A note on the links given & added info for aspirants!

Disclaimer: Do not read/try to understand everything & every links here in 1 go, it would surely cause indigestion! Try eating slowly...patience is the key...! :)

...many of you might not know most of these links. I have included them because all of them serve a different purposes. For those who do not have the time to go thru the links to find out more, just a quick note on the same:

The 'A-list' is a must go-thru list. In that, PG - short for Pagalguy is a must. It is huge, with more than 6,00,000+ registered users & few lakh vistors/month (as on date), you have immense info on ur hand on almost everything relevant. Also you could sign up for their free question-a-day for Maths, DI etc- which would be extremely good & tough questions which gives u a very good grounding (note- a first user of the site might not always find the site very useful, since it is too deep. Re-visit it, u will realise its use as you progress across the stages in preparation- especially when it comes to the GD & Interview stages-PG is the best place for you to meet up fellow aspirants). It also has sign-up for free SMS B-School Notification updates (SMS "BEGIN MBA" to 56070 to start receiving the alerts), B-School Apply function & various other resources- check them all out for yourself.
MBA Universe, MBA paradise & Sharetermpapers might be more useful for those who are undergoing the course or have passed out (though info useful for aspirants are also in these sites).
Jam Mag is pioneered by Rashmi Bansal who is the Editor and Publisher of this popular youth magazine (JAM - Just Another Magazine). She is very balanced in her views unlike most of her other IIM compatriates (offence meant!) and gives plenty of insightful articles useful for B-School aspirants. For example, the follo link gives a comparison among coaching institutes, which is relatively useful- only problem is that the article is slightly outdated & some of the info contained has changed, but still it is useful.
Again the follo article about IIPM forced IIPM to moderate some elements of its blatant ads.

In Solidgyan, you can freely enroll for some parts of the course & can even do previous cat papers online for free as timed tests. Total Gadha has a downloadable collection of previous cat papers + lot of good articles. Urpercentile's free CAT Hurdles are a must for ppl who might be weak in some of those areas & needs some basics & easy to medium level of questions to handle under each topic http://urpercentile.com/Hurdle.htm . Subscribe to their free Yahoogroup to get access to all CAT Hurdles. Tenaday has ppl like Devashish Chakravarty who was a 100 percentile scorer in CAT 2004 and 2006 who has graduated from IIM A, TestFunda has a lot of very useful material from various 100 percentilers over the years & lot of free online test, freely downloadable software for Test taking & study. TCY online which was in the 'B-list' in the last year has moved to the 'A-list' due to its provision of a large number of free online tests which would prove useful for aspirants in the new CAT Online era.


The 'B-List' gives you some of the older stalwarts. Among the B-List, Ascent is not that much high in the radars of the coaching institutes roll-call, but their site has good free content & hence i have included the same. CL & TIME have been ruling the roost, though IMS is the oldie, which has been loosing ground steadily in the past. It is quite obvious that all the old-timers have understood that they need to scale up & hence have ventured into B-schools & Schools- IMS started with Praxis, the B-School, while CL started with Schools first & very recently launched a B-School. All these players have geared themselves up for the first online version of CAT, CAT-2009, taking place from Nov 28th, 2009.

Coming back to the B-List, the oldies are proven & time tested. They give a lot of info for free & does lot of good & more systematic work especially just after CAT in bringing out the answer keys & solutions (though CAT English key is always a stumbling block for them). They do give a lot of info abt other B-School tests & analysis & previous papers as well as info abt B-schools. Career Forum also gives a comparitive list of previous B-School rankings .Some of these sites allow you to sign up for free for accessing few resources, so do check them out.

Students have to be wary abt 1 aspect: Lot of your coaching at these old-gaurds are oriented towards the CAT.
All AIMCATs (TIME), SIMCATs (IMS), Mock CATs (CL) & PracCATs (PT) which you take week after week till Nov, is oriented towards CAT (since most of these institutes are dominated by guys from the IIMs- do a head count if you have a doubt!) And do keep in mind that the IIMs will only be able to absorb around 1750 of the more than 3 lakh CAT aspirants. Thank God that there are more that 90 institutes that take the CAT score, but just because these institutes take the CAT scores, they need not be good, and i know for a fact that many of these institutes are not even close to many other institutes available only thru other entrance tests. And again there is no gaurantee that multiple IIM calls can get you into the IIMs as I myself have experianced in the past. So the students have to get themselves oriented for the other exams also during their preparation, even if the respective coaching institute gives emphasis to it or not.
Most institutes tell their students that if they do well in CAT, they are gauranteed to do well for other exams. This need not hold true for everyone.
I have taught in IMS for multiple years & been the CAT dept head at the head office of TIME & has noted that CAT & the other exams are different ball games, if we observe the calls that many students get. For CAT, with increasingly difficult questions & greater time alloted per questions (since there are only 75 questions), the key is accuracy, while for most of the other papers, though you might be 100% accurate, you might not make a call since you need lot of speed, since most of these other institutes will give much lesser calls & you will have to be among the top few performers in India to be assured of a call. Since you as a student gets geared to the CAT pattern every sunday for all the mock tests, week after week, it is difficult to change gears all of sudden November onwards. So it is upto the students to orient themselves properly, a bit earlier.

Now coming to the 'C-List'. This is a list which i have arranged in the aphabetical order, so that there is no controversy over who comes first or second. Some of these sites are better than the others, so it is upto the aspirants to go thru them in detail & decide on which one you would stick on to. Each of them has something unique, for example, catalyst4cat.com is a site run by Munira Lokhandwala, an IIMC Alumnus for personalized CAT coaching. She has worked in the past as CAT Product Head and Faculty at IMS & CL and scored 99.99%ile in CAT 2004, 100%ile in CAT 2005, 99.99%ile in CAT 2006, 100%ile in CAT 2007 & 100%ile in CAT 2008 (Rank number 1 in india- 290/356 marks), Though the site does not have much content, those interested in personal coaching of the elitest order might find it useful. So the 'C-List' has to be your take.

1 last word: I have seen many students write/prepare for MAT just because they feel CAT is very difficult. But unfortunately there are just 5-10 institutes under MAT that are worth the while of the aspirant & they would do much better if they write CAT (151 non-IIMs taking CAT score this year) or XAT (60+ institutes taking XAT score) & other independent exams & apply to the better institutes affiliated to each (the CAT & XAT affiliated institutes are almost always better than the MAT affilated institutes!). Then there are also independent institutes like IRMA (my alma mater), Symbiosis, IIFT, FMS, Jamanlal Bajaj etc which are also very good institutes which have separate exams. Among these institutes they can absorb around 1000 students.

Also keep in mind that however good 1 person is, he or she can only go to 1 institute. So, ultimately it is a filtering process & some of the students who got even 75 percentile in CAT or XAT will get a better institute to choose from than someone who gets 90 percentile for MAT. I thought of adding this 1 last bit since i have seen many students writing only MAT due to fear & avoiding all other exams- That is a mistake- Do not do it!

So all the best to you, MBA aspirant.
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DISCLAIMER: The info which i have provided is based on my experiance & background knowledge which may or may not be complete. So in case you have certain reservations against few of them, kindly let me know the same with reliable info that would help me get convinced otherwise. I am open to correction, if it is due.

NOTE: Dear B-School aspirant, do not ask me things & info without doing some homework first. Go through the links & get clarifications from multiple sources before you ask. If you ask me for things that are already clarified in these links given, I will not answer you. I am into lot of things & have opened this to help you in your preparation, to the extent possible & I am not obliged to answer your every query. Any B-school aspirant should be willing to do some work & I expect the same from you.

P.S: This is a free service & no one is authorised by the author to collect anything in cash or kind from anyone in this regard.

Regards,
Aju John. :)