Ayushi Mittal

CAT'16 Student Converted IIM Ahmedabad

Hello Satya Sir, GP Sir, Gejo Sir and GB Sir,

Disclaimer: This might end up being a very long mail because it has been a long journey. I hope you will spare 5 minutes and bear with me. :)

It was in 2012, second year of college when I thought MBA is the next step after graduation, and joined an extended classroom course of TIME. As I started preparing for MBA entrances, I received study material which was great, but I missed personal attention from both faculty and management. No doubts taken, no calls reverted, no cooperation with students or maybe so I felt and left the course in a month's time. Disheartened and disappointed, I joined the full time course of MBAGuru, excellent personal attention but that lacked the rest. Nonetheless, I appeared for CAT/XAT '13 and scored a decent percentile, however I decided to repeat.

This is where my journey with CL began. Being extremely disappointed with classroom courses, I took up CL's Smart CAT Cracker (SCC) and test series. Going through the lessons of Smart CAT Cracker (SCC), I had the best time of my life (no exaggeration here, I swear). I would go through Gejo Sir's lessons again and again marveling at how he interprets everything, how he makes the passage come alive with the sort of energy he reads it with and how he breaks down things to simpler bits of information, connects them into a simple story and suddenly RC looks so simple a task. Later I realised it isn't just RC, this algorithm can be applied anywhere in life and the task becomes just as simple.

I would pause, rewind and replay every bit of GP Sir's SCC videos and mock analysis, and wonder how he can see similar relations and concepts of quant questions, in the LRDI sets, which I found difficult to interpret in the beginning but gradually learnt the trick. CAT '14 result was unexpected. I secured 99+ in XAT and received the interview call but didn't go for it because I was adamant for IIMA. In 2015, I joined SCC, Test Series and bootcamp. I thoroughly enjoyed every session of the camp. I was very happy to finally see and hear GP Sir, Gejo Sir, Satya Sir, everyone in real. I was skeptical that after SCC these sessions might be repetitive for me, but they certainly weren't. Bootcamp wouldn't be complete without a mention of Saran Sir. I used to hate Geometry before taking his classes, which now is my strongest area.

I had started waiting for the weekend to come, I remember feeling so sad when the Bootcamp ended. In 2015, I got a call from IIM A, so I enrolled for PDP personalised in Chennai. There Vipin Sir helped me a lot in every step. However, I could not make it to IIM A but got through IIMK. I had paid the fee there but couldn't bring myself to settle.

By now I had lost all hope and had no strength at all to think of giving CAT and going through the entire process all over again. This is when I read about CL's CAT NIGHT CLASSES. Taking CAT again was an extremely distressing thought, but I loved the idea of being taught live by all of you, and it was very exciting to let go of. That's the only reason I joined NC. To my surprise, it was a great learning experience, I learnt so many things beyond what I had picked up from SCC, Bootcamps and workshops. On one hand, GB Sir said takes 10 seconds for this question, 30 seconds for this one, on the other Sreeni sir gave 2-3 minutes and didn't start until we started giving some answer atleast. This pedagogy worked wonders. If it wasn't for the night classes, I wouldn't have written CAT this year.

And if it wasn't for Satya Sir, I wouldn't have closed my eyes and imagined IIMA every day only to wake up on April 10th to see the dream come true. I can never thank you enough for this amazing 3 years journey that I have had with CL. The rejections were heart breaking but now in hindsight they were worth all the happy time that I had spent on every mock test, every session and every class.

Sir, I have learnt my life lessons from all of you, and even if I hadn't made it to IIMA, I would have written this mail to tell you that whatever I am and whatever I'll ever be in life, a part of it I would always owe to you.