‘Hardwork and luck favoured me’

Kumar Karthik Immaneni, 22, from Vijayawada is one of the eight students in India who have scored 100 percentile in the Common Entrance Test 2014, the country’s most prestigious examination.

Kumar, however, says that the job is only half done as he still has to face the interview at the India Institute of Management campus.

Talking with DC, Kumar says that luck, along with hard work, favoured him. “I expected more than what I had got in the last attempt, but I did not expect to get 100 percentile now,” he says.

Kumar did his schooling from VP Siddartha Public School in the city and is presently working as an associate application developer at Oracle, Hyderabad. Before attempting CAT for the second time, he had trained in an institute in Hyderabad and mostly prepared practice papers, concentrating on his speed in solving quantitative aptitude problems.

“After coming back from work, I would sit for around six hours everyday. I was familiar with aptitude and was only lagging in English grammar. However, I overcame that difficulty,” adds Kumar.

“CAT aspirants think that it can’t be cracked easily and end up getting tensed right from the preparation stage to presentation in the examination,” he says.

“As far as my knowledge is considered, I would say that luck is also important for a CAT aspirant. Despite how hard one prepares, it depends on how well the person takes the test,” he adds.

“After completing my management studies I will work for some years before starting my own company”, he says.

CAT aspirants, he advises, should get a total grip on the basics of every segment. “Materials are available everywhere but if basics are known, then with practice anyone can solve the problems. CAT is all about ‘speed and accuracy’. If one solves a problem in 10 minutes and another can solve it in only one minute, the difference is practice and familiarity with the topic”, Kumar sums up.