Juggling work and study, Bengaluru boys manage to crack CAT

For the past four years, Swapnil Nagare had been juggling his work at a software company in the city with his preparations for the Common Admission Test or CAT.

This year, however, he finally achieved his highest score of 99.9 percentile in four years and is hoping to land a seat at any one of the top three IIMs.

A number of candidates from the city who took the test in November have done commendably well, securing percentiles of 99 and above. The results of the test were declared on Saturday.

“The first time I got a percentile of 99.4 and then in the second year I got a percentile of 85 and 96 in the third attempt. I hope to get into IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore or Calcutta and want to study investment banking.

However, I am considering all my options,” said Swapnil, who did his mechanical engineering from Mumbai.

He scored 99.7 percentile in quantitative ability and data interpretation (section 1) and 99.6 in verbal ability and logical reasoning (section 2).

Mohammed Riyaz Ahmed who secured a percentile of 99.8 wants to specialise in finance from IIM-B. An engineer from BITS Pilani (Goa campus), Riyaz was working in a city finance firm for the past two years and quit his job a month before the exam to prepare for CAT.

“Juggling became extremely difficult and I could not focus, so I had no choice but to quit,” he said. Riyaz, from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh,  wants to become an entrepreneur in the primary education sector. Both his parents are school teachers back  home.

He secured scores of 99 percentile and 99.38 in both the sections respectively.   
For Rishab Gupta, who secured a 99.29 percentile in the test, a career in consulting or in a global leadership firm is what he is aiming at.

“I prepared for about six to seven months and used to study regularly during the weekends. I have been in Bangalore for nearly two years now, working in a management consulting firm and would, therefore, ideally prefer to study at the IIM here,” said Rishab, who studied computer science engineering at BITS, Pilani.

He secured 95.6 and 99.6 percentiles in sections 1 and 2 respectively.