Author: Tony Xavier

How to choose between a HR program and a regular MBA

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I think I have said this in another post — India is probably the only country where people will be willing to shell out more than 20 lakhs for a product and at the same time be willing to accept whatever the seller decides to give them. What am I referring to? When I ask students who have both BM and HR calls from XLRI, what their preference is, or what they would prefer between XL-HR/TISS and IIM-K/MDI, most are very clear the specialization does not matter all that matters is the brand, others start bringing ROI into the picture.

How to prepare for CAT – II

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In the first part of the post on to how to prepare for CAT , we discussed what your practice routines should be like. In this part, we look at how you should approach your practice, how you can get most out of your practice sessions and how you can maximize your potential in fewer iterations.

How to prepare for CAT – I

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We are slowly getting closer to the business end of the CAT 2018 season. Some of you would have joined for classroom programs as early as last June, a lot of you in Jan and I am sure a few are yet to start but all of you know that you have to start your prep with all seriousness. All of you know that it is time to do more than just attend classes, meet your CAT prep mates and go back home. So it is not a surprise that I am getting a lot of queries – how many hours of prep should I be putting in daily to crack CAT 2018? – what should I be doing on a daily basis to crack CAT 2018? – how should I plan my prep for CAT 2018? This post is going to be dedicated to all things related to a prep plan for CAT 2018.

How to improve your Verbal Ability for CAT?

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As discussed in the previous post, the Verbal Ability sections on the CAT and other tests end up testing aspirants’ general command over the language as much as the test-specific practice they have put in. So how does one improve one’s command over the language? How does one improve one’s reading speed? How does one widen the range of one’s vocabulary?

How to prepare for a CAT retake – Part II

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    In the previous post, we discussed the mindset with which one should approach a CAT retake; in this post we shall look at a few more aspects with respect to a successful CAT retake. Since each one of you readers will have a different back story with respect to your first attempt and there will also be some non-IMS students among you as well, the focus of this post will be a bit wider.

How to prepare for a CAT retake – Part I

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Most of the institutes have given out their calls and many of you might be planning to retake the CAT. For some of you, it might be a case of almost getting there but missing out because of one poor section or just missing out on the overall percentile. For others, the CAT-day might have been a bad day at the office and you knew straight away that nothing much was going to happen.On my first attempt, I fell into the latter group — I knew I was out of my depth when I saw the Quant paper, there was no way I was going to clear the cut-offs. This despite consistently doing very well in the Sims leading up to the test. I decided to take another shot since I was very clear that it was not out of my league. This post, in three parts, is for all those re-takers who are NOT hoping to get lucky next time around but want to ensure that they leave no stone unturned to make the cut in …

My 2 cents from a lifetime experience called MBA

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Over the past few years of mentoring there are always students who keep in touch even after they graduate from b-school. Some to express gratitude once they get their final placement, some to sort out their post MBA dilemmas and others just to have a nice chat about everything under the sun :-). Likewise this year a student of mine who graduated this March, wrote to me saying that he felt investing in an MBA was the best thing he did and over the course of a few mails I asked him to do a guest post about his MBA experience. Given that a lot of aspirants who made it to b-schools will be debating the pros and cons, thinking about the cost involved whether it is worth it, the better schools you missed out on and stuff, this post is timely. Two years back I remember this student also being in the same dilemma. He was wondering whether it was really worth leaving his job at Ford to do an MBA. I felt he should …