 are right.

Verdict - 0 Calls. In any case, if you don't agree with the above analysis/verdict, we'll know for sure in first week of January.
Percentile Expected - 97.0 percentile. It may might just touch 97.5 but that is too optimistic, considering I don't have any single exceptional section.

--
US

P.S - Do write your expected scores in the comments.
The time of checking scores is also somewhat intersting. I woke up at 0600 hrs today and the reality suddenly hit me. I still had to check my scores and all iterations of combinations of its implications were flowing/bombarding in my head. Time to repair my simulator to take these differences lighter. Reference - 'Fail'.

P.S Again - I have an almost creepy ability to accurately predict exam outcomes. So 97.0 should be more or less within +- 0.25 percentile.

P.S Yet again -
"In next 30 years, we will be graduating more students than in the history of mankind. Suddenly, a degree is worthless" - Sir Ken Robinson (Reference)
AND - that according to me is the best possible excuse for not getting an admission to any grad school.