SNAP - a feeling of comfort

SNAP 2008 was held on 21st December 2008. Appreared for it and found the paper on slightly easier side. However, this is completely my opinion. LR was quite dubious as it had a few questions where one could find two answers. People were prepared for solving more than 20 in LR , however, this dubiousness restrained many of them from attempting more question. But one should have attempted at least 18 Qs (Might be cuz i did :-))
Quant and DI was really easy and the DI set on Chips was given so that people can get full marks from it. A few questions were give for throwing the marks. The cut off could be 14+ on higher side or could be around 13-14. VA section was real treat for VA lovers. I could attempt 28 Qs and got 26 correct as per the keys. Cut off for VA could hover around 20 with 1+ or -1.
Over all the paper was easy, however, people and most of the calsses are saying converse is true.
Cut off Could be around 78-80 for SIBM.
My attempts:
LR 18 (getting 3-4 wrong here)
QA 18 (would be score is around 17.25)
GK 17 (16.25)
VA 28 (24.50)

Overall 83.75
Lets hope for the best..
Regards,
Ameya

JMET - Quite Good Performance

Wow..After heart breaking performance in DI section of DI, i have rocked the DI of JMET with 19 attempts and 18 correct. Paper was on easier side and i think the cut offs will surely increase this year for IIT B. VA being my stronget section has disappointed me in JMET with mere score of 21. Quant has been a fantastic section for me in JMET also with 17 attempts and all correct. LR also was good enough for me to score around 17 marks on this paper. So my total comes around 72.75. I think i will miss the IIT B call but hopes are kindled for IIT D. Lets hope for the best. By the way, if you are preparing for SNAP GK, this site has some fantastic SNAP GK test and SNAP material. Visit MadeITsimple.com
All the best for SNAP..
Cheers,
Ameya

CAT Performance

Today, after many days i thought to write a post about my performance on CAT. I have been writing this blog since almost 8-9 months and the same is my prep stint. So anyways, CAT this year was too good for me in two of the sections. However, DI screwed me up badly that none of the IIMs gonna call me.
I started with 30-30-30 and 20-20-20 min strategy that had given me good results in past. I kick started with QA section for a change and able to sovle mere 5 question in 35 mins. Then moved to DI section and did 6 question and man, i was damn sure that i have these 11 question correct. After more 30 mins and DI section, i moved to VA and apportioned 50 mins straight away. I found VA exteremly easy and was able to solve only 22 question. Yes, even after i said easy section. I then alloted 20 mins to DI section again and i landed up with only 9 attempts in DI. And then more 15 mins to QA and i did 6 question!! :). So overall my attempts were 11 in QA, 9 in DI and 22 in VA.
After checking the keys, following are my would be scores:
QA: 34 (9 R and 2 W) awesome accuracy man
DI: 16 (5 R and 4 W) My worste performance in DI ever
VA: 78 (20 R and 2 W) again awesome accuracy
Overall: 128 Marks
But looking at my DI scores, i know i have screwed up big time and the coveted bricked corridors are now out of the picture..Well, JMET is the next target..Hope i do well this time and do not disappoint myself and all you readers.

Regards,
Ameya

JMET 2009 to be held on 14th Dec; Major Pattern changes observed

The structure of the JMET exam will undergo changes this year, according to IIT Kanpur. This year this written management entrance exam will be conducted by IIT Kanpur.
According to IIT Kanpur, JMET 2009 will be of 3 hours duration. The test will consist of 120 questions including objective & multiple choice type in Verbal Communication, Logical Reasoning, Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation areas.
Earlier the test was two hours long with 150 questions where the sections were same.
The test will be held in 37 test centres in 8 cities include Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Roorkee and Madras.

Last lap to the feline

CAT - the feline is just couple of days away. Lots of people are giving gyan like do this, dont do this and loads of stuff. Anyways, i am posting this post just for some quick updates. Took CL Mock 11 yesterday. DI section was lil tough. QA had some sitters and VA was doable. I am not posting the entire analysis now, as time is not suitable for it. Anyways, thanks to my preps and my god, i cleared the cutoffs again with flying colors.
QA: 34 (cut off being 28)
DI: 23 (lots of contoversies are there for this section. People are saying three sets were wrong so i sat with my facutly and indeed, almost 8 Qs were wrong. So i assume i have cleared this cut off. The offical cut off being 38 with erronious question.)

Va: 57 (cut off being 37)

OA: 109
%ile: 98 +

Ameya

AIMCATs Journey ends with the rocking mock!

Finally, yet another season of AIMCATs and the saga ends. Actually, i want to write a long post about my experience of this journey, ups, downs, and god knows what not. This season might have been very good for some and might be a path full of thorns. Anyways, i am not posting this crap now, as i am saving this for my aideu speach after the IIMs reaults.

I have been working on the strategy to solve the paper since quite a long. However, it is the recent times when i discovered the one that suits me perfectly, that makes me confortable while soving the mock. Thank you to Sinchan aka Rik_12 on Pagalguy, who guided me to go with the strategy and boy, it worked, it clicked, i found what i was searching for. I took 3 mocks with this strategy and i must say i have rocked them totally including AIMCAT901.
The strategy is, to apportion eualy time slot of 30 mins to each section in the first half of the paper. The means, i allocated 30 mins to QA, 30 to DI and 30 to VA. Now with this you have already gone through the entire paper once and must have solved at least 5-6 questions in this this 30 sprint. So when you see 5-6 Qs ovalled in each section, it boosts your confidence to hights. Now, in the second half of 20-20-20 mins, when you return to sections, your conversion rate the around 95%. So in 60 odd minutes you will end up scoring big time. This worled for me big time and still is working. If you guys are still struggling with the strategy, go try this one out.
AIMCAT901:
As i said, i started the paper with QA (i had never started with QA in last 18 mocks) and given around 40 mins instead of 30 and solved 4-5 Qs. As quant was inclined towards the tougher side, i was not stiated with my attempts in 30 mins, but i was sure that all these 4-5 Qs are correct. I left QA and moved to DI. Initially i was struggling to find a set to solve but then i got hold of the 1st set in the paper and solved 4/5 and got all correct. Moved to DS and solved all of them got 2/3 correct. By this time, the 30 mis sprint was over so i moved to VA so that i could get some good number questions there and increase my score. I decided to alloted the 20 more mins to VA section after 30 mins. I returned to QA and solved 3-4 questions there and then to DI and solved 3-4 questions. With this, the time was up and i was done with the last AIMCAT of the series.
I stepped out of the exam hall and started to check the answers and found that i have solved 2 Qs wrongly in QA. I said to myself, oh boy i again messed it up. I didnt bother to check the scores, however, when i checked the scores, i ended up with the following score:

QA: 8 R 2 W -->30
DI: 8 R 1 W --> 31
VA: oh boy, i am back to my best 16 R 2 W --> 62

Over All: 123 !!! I never imagined myself scoring this much, but man..i am there..i am there in the game..it feels great to score after you worked so hard. Anyways, enough og gyan..let me conclude the post here..

Ameya

Last 14 days to CAT 2008

The timer is running out of time..The fire has been fuled up. The clashes of desires and reality must have removed the veil of mirage from everyone's heart. Last 14 days for CAT. The last leap. I am not going to post something very serious or something that makes you serious because it is of no use now. The time has passed and one should concentrate upon consolidating the strategies, ideas and tricks.

Many of you who are preparing for CAT will solve around 5-6 mocks more..But, i am not talking about the mocks either. It is gonna be about the state of mind one should have while attempting the CAT. Enough of preparation phase, i am going to try to consolidate myself, my state of mind and concentration level now. I remember one of my friend from IIMs told me, if you have control on your senses, the D-day is yours..But this is often easier said than done. I am facing this big time now. Although many people continually suggests me to keep faith, keep your cool, keep the spirits up..Sometime this does not happens. I think this is what exactly IIMs wanna test. Are you able to handle the situation calmly? Are you able to make decisions properly when time is running off? Are you the one who drops the guntlet at the tough and tensed momemts? If my answer to all these question is big "YES" then you are made for IIMs. No matter what my mock scores are, no matter how many people are there in the race, no matter what people think about me.. say it to yourself - I AM GONNA WIN !!!

Isn't it charge up your attitute? isn't it runs through your blood? come on..

Take some time out and talk to yourself. Have i prepared properly? Am i ready for the fight?

However, these words are not meant to make you a charged unstable particle, but to let you think, to let you consolidate the thought process. Forget the mock scores, forget the peopel..Be it yourself..Relax..This is what i have been telling to myself since many days. Yes, this 16th November 2008 is gonna be my day..I am gonna win..Let anything happens, let anything comes in bet..i am gonna make it this time...Are you saying the same to yourself?

BTW, i am gonna watch all part of Rocky (silvestor wala)..

Ameya

SAP Professional Journal Contract

I am glad today to post about my recent contract note with SAP Professional Journal for writing an article under "work-for-hire" agreement. I initially developed an article proposal way back in June-July. After having done the evaluation and feedback from Wellesley Information Services team, I started to preapre the first draft. After developing an article that took almost a months time, i forwarded the draft to SAP PRO team for the evaluation.
Today, i got the mail form the SAPPRO team that my article is going to get published after multiple iteration between me and the design engineer. I am glad that i got a chance to write in such a repected internation journal that is going to be read by at least 10000 people worldwide. So it is the time to cheer. I am moreover happy that my profile is going to get tremendous weightage because of this achievement. So i think i am preparing myself for a post CAT selection process. :) This will gonna add certain weightage.
Cheers people...

Ameya

Fact, Inference and Judgements For CAT

FACTS:

Deal with pieces of information that one has heard, seen or read, and which are open to discovery or verification. The key word here is “verification”. A fact is a statement that can be ‘verified’, i.e. a fact is either true or false. Facts are statements that may involve numbers, natural phenomena, dates etc.

The characteristics of the statements classified as facts are:

-->Made after observation or experience. An event cannot become a fact unless it has occurred.
-->Confined to what one observes; cannot be made about the future.
-->Limited number possible.
-->Not perception dependent. A fact will be agreed to by every person. It does not change from person to person.
-->Tends to bring people together in agreement.


Examples:

1)Nearly 2 lac students took CAT last year.

2)Life exists on other planets (although physically not possible to verify, this statement will be either true or false).

3)I like Pink Floyd more than Metallica (It may not seem so, but this statement is either true or false. Either I like Pink Floyd more than Metallica or I don’t).

4)The legislature is advocating vigorously against intrusion of judiciary in parliamentary affairs.

5)A football field is 100 yards long.

NOTE: Notice the difference when a sentence contains subjective or abstract expressions-

6)The music was very loud (NOT a fact as the loudness might vary from person to person).

Poverty is a curse on mankind (NOT a fact…’curse on mankind’ is too abstract).
7)20% of the population live below poverty line (Fact).

‘FACTS’ STATEMENTS IN CAT 2006 PAPER:

1)The government has been supplying free drugs since 2004, and 35 000 have benefited up to now- though the size of the affected population is 150 times this number.

2)Only about 13 million children in the age group of 6 to 14 years are out of school.

3)The truth is that we have more red tape- we take eighty- nine days to start a small business, Australians take two.

4)The economies of the industrialized western world derive 20% of their income from the sale of all kinds of arms.

INFERENCES:

are conclusions drawn about the unknown, on the basis of the known. Notice the three words ‘conclusions’, ‘known’ and ‘unknown’ very carefully. They will give you complete description of what an inference consists of-

Known- A fact. The first thing an inference should consist of is a fact. This fact is required to prove another proposition.
Unknown- Something which can be logically proven by the given fact or the ‘known’. Therefore, in an inference an unknown proposition is present which is to be proven with the help of the fact. Remember that this proposition has to be proven with the help of another fact.
Conclusion- Once the unknown has been proved with the help of the known (fact) it is called a conclusion.
Notice the meaning of the word ‘Infer’. To infer mean to conclude from evidence; to deduce to have a logical consequence. (an inference = a conclusion)
Therefore, the process of inference can be summarized by the figure given below:


Examples:

1)Because the old man stayed indoors all the time and did not receive any visitors, no one discovered his dead body for days.

(the green part is the fact and the brown part is the conclusion. Notice that without the explanation given by the fact, you cannot convincingly prove the conclusion.)

2)The footprint warned Robinson Crusoe that there was someone else on the island.



‘INFERENCE’ STATEMENTS IN CAT 2006 PAPER:

(the facts are in green and the conclusions are in brown)

1)The recent initiatives of networks and companies like AIDScare Network, Emcure, Reliance-Cipla-CII, would lead to availability of much-needed drugs to a larger number of affected people.

2)According to all statistical indications, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has managed to keep pace with its ambitious goals.

3)Every red tape procedure is a point of contact with an official, and such contacts have the potential to become opportunities for money to change hands.

4)Even without war, we know that conflicts continue to trouble us- they only change in color.



JUDGEMENTS:

are opinions that imply approval or disapproval of persons, objects, situations, and occurrences in the past, the present or the future. There is a fine line of distinction between inferences and judgments. Most of the times judgments are also based on facts and therefore they seem like inferences. But there are some ways to differentiate a judgment and an inference-

Judgments are arguable and contestable. Inferences are rock solid. Although both judgments and inferences are based on facts, in the latter the conclusion is so unquestionable that it becomes fact itself.
Judgments are opinions, suggestions and recommendations whereas inferences are proven conditions.
Judgment statements include a lot of quantities that cannot be measured, such as happiness, beauty, joy etc.
Many a times, judgments are not accompanied by facts at all but are only opinion statements. When there is no fact involved, the statement can only be a judgment statement.
A judgment is an honest attempt to make reasonable observations about the given facts but they do not conclusively prove anything.
Examples:

1)It is estimated that that 30% of Indians live below poverty line. (judgment: if it is an estimate, it cannot be a fact).

2)Every mother has only the best interests of her children at her heart. (Is there a way to look inside a mother’s heart?).

3)Because we had three wars with our neighboring country, we should keep our armed forced ready for the fourth one.

‘JUDGMENT’ STATEMENTS IN CAT 2006 PAPER:
1)So much of our day-to-day focus seems to be on getting thins done, trudging our way through the tasks of living- it can feel like a treadmill that gets you nowhere; where is the childlike joy?

2)We are not doing things that make us happy; that which brings us joy; the things that we cannot wait to do because we enjoy them so much.

3)This is the stuff that joyful living is made of- identifying your calling and committing yourself wholeheartedly to it.

4)When this happens, each moment becomes a celebration of you; there is a rush of energy that comes with feeling completely immersed in doing what you love most.

5)Given the poor quality of service in the public service, the HIV/AIDS affected should be switching to private initiatives that supply anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) at a low cost.

6)But how ironic it is that we should face a perennial shortage of drugs when India is one of the world’s largest suppliers of generic drugs to the developing world.

7)The Mid-day Meal scheme has been a significant incentive for the poor to send their little ones to school, thus establishing the vital link between healthy bodies and healthy minds.
8)I found the music very loud (A fact as it is either a truth or a lie. I must have found the music very loud or not very loud).

9)We should not be hopelessly addicted to an erroneous belief that corruption in India is caused by the crookedness of Indians.

10)Red tape leads to corruption and distorts people’s character.

11)Inequitable distribution of all kinds of resources is certainly one of the strongest and most sinister sources of conflict.

12)Extensive disarmament is the only insurance for our future; imagine the amount of resources that can be released and redeployed.

Work load, Pencils and darkning of ovals

As you can guess from the title itself, i am consumed in the work like a bull. Ineed, since past three days i have ben working for more than 14 hrs a day. So finding it difficult to post on AIMCAT 906.
Life is really getting as unexpected as it can and this is proved from me getting assigned to multiple project when i had asked for a leave, Deadline of both the projects on the same day!, getting good score in AIMCAT 906 despite of not studing much and clearing the NSE Securities module with 92%. Anyways folks, i think this AIMCAT is good for most of you as there were lot may sitters. However i again flunked in QA. God knows when this is gonnna stop, May be by the next AIMCAT?
Works penciles and ovals, these are the things that has occupied my life most of these days. Sometimes i find it difficult to have the work study balance or pencils and oval balance. What? got confused? Ok let me clarify. Since AIMCAT 920, i have been marking at least one woron oval while solving. This has bumped my mind this time because i lot 12 marks just because i marked 4 ovals wrong even though i solved the questions correctly. Anyways, i can not spare much time writing this post as my messenger is continuously beeping and calling me for a dry run. Yes, that is thwe new word i have explored for internal demo. May be a management jargon. Sometimes i think why these management people use such words. May be to show how much the are working by mere throwing the orders to developers or may be to show they are managers. Anyways, this is not gonna cancel my meeting as as two oppositley charged entities are waiting for me. My manager and my work status.
Enjoy..


Ameya

50 hours of free fast track course for CAT 2008 from SPARK

Yes, you read it correctly. As i posted earlier that i have joined S.P.A.R.K classes, SPARK is arrenging 50 hours of intensive training and fast track course for CAT 2008 people. Following are some of the unique points of the course:
1) Calsses will be held on Sunday only and availabe in 3 timing slots.
2) Course is totally FREE !!! (i think this will catch you in)
3) 35 hours of exhaustive training and 5 mock CATs
As all of you are aware, only 54 days are remaining for the D-day, you wont get another opportunity to study the basics again. Go grab the opportunity. You can call or visit the classes for the registration..
Following is the address of SPARK:
SPARK Education services, 22-23, Shreenath Plaza, DPC aka Dnyaneshwar Paduka Chowk, FC Road Pune.
Or
Call : 9730306085

PS: I am not marketing for the classes, i was the regular studen of PT earlier, then currently TIME and SPARK. I just want to convey the information that might be usefull to many people who are still struggling with their tyrst with CAT.
Also i will be putting the AIMCAT 0907 analysis soon, so watch out..
Cheers,
Ameya

AIMCAT 0908 analysis

Another 25-25-25 question AIMCAT with no changes what so ever. Indeed, AIMCATs now should bring the sense of uncertainty into the picture. However, Changes should be in a realm of possibility so here we go..
This AIMCAT was breazer for almost everyone. "DI was a piece of cake walk" as many says, but sets needed one to concentrate hard and do some heavy calculations. Yet, thethird set on TV channel and skill sets was very easy and one could have managed to score 20 marks here. Other sets were not that easy (At least for me). But, 1-2 questions from other sets were doable and so 30 marks here in DI was a valid target.
VA section was easy. FIJ (Facts, Inferences & Judgements) was a life saver. Questions were easy. One could have solved 4 out of 5 questions easily. Para completion question were also easy and 3 Qs out of 4 were sure shot. However, in case of RCs, selection played a major role. Last para was the easiest one and one should have attempted. With decent accuracy, one cold have scored around 3 Q correctly here. So overall 35+ was the valid target for anyone.
In QA section, there were a few very easy questions. For e.g Question No. 54, 57, 59, 63,69,70,75 were simple and could have been solved with 100% accuracy..so i think 22+ was a decent target.
My Scores:
QA : 22 :-(
DI 22 :-(
VA 40 :-)
OA: 84 (Could have managed 2-3 questions easily but dumbo me skipped them while solving)
So this is all about AIMCAT 0980..You are free to put your comments.
Regards,
Ameya

Rock On !! and AIMCAT 909

:) as you see the title you might think i have rocked on this AIMCAT 909 but unfortunately the converse is true. Yes, this post is all about two different topics. One about the latest movie i saw Rock ON !! and another, AIMCAT 909.

Hmmm, which one shoul i discuss first? Anyways, lets Rock On !!

As the title of a movie says, movie is AWESOME, FANTASTIC, Excellent. I can not describe it in words. After long tiring days of study this movie indeed rocked me on. Every single aspect of movie was specificly managed and executed. One will never get bored while watching this movie, not even for a second. Farahan Akthar has rocked this movie, rather everyone has, but he was a real surprise when it comes to singing. His vocals are fantastic and music by Shankar, Eahesaan and Loy has put eveyone on to the floor. Story is also flawless. Overall a really good movie to watch, rather a must watch movie.

Now let us come back to AIMCAT 0909. This AIMCAT must have shocked everyone one. Most will say this was the toughest of this season. But i think a few question from VA and QA were doable although not sitters. If one was dependent on sitters to clear the cut offs then this AIMCAT would have been a nightmare for one.

VA section, although not to easy but was the easiest of all other sections and had a few doable questions. The RC passage on Religion-based classification has tw oquestion doable. Rc on War also had 1-2 questions doable. TIME is saying that Upstreme Downstreme argument was difficult and one should have preffered Parajumbles over the previous one but i disagree to this. These question had two very easy questions like Q 12 and 13. Also question on word replacement was also easy (Q 7).

QA section has some really easy questions for e.g. Q 21,26,32,35 and 36 were easy and manageble. But again clearing the cut offs was totally dependent on selection of questions. I am not the expert in this section so i would not talk about it much.

DI section was the nemisis. The toughest of all sections. It was veryt difficult for me to find even a single question to solve. However, DI set 1 was near about doable and the last was the hardest of all.

Overall, i think solving 5 questions with 100% accuracy in 45 mins for each of your stronger section and 5-6 question with 100% accuracy in 60 mins for the difficult or weaker section was the key to clear the cut offs. I was able to do so in VA and QA but as the adage says, "Lalach Buri Bala Hai", after solving 5-6 question from VA and QA, i was tempted to solve more questions and here my negative marking started and i lost the marks earned in earlier 5 questions eventually leading to not clearing even half of the cut offs.Well, this is the story about my experience of AIMCAT 0909. Lets see what AIMCAT 0908 has in its kitty to offer. But one thing i really want to say is, one can not totally dismiss the chances of appearing this kinda paper in CAT 2008.

Regards,

Ameya

S.P.A.R.K Classes For CAT in Pune

I joined S.P.A.R.K Education services Pune today for improving my poor QA skills. I was not aware of any such institute before i came across a thread on PagalGuy. Someone had posted that these people are fantastic and a best place for QA. I even heard that these people solve 300 QA question in one go. Well, to put a full stop on everything, here i am posting about S.P.A.R.K Education services.

I just attended the class yetsterday and i must say QA faculty is really good although i do not want to speculate anything so soon. I attended ALGEBRA class, to be more specific Quadratic Equations. They gave a sheet of 20 questions and we were given half an hour to solve. At first glance i found the question a lil bit difficult, but as soon as faculty started to solve the questions, i thought i am the only dumb ass in this world. The short cuts taught were awesome. Guess what!! we were done with the sheet of 20 question in half an hour with no doubts, no ambiguous thoughts in mind. So i feel i am on right track and have taken the right decision to join them. Facutly was very much confidant to improve on my QA skills.

As only 76 days to go for CAT, i am preparing hard now to crack it (At least i hope to).

For all of you, who are interested, the institute is located at

Shreenath Plaza 22-23, DPC aka Dnyaneshwar Paduka Chowk on FC road Pune.

AIMCAT 910 results

I was searching a boulder to break my head, this was my reaction when i cheked my scores. I marked some questions incorectly !! i was unable to belive it as since CAT 2006 i hd taken evary possible care at least while marking. Anyways this taught me another aspect and i am sure i wont repeat this mistake again.
My performance was pathetic 87.33%ile, thanks to those 5 wrongly marked question, else i would at least have crossed 92 %ile. Anyways, there is no point in lamenting over spilt milk. This AIMCAT was real breazer for all. TIME has declared the cut offs at 10+, 11+, 14+ for QA, VA, DI respectively. I hope to get some time to analyze my performance at this AIMCAT. Sometimes work sucks every bit of your time.
However, whatever may be your score is, good or bad, dosent matter. Important point here is to check and analyze your mistakes and making sure not to repeat them in upcoming AIMCATs.
Never loose hope and never get demotivated. We still have 79 days to go and world can turn 79 times in this time. So pull your socks and fire with full throttle. I will update this blog again before the AIMCAT and after the AIMCAT.
Say it with me, I am improving, i wont loose, i will win..Lets win...This time now or never..

AIMCAT 0910 Analysis

Yet another AIMCAT, well, before i get lost in the work let me put some analysis of the latest AIMCAT 0910.
PS: this is totally my own perception about the test

QA: This section was not that tough but selection of question was the major role palyer in conquering this section. Some question like 1,8,17,20,21,22,31,32,34,35,46,48 should have attempted. I will put the detailed analysis once i finish the analysis. The cut offs are predicted towards 14-16 for QA section.

VA: English was real treat for VA lovers this time. Some passages were real easy ans so were the parajumbles. One should have left the Summary question as those were time consuming. The cut off are around 15-16 for this section.

DI: Ahh, was the fantastic section this time. Last 10 question were all sitters and should have attmepted in not more than 15 mins. Question sets like the "Bus transport", "No of erasers in the office", "Cold Drink brands and companies" were really easy and one should have attempted them with at least 95% accuracy. (For a change I did this time, he he)

Over all the paper was feel - good factor for all those who are struggling in past few AIMCATs. But the task is not over yet. You should tear out the paper with the analysis. Let me know your thoughts and concerns on this AIMCAT. Lets share..

Regards,
Ameya

JMET 2009 Registration Open !!

Joint Management Entrence Test 2009 registration is now open. The test is to be held 14th December 2008 and the organizing institute is IIT Kanpur. You can apply online now from the following link: JMET 2009 Registration Form

Details:
Commencement of submission of data for ONLINE Application: Monday September 8, 2008 at 8:00 AM
Last date for submission of Application Form, Submission of data for Online Application (website closure):
Wednesday October 8, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Receipt of completed Online Application Form at IIT Kanpur GATE Office: Friday October 17, 2008
Date of Test: Sunday December 14, 2008
Announcement of Results: Monday January 5, 2009

Go Apply...

Regards,

Ameya

SNAP Registration to begin by 10th September 2008

Symbiosys National Aptitude Test is to be held on 21st sept 2008. However, the registration has not started as for yet but getting kick off by 10th Sept 2008. You can find all the details at following link : SNAP Registration
Sale of Symbi Collage forms are also starting on 10th Sept 2008
Regards,
Ameya

Permutation and Combination

Today i got fantastic article of basics of P&C, it was really helpfull for me. Hope you people can also make fullest use of it. Here is the link.
Permutation & Combination
Cheers,
Ameya

On the lost path..

I am updating this blog after almost two months. The new website took hell out of me and as expected i lost the touch in studies. I should not write this but the fact is fact. Few personal problems also tied me up from studying and finally poor AIMCAT scores (Few Aimcats are exception). Now i feel that i wasted my big time in this website stuff, but hey i am happy that i have created something. No worries..Here i am starting the studies again. I know most of you people might have gone forward and must have scoring nice marks. But i am not loosing it now, I am starting it again. I need to brush up my quant concepts :) LoL
I know many people would be starting their studies late like me (I am restarting it that is why) so i will regularly update this blog with my ups and downs. Lets see what i am up to. By the way some quick updates:

Exams Dates :
CAT 16th Nov
IIFT 23rd Nov
JMET/NMAT 7th Dec (Tentitive)
XAT 4th Jan
FMS 11th Jan
SNAP 21st Dec

Forms Available:
MDI Gurgaon,
IMI Delhi,
FMS Delhi,
SP Jain Mumbai,
More updates soon..
SNAP Registration to begin by 10th September 2008
So lets get started now..We still have time..We will crack the CAT..

Ameya

Cat 2008 Notification Out!

Finally, most awaited CAT 2008 notification is out. You can check the details here.
As usual, CAT has come up with some diversity this time too, what is it?
The way scores will be decalerd :
Reducing the result day axiety, now you can check your score by an email or SMS or on website.

However, what we can expect in the CAT2008? As we all know CAT is to expect the unexpected. But if you have gone throught the bulletine, the timings are same i.e. TWO HOUR AND HALF. So can we expect number of question to be same or more? According to Munir Lokhadwala on Pagalguy, the number of questions will increase and the paper would be mix of difficult and easy quesstions. Read more here.
what ever you can conclude, but one thing is sure, this notification has given me a motivation to study, to fight. So forget your scores of AIMCATs (if your scores are not good) and come lets start the studies again, lets win..
Download CAT bulletine here.
Regards,
Ameya

AIMCAT 0917 analysis

Another one shot of AIMCAT and the very firts AIMCAT with sub-sections of this season. The test was moreover on the platform of CAT 2005 which had the sub-sections and it has been around 3 years CAT have not used this type, so it was a good experience for everyone of us who is aiming to bell the CAT this year.
Well, Starting with the analysis, as TIME says test was easier than that of CAT 2007 paper.
VA:
With only one easy question, numbered 15, this section was more over of medium level of difficulty. However many and even i myself are victim of this sub-section thing. Section - A was given weightage of only 20% and there were 10 questions. One must have thought to solve some question of this section and then go to Sec- B but as i said, at least i was accustomed to give equal time to every section, a messed up was obvious. But im ust say it is good to do all mistakes in Mocks.
Question wiht mediaum difficulty were 1,3,5,6,8,11,16,17,18,19,2,22,23,24,26and 29 and resr were difficult. Cut offs are expected around 30 marks
QA:
I must say i am doing every possible misyke in AIMCATs in QA section only. Anyways, this section had few easy question, numbered 31,34,36,35. Cut off of this section is expected around 32 marks.

DI:
Some sets from section A were really easy. The set of players playing diff. games and living in diff cities was really simple. Another set on Credit cards was very easy (I am fool to solve it wrong :( )
Section - B , the first set was quite lengthy, but i must say the secod question and the last from this set were really easy. Rest sets were more over of the difficult level.
Cut offs are expected around 28 makrs
Overall cut offs for 1 IIM call are around 110 +

Regarding my scores?? i am analyzing the test right now, i will update as soon as i finish analyzing..
Regards,
Ameya

Launcing my own website!

Dear All,
Taking my blogging to the next level, i am going to launch a new website of my own. The brief & some exciting features of this wesite are as follows:
On this website you will get as usual the CAT & GMAT contents as they are here on this blog, verity of categories to choose from such as CAT & GMAT, Technology, Finance & Economy, Healthcare, Media, SAP-ERP, Philosophy, Travel & Holiday. I am pleased to anounce that many experts from respective industries are joing me and already have started contributing in the form of articles for letting this website to move upfront.
My esteemed authors includes people from variety of domain experties such as For Media category i have people from STAR TV , For Technology people from various IT MNCs are contributing, I also have few doctors who are joinging with me for Healthcare category, Finance & Economy section are looked after by people from well known MBA colleges.
This site will aslo include our very own concept of FORUMs, which is the best collaborative tool now as days.
So people, whatch out for offical launch of our very own website...

Regards,
Ameya

AIMCAT 0918 Results Out !!

AIMCAT 0918 results are out now, first of all soory for posting after so many days as had benn busy in projects. Well, this AIMCAT was a real opprtunity to test where you preparations are heading. Questions were easy, YES easy !! even though it wont appear easy at first hand.
In the QA section, there were minimum 8 question those one could have solved if one's concentration during the test was highest. The cut off for this section is at 21 marks (5 questions). Few question i want to discuss out here.
I dont remember the question number so please pardon me for that.
There was a question i think question 49, was the easiest of all..IF you are able to draw the figure properly, Bang !! 4 marks and figure was not that tough to draw. The clue in this question was the use of "Alternate segment theorem". With the use of this answer was there in your hands in less than 2 minutes. I missed this one because of oversight. This i have been telling to my self to read each and every question and i even decide that i will not let any question go out of my eye sight but some how this keeps happen. Lets see, i am trying to improve on this.

Secondly, there was a question 28, that talks about number of people are games that they play. simple writing down the equation in terms of veriables a,b,c,d.... would have fetched you 4 marks straight away. No skills were required to solve this one. I solved this one wrong !!

Now there was a question number 34 i think, please cross chekc the question number.
It talks about a+b+c+d = 13 and we were asked to find minimum value of sum of cubes of a,b,c,d given that all are positive integers.
Man, this was the question for which i am breaking my head that i never tried to solve it.
Now tell me what will be the minimum value of sum of a,b,c,d if a+b+c+d = 13???
Obviously when a=b=c=d = 13/4 isn't it??
But as all are integers, we can take this value for a,b,c,d, now lets take nearest integer value of this fraction and this comes out as 3 !!
Now try to consider value of variables as 3, but a+b+c+d = 3+3+3+3 => 12 !! so we need to increase one of the value by 1 so the sum becomes 3+3+3+4 = 13 !!
Now use these values and determine the sum of cubes of these values and this come out as 145 !!
4 marks more. I think we are at 12 marks by now..

Now this i remember clearly, question number 32, that asked you to clculate the ratio of sides and ration of other sides was given as 4:3
I am not saying this was poor question but belive me if you are good at similarity of triangles, you would have fetched 4 marks for sure...

Now comes again one of the most simple question, 43..
It talks about dishonest sugur marchant and his gain on trading, He manages to get 20% more sugure initially that means if he is intended to get 100 Kg of sugure, he manages 120 Kg. And suppose the price of sugure is 1 Rs so he initially invested 100Rs. Now 30% of sugur actually delivered is added to get original quantity i.e. 30% of 120 => 36 which gets you to 156, and it was stated that he charges 10% of initial claiming his transportation cost so 10% of 100 => 10 so adding this we get 156 + 10 = 166 so total gain is 66% !! More 4 marks..

Now i wanna discuss the question number 47, was most easy and was solvable in not more than 1 min. It talks about points that lie on and between the trinagle with co-ordinate (0,0) (0,5)(5,0).
It ask you to find number of integer points on this figure.
Even if you draw the figure and mark points manually, it will land you to 10 Points, Try it. Draw the figure and have a look your self.
By now we are up to 20 marks i.e. 1 mark short of cutoff and %tile near to 93-94 !!

Well, there are some more questions but i wont discuss them out here. These were the question one could have managed to solve in less than 15 min at max and cut off was clear. I missed this althoguh claiming i was not fresh enough to write the test but i understand CAT wont let me give any excuse and i have to crack it any how...
Hope i wont repeate these silly mistakes in the coming AIMCAT !! All the best and congrats for the people who scored well on this test.

Regards,
Ameya

AIMCAT 10919 results out !!

Finally AIMCAT 919 results are out and availabler on TIME's website. My score was slightly lesser compared to what i had calculated. I ended up in scoring 93.84%ile on DI with 90.91 % accuracy which is the only point for my being elated. Then Verbal was on 96.2%ile wiht poor 70% accuracy but still i am happy that i have cleared the cut offs. Then comes the Monster QA section, it is proving my calling it a nemesis. Well, QA was poor 70%tile so i missed the bus here because of QA again. Overall i scored 93.34 %ile.
People can assess their performance now as AIMCATs are really getting into the business now. But as i said earlier, after analyzing QA section , i came to know my mistakes. There were 3 questions which one could have solved in 10 mins. Only thing required was keen observation. Well, i am keen observe it in upcoming AIMCATs as the next AIMCAT is scheduled on 22nd June.
People can access their scores from the following link, or you can post your TIME Id, if it is in top 5000 students i will post the score and percentile here itself.
http://www.time4education.com

Hope it helps.
Regards,
Ameya

AIMCAT 0919 DI Section analysis.

If anybody has analysed AIMCAT 919 properly then it could be observed that DI was a scoring section. I understand there were questions that were tough, but if you look closely then in the first 5 questions of DI section, 1st, 2nd and the last one were easy and anyone could have managed to solve them will 100% accuracy in less than 5 mins, no calculation was involved.Then question 10th was just based on observation. Then if you consider the questions from 11-15, 11th,12th and 13th were doable but needed trial and error approach. Then look ofr questions from 16th - 20th out of these high calculation based question, 16th was easiest and had just concept of percentages. and if you are avg. at observing percentages then you could have solved 18th also.I am not saying that i have solved all of these qestions, but few of them. I have scored mere 29 in DI but after this analysis i came to know that had i alloted 5-8 mins more to DI i would have scored more than 40 !!
Well, this was the analysis that i did for myself. I will suggest each one of you to follow the same approach for analysing AIMCATs.
I will post the QA analysis after sometime. Mean while hope these contents helps.

Regards,
Ameya

A satisfactory performance - AIMCAT 100919

Haaaa, this was my reaction when i calculated my AIMCAT 100919 score. After the worst, pathetic performance in AIMCAT 100920, a good (Compared to my earlier scores only) socers was needed to boost me up in the preparations. Here is my shot at AIMCAT 100919

I have managed to score 29 Marks in the first section i.e. DI-LR. The section was tough as per the guidelines of TIME. But i never flet so. Because i knew tto clear the cutoff all i need are two sets with at least 95% accuracy. Thats where i hit the bull's eye and got whoppping 100% accuracy in those two sets i choose to solve.
Secondly, i scored 33 in VA, which i belived my strength, but AIMCAT 920 had created dark clouds over my strength. but not this time..I was able to get back on the track. The transition form AIMCAT 920 to AIMCAT 919 involved getting all wrong in RCs in earlier AIMCAT to getting all rights in recent AIMCAT. After the first AIMCAT i had committed to myself to solve at least two RCs everyday, And it paid up guy it paid up !! I got all RCs correct.
One thing i really want to tell, i was getting almost every question wrong in parajumbles but this time i really restrained myself from touching them at first hand. I made sure that i am clearing the cutoff and also scoring nicely then only i went to PJs, but as many people says do not attempt the question unless you are 100% sure, somehow i was not able to control my self from marking these question but this time i did and result is good for me. Indeed i learnt through mistakes.
Third, QA, always termed as my nemesis, but was able to get some sitters this time and solving TIME Practice test bookelts indeed helped me a lot. At least i cleared a cut off which means a lot for me as i was getting less score in QA.
There was a question in QA, question number 85,
The number of integral values K can take , where 2<= K <= 30, such that (K-1)(K-2)...3.2.1 is not divisible by K
--> Ideally one should not get more than 25 seconds to solve this, how ????
Here it is the concept that TIME material taught me.
(K-1)(K-2)...3.2.1, can u call this sequence as K! ?? yes we can
There is a theorem, named williom's theorem, that says (n-1)! +1 is always divisible by n only when n is a PRIME NUMBER. you can apply this concept here.
As you observe there are 10 prime numbers between 2 and 30, now dont make haste to mark the solution as 10 !! , yes solution is not 10, there is one more number 4 which is a composite number that is not divisible by itself if taken a factorial.
So in all there are 11 numbers or 11 values.
If you knew this 20 seconds and 3 marks !! deal isn't that bad ha..
So this makes my over all score = 80
Missed Overall cut off by 4 marks, not baad yaar..
Well, although my score is satisfactory but CAT is all about consistency !! and i will surely raise the bar in next AIMCATs..

So all the best to all fellow aspirants..
Regards,
Ameya

AIMCAT 100919 Analysis

AIMCAT100919 Analysis

“Strike Two!” is what most of the students who gave a shot at AIMCAT0919 would nervously be telling themselves. Since, after having taken a rather amateurish, warm up swing at AIMCAT0920 a few weeks ago, without managing any spectacular performance as such, this AIMCAT would only have made one feel seriously under-prepared. Fortunately, however, the rules in CAT prep are not as strict as in baseball and one is not asked to leave the pitch after just three strikes. But on another note, being in the game and not giving up is definitely the more difficult part in CAT prep. So brace yourself and keep up your spirits, for it’s a long journey still.

AIMCAT0919 was a 30-questions-per-section paper, with four answer choices per question. The paper was actually a hybrid of CAT2005 and the latest CAT paper, i.e., in terms of the number of questions and number of choices this paper was similar to CAT2005 but it had no sub sections.

With one choice per question less, when compared to the previous AIMCAT, the Verbal section should have been a lot simpler. Quantitative more or less just as difficult as in AIMCAT0920, but Logic and Data Interpretation was of a much higher level of difficulty. Irrespective of how good or how worse you feel your performance may have been, remember that the final benchmark is your rank (or percentile) and whether you have managed to cross the cut-offs or not. So hold your horses till the dust settles and the results are out. Meanwhile spend some quality time analysing the paper, question by question, and figure out how you could have done better.

Let us now take a brief look at each section of the AIMCAT:

Section I – Logic & Data Interpretation:

Different data representations, convoluted descriptions of the data and the very tricky phrasing of the questions would have left most students teary eyed at their prospects in this section. Most of the sets appeared very difficult and incomprehensible and even those proficient in DI might have been wondering if they would achieve the cut-off score in this section. The set on the ‘gem-trader’ was very difficult to understand and interpret and hence should not have been attempted. The set on ‘Students and their Grades’ involved a lot of calculations, had many possibilities and students attempting them would have made quite a few errors. The set on ‘Prime numbers’ was the easiest of the lot and would have afforded decent scoring options for those whose forte is ‘trial and error’. The set on ‘XYZ Limited’ was easy for those comfortable with percentages. The set of questions on the pie charts were quite tricky and should have been left out. The DS questions were quite doable and students would have looked at them to salvage the section.

An average student in Logic & Data Interpretation could have managed a score of around 14+ marks and any score from 18 to 28 marks can be considered to be good. Any score from 29 to 42 would be very good and 42+, excellent.

The cut-off score in this section is expected to be around 18 marks.


Section II – Verbal:
This was, broadly speaking, a paper of moderate difficulty. Students may have found the RC passages on philosophy and ethics readable this time, having been exposed to these areas in the last AIMCAT, and (hopefully) with some similar reading thereafter. The passage on geopolitics would have been of interest to most, and therefore relatively easy to deal with. As in the previous AIMCAT, the RC questions were in the ‘moderate’ and ‘difficult’ categories and were of a variety of types, including interpretation and inference questions. As before, the para-jumbles required careful reading and recognition of idea flow, and were difficult. Some of the grammar and usage questions were also difficult, with errors that could easily escape attention. The vocab-based questions, usually the most ‘popular’ of VA questions (if such a term exists), appeared in the form of FIBs and were of moderate difficulty, except for one. The best summary questions tested the students on recognition of key ideas and idea flow and, for a student comfortable with reading, were do-able.

An average student in Verbal could have managed a score of around 18+ marks and any score from 28 to 40 marks can be considered to be good. Any score from 41 to 48 would be very good and 48+, excellent.

The cut-off score in this section is expected to be around 28 marks.

Section III – Quantitative:
The Quant section of AIMCAT0919 was considerably simpler compared to the Quant section of the previous AIMCAT. The section comprised of a good mix of questions from all topics with no particular topic/s being given significant weightage as such. This was very unlike the usual situation where topics like Numbers, Geometry or Permutations and Combinations often appeared carrying significant weightage. In fact, a common sense based reasoning approach is usually what is expected from a CAT examinee, wherein the basics of any topic are useful only to the extent of formulating the question and the solution mostly depends on one’s ability to analyse the situation using common sense, improvise on the basics and apply them – even under seemingly unfamiliar circumstances. Most of the questions were of a medium level of difficulty and several could be classified as difficult. There were, however, very few questions that were either very easy or very difficult. Some of the questions that should definitely have been attempted were Q. Nos. 61, 65, 66, 71, 76, 79, 84, 85, 87 and 88. Most of the other questions that were of a medium level of difficulty could also have been attempted.

An average student in Quantitative could have managed a score of around 18+ marks and any score from 24 to 35 marks can be considered to be good. Any score from 36 to 50 would be very good and 50+, excellent.

The cut-off score in this section is expected to be around 24 marks.

The overall cut-off for at least 1 IIM call would be in the range of 84-88 marks and any score in excess of 100 should fetch 3 or more IIM calls.

In the next post i will write about every of thid AIMCAT and some fundas.

Regards
Ameya

Logarithms

First of all sorry for posting my new post after so many days.
Today we will discuss some concepts on Logs or more properly known as Logarithims. Although many books (I do not want to write their names) says that logs are not of more importance when an exam like CAT is concerned. If you look towards the concepts involved in the topic and efforts reqired to put are less compared to other topics like Time, work and speed or say most time consuming Number systems. As i observe, when you flip through previos papers, you can surely say there will on an average 1-2 questions on Logs. But why should one spend one's time just for 2 question?? Are you asking this to yourself? I think every question is a diffrentiater of you from the entire mass.
It took 1 and a hlaf day for me to study logs. When i say 1 and half day that means the time i get after my working hours, which merely comes as 2-3 hrs at max a day. So you can gauge that it will take hardly a day for a non working person to study logs.
Well, enough of writing other things, lets get into the business right away !

When you say log, the first equation should come in front of one's eyes is : a^x = N
Which means that, X is a logarithim of N to the base a, so our equation becomes : x = log(a)N
PS : Plz note bracketed term here is the base of a log, so equation above should read as log N to the base a

Well, there are no as such more theory to discuss out here but i will put forth some key points that i feel are extremely important.

1) Log(a)b = log(c) b/ log (c) a
This means when ever you have given a problem like solve log(2)225 + log (4) 200, when
log(2) = 0.3217
Then your problem reduces as follows :
log(2)225 + log(2) 200 / log (2) 4
Now you can work on the problem as base for both of the terms are same. You can divide
log(2) 200 by log(2)4 whic hgives you log(2)50.

2) Second most important formula is : log(a)b = 1/log(b) a
This is also called as base change formula.

3) When you have equation like log(10) X = 2.abcd, then possible values for X are :
10 ^ (2+1) - 10 ^ 2
To generalize, N ^ (a+1) - N ^a
where,
N = base
a = integer part of a log or characteristic of a log, which is 2 in case of above example. (The decimal part is called as mantissa)

4) log(a) b = log(c) d
If, a= =c then b = = d
If, b = = d then a = = c

5) Log of any term to the same base is always 1, that means
log(a)a = 1

For now, these concepts are enough. I will discuss more concepts in second part of this blog.
Cheers..

Regards,
Ameya

Grammar Funda

While i am posting the grammar questions i feel it necessary to post some grammar concepts also. When i was preparing for CAT 2006, i never tried to study the grammar part seriously but later on when i went on to study the EU part, i came to know that amongst all the people clearing English cut off, winner is the one who solves EU part correctly. As you all know if you are good at EU you will end up solving at least 5-6 question 15 min !! so what is ROI on the investment you do on study of grammar? 15 questions + we assume to solve 5 question correctly = 20 mark i.e. more than half way through to clearing VA cutoff !!

Any ways let me start with discussing some of the grammar funda that i know.
I assume peopel are aware of basics such as Waht is verb? What is noun? so let me take you all to discuss what type sof verbs we mainly have.
There are many types of verbs but i will broadly categorise them into only two types and are :
1) Action verb
2) Linking verb

Let us first see what do you mean by linking verb, A verb that acts as a linking between a subject and direct object would be termed as linking verb. Linking verbs are a lot simpler to understand because there are few verb that always identified a linking verb. The list goes as follows..

is Was been
Am were being
Are be

These are the verbs, whenever occurs, mostly they are linking verbs.

Action verbs are the verbs which indicates action (Verb does the same, then how it is different?)

There is a quick trick to identify action verbs from rest of the verbs. that i will discuss in the next coming post. Firstly let me discuss how should we identify between Verbs & verb phrase??

Let us discuss this with an example

The Cake tasted delicious
Any one would think the TESTED is an actiion verb?? let us check
A simple trick out here is, insert a form of linking verb after the verb you have identified, if after inserting this, sentence still makes sense then verb is linking verb !!!

Let is insert a from of linking verb WAS
Now the sentence becomes : The Cake WAS delicious, Makes sense?? YES
So TASTED is not an action verb but is a linking verb.

Here i have explained a very simple trick to solve questions based on verb and i think this post will surely make things clear.

Hope it helps,
Regards,
Ameya

EQAD-3

First of all here are the solutions to EQAD-2

A1 Can you hear what he is saying?
answer: (a) saying
A2 She hasn't come home yet.
answer: (c) yet
A3 I watched TV yesterday evening.
answer: (d) watched
A4 We live near the city centre.
answer: (a) near
A5 She looks like a famous film star.
answer: (b) like

So here are next few question for you all
EQAD-3

Q1 Some people only read the ....... lines in a newspaper.
(a) top (b) big (c) main (d) head
Q2 You should always check the sell ....... date of things you buy in the supermarket.
(a) in (b) through (c) by (d) off
Q3 When the building was completed, all the workers were paid ........
(a) off (b) through (c) out (d) over

Regards,
Ameya

EQAD-2

Hello all,
First of all i am sorry for noy posting the solution earlier. Well, before we start with the EQAD-2 here is the solution to earlier problem

EQAD Solution: option D
The error in this sentence occurs at (D), where there is an improper idiom. Both parts of the “both...and” structure must be followed by grammatically similar elements. Because “his” follows “both,” “his” must also follow “and” (“both his jazz and his classical”).

Noe here is the EQAD-2 for toady


Q1 Can you hear what he is .......?
(a) saying (b) speaking (c) telling (d) talking

Q2 She hasn't come home ........
(a) still (b) already (c) yet (d) till

Q3 I ....... TV yesterday evening.
(a) saw (b) looked (c) viewed (d) watched

Q4 We live ....... the city centre.
(a) near (b) next (c) by (d) nearby

Q5 She looks ....... a famous film star.
(a) as (b) like (c) similar (d) same

Hope it helps, i will post the answers tomorrow.
All the best and happy learning
BTW we have AIMCAT 2 coming up on 8th..
Regards,
Ameya

English question for the day.(EQAD)

Friends, here i am starting to post one question on english every day with explainnation. Question might be on word usage, grammer, parajumbles etc. I hope this will help many of ouie fellow CAT aspirants

Here is the question for the day
The following sentence contains either a single error or no error at all. If the sentence contains an error, select the one underlined part that must be changed to make the sentence correct. If the sentence contains no error, select choice E

Answer this question in the poll.

Regards,

Ameya

Time Value Concept Of Money !!

TIME VALUE CONCEPT OF MONEY

In continuation to my earlier post where i tried to explain some of the economy concepts, here i continue with some new concepts..Time value of money.
Time value of money, which serves as the foundation for many concepts in finance, arises from
the concept of interest. Because of interest, money on hand now is worth more than the same
money available at a later point of time. To understand time value of money and related concepts like Present value and future value, we need to understand the basic concepts of simple andcompound interest.

Future Value

Future Value is the value that a sum of money invested at compound interest will have after a
specified period.
The formula for Future Value is:
FV = PV*(1 + i)n
Where:
FV : Future Value at the end of n time periods
PV : Beginning value OR Present Value
i : Interest rate per unit time period
n : Number of time periods
Example
If one were to receive 5% per annum compounded interest on $100 for five years,
FV = $100*(1.05)5 = $127.63

Intra-year compounding

If a cash flow is compounded more frequently than annually, then intra-year compounding is
being used. To adjust for intra-year compounding, an interest rate per compounding period must
be found as well as the total number of compounding periods.
The interest rate per compounding period is found by taking the annual rate and dividing it by the number of times per year the cash flows are compounded. The total number of compounding
periods is found by multiplying the number of years by the number of times per year cash flows
are compounded.
Example
Suppose someone were to invest $10,000 at 8% interest, compounded semiannually, and hold it
for five years.,
Interest rate for compounding period = 8%/2 = 4%
Number of compounding periods = 5*2 = 10
Thus, the future value FV = 10,000*(1+0.04)^10 = $14,802.44

Present value

Present Value is the current value of a future cash flow or of a series of future cash flows. It is
computed by the process of discounting the future cash flows at a predetermined rate of interest.
If $10,000 were to be received in a year, the present value of the amount would not be $10,000
because we do not have it in our hand now, in the present. To find the present value of the future
$10,000, we need to find out how much we would have to invest today in order to receive that
$10,000 in the future. To calculate present value, or the amount that we would have to invest
today, we must subtract the (hypothetical) accumulated interest from the $10,000. To achieve
this, we can discount the future amount ($10,000) by the interest rate for the period. The future
value equation given above can be rearranged to give the Present Value equation:
PV = FV / (1+I)^n
In the above example, if interest rate is 5%, the present value of the $10,000 which we will
receive after one year, would be:
PV = 10,000/(1+0.05) = $ 9,523.81

Net Present Value (NPV)

Net Present Value (NPV) is a concept often used to evaluate projects/investments using the
Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) method. The DCF method simply uses the time value concept and
discounts future cash flows by the applicable interest rate factor to arrive at the present value of
the cash flows. NPV for a project is calculated by estimating net future cash flows from the
project, discounting these cash flows at an appropriate discount rate to arrive at the present value of future cash flows, and then subtracting the initial outlay on the project.

NPV of a project/investment = Discounted value of net cash inflows – Initial cost/investment.

The project/investment is viable if NPV is positive while it is not viable if NPV is negative.
Example An investor has an opportunity to purchase a piece of property for $50,000 at the beginning of the year. The after-tax net cash flows at the end of each year are forecast as follows:
Year Cash Flow
1 $9,000
2 8,500
3 8,000
4 8,000
5 8,000
6 8,000
7 8,000
8 7,000
9 4,500
10 51,000 (property sold at the end of the 10th year)
Assume that the required rate of return for similar investments is 15.00%.
NPV = - 50000 + 9000/(1+0.15)^1 + 8500/(1+0.15)^2 + ….. +51000/(1+0.15)^10 = $612.96
However, if we assume that the required rate of return is 16.00%,
NPV = - 50000 + 9000/(1+0.16)^1 + 8500/(1+0.16)^2 + ….. +51000/(1+0.16)^10 = ($1360.77)
Thus, it can be seen that the NPV is highly sensitive to required rate of return. NPV of a project:
· Increases with increase in future cash inflows for a given initial outlay
· Decreases with increase in initial outlay for a given set of future cash inflows
· Decreases with increase in required rate of return.

Hope it helps,

Regards,

Ameya

Another one from Chetan Bhagat - 3 Mistakes of my life

Good new for Chetan Bhagat lovers like me, the third book is now out from the press and available. Indeed i was waiting for another one from him.

3 Mistakes of my life







What it is all about?

Wondering what is the story this time?? I think he rocks again. The story starts with a saturday morning, an email pops up onto the chetan's screen, what was it all about??

--It was a sucide note !!

Writer of the email was taking the sleeping pills as he write downs every sentence of email. Chetan had a look on the number of sentences as he takes the another sip of coffee, it was already 5 sentences, 5!!! ??? Chetan puts his coffee mug down..


Well, i think i should not write anymore on this, but still if you guys want to read the first chapter, then visit this link :

http://chetanbhagat.com/the_books/t3moml/excerpt.html

Regards,

Ameya

English Question a day !!

Exactly like what Pagalguy is runnign their QQAD (Quant question a day). Here is something i found out for english question, you can call it EQAD !! there are a few simple steps you have to follow.

Follow following URL :

https://ecl.collegeboard.com/account/AccountProfile2.jsp?applicationId=206&destinationpage=http%3A%2F%2Fapps.collegeboard.com%3A80%2Fqotd%2Fquestion.do%3Fsrc%3DO%26questionId%3D606

Here fill in all the required information, & email id, and just register. This will deliver one English question into your mail box everyday. Hope it helps many studens

Regards,
Ameya

AIMCAT0920 Analysis
Yet another saga begins! Yes it is indeed the AIMCAT season. A season of big game hunting, of refining skills and practicing for the kill. As always, we at T.I.M.E. would like to reiterate our promise of giving you the most challenging, enriching and learning experience – one that would make the CAT of 2008 seem like child’s play!!Over the years, we have seen quite a large number of students having a ‘fixed’ notion of what the CAT exam is going to be. This notion stems from their acquaintance with the previous years’ papers (in this case the 2007 and 2006 tests). Nothing can be more dangerous than the “CAT has been like this last year and it is going to be like that in this year as well” approach. The cardinal rule to doing well in CAT is to rid oneself of notions as to what CAT2008 could be like and instead to prepare for all possible permutations and combinations in the exam pattern and in the types of questions being asked.Let us now analyze each section of today’s AIMCAT:

Section 1 – QUANTITATIVE

Overall, the Quant section of AIMCAT0920 recreated the look and the feel of the Quant section of CAT2007 very closely, except for the fact that this section was, on the whole, of a level of difficulty slightly less than that of the Quant section of the actual CAT2007. Easy and doable questions were not difficult to find. More specifically, there were a significant proportion of such questions among the first half of the section itself, while the latter half had a few more of difficult questions. The DS questions had two easy/doable questions and two which could be classified as difficult There were several questions dealing with basic concepts like elementary geometry, concepts of number theory, simple equations, etc., sufficient enough in number for even the first time CAT-aspirants to give this section a decent shot, without having to complain of not having completed their full syllabus. The only way one could have missed the cut-off in this section could have been to thoroughly mismanage their time by getting stuck in difficult or unfamiliar questions and losing focus. A clear mind and disciplined approach would have easily enabled one to bag a decent percentile. An average student in Quantitative could have managed a score of around 20+ marks and any score from 28 to 44 marks can be considered to be good. Any score from 45 to 60 would be very good and 60+, excellent. The cut-off score in this section is expected to be around 28 marks.

Section 2 –
LOGIC & DATA INTERPRETATION

The Logic & Data Interpretation section of AIMCAT0920 was of a higher level of difficulty than that of the CAT2007 paper. The questions were not the ‘direct’ calculation based ones but were rather based on logic and involved understanding the situation clearly. The set on ‘boys standing in a queue’ was fairly straight forward and students should have solved it completely. The set on ‘Internet shopping malls in various countries’ was a calculation intensive one and did not test one’s ability to comprehend the data. The set on pie charts was quite easy and anyone who is familiar with ratios would have been able to crack it without much effort. However, the last question in the set was difficult and should have been left out. The sets pertaining to the ‘documents of Gill Bates’, ‘classrooms in a school’ and ‘Waist sizes’ were quite difficult and students choosing them ahead of the other sets would have wasted a lot of time without commensurate returns. The questions on Data Sufficiency were a mixture of both easy and difficult ones with Qs 47 and 49 being sitters. All in all a good paper to test one’s mettle in this very crucial section and highlight areas of concern and improvement.An average student in Logic & Data Interpretation could have managed a score of around 20 marks and any score from 26 to 40 marks can be considered to be good. Any score from 41 to 54 would be very good and 55+, excellent. The cut-off score in this section is expected to be around 26 marks.

Section 3 –
VERBAL

The Verbal section of AIMCAT0920 was of a slightly lower level of difficulty than that of the CAT2007 paper. The RC passages barring the one on “Japan” were of the CAT type and were based on ethics, economics and philosophy. Students who had not done varied and extensive reading would have found the passages difficult to read and comprehend. Students would have been better off attempting passages 1 and 3, whereas passages 2 and 4 would have troubled even the most prolific of readers. The Qs on grammar and usage were tricky and could have fooled most of the students into making mistakes but then, since this is the first MOCK, there is quite some time to plug the gaps and reinforce the weak areas. Most of you would have tried solving the questions on Vocabulary and a smart elimination based approach would have helped in getting 2 out of the 3 questions right. The para-jumble questions were tricky and would have daunted even the most well prepared of students and as such should have been avoided.All in all, an average student in Verbal could have managed a score of around 16 marks and any score from 22 to 36 marks can be considered to be good. Any score from 37 to 45 would be very good and 46+, excellent. The cut-off score in this section is expected to be around 22 marks. The overall cut-off for at least 1 IIM call would be in the range of 88-92 marks and any score in excess of 108 should fetch 3 or more IIM calls.

Hope it help to many, well, i think i have screwed up here big time, but yes i spend one full day analyasing my mistakes and have come up with some learnings. Shall post it afterwards..

Regards,
Ameya

First AIMCAT !!

Well, eveything is set to fly off with the first AIMCAT of the 2008 season. Juat thought to post before the test. Guys i think this is the time when many firstimers and also repeaters like me are apprering. But out of few thing i learned form previous CATs is, accuracy would be the key, Give soem time in selecting the questions, it is not a waste of time rather it is an investment.
For firstimers -- If you have not finished the syllabus, (even i have not :) ) just go for the question that u r comfortable with, look out for sitters, mark them and solve them first because another thing i have learnt is, in first few minutes of CAT, it happens that you might not fine any sitter, any easy question, this creates problem and weakens your attitude. So start with your strong section, solve a few question, get a feel that YES i can solve it, grab the positive attitude and throttle with full power. ALL THE BEST again and hope few posts their score out here.
Also a discussion is going out there on Pagalguy about the mocks, here is the link
http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/cat-and-related-discussion/31613-which-test-series-to-choose-4.html#post1125529

Regards,
Ameya

Quick DI inputs..

While searchin some good contents for DI to start with i came across some really good contents on DI. Althought these are very easy question, but this would act as a starting point for all of those who are still struggling to start with DI from the scratch...

Here we go...

Unraveling the Purpose of Data Interpretation
Data Interpretation section virtually puts a student in the shoes of a Business Manager, who is inundated with useful (and not so infrequently with useless) data and has to make some quick interpretation of the data to reach important decisions. Once presented with graphs or tables, the mental processor of a manager starts whirring at the top gear and selects, prunes, manipulates, and compares the data and reaches certain conclusions. Successful operations of these processes require that a manager possesses qualities like:

o An eye for detail,

o An ability to focus on key issues quickly,

o An ability to work on numbers in different ways,

o An ability to see a trend,

o An ability to identify exceptional situations,

o An ability to work with logical relationships and An ability to reach a conclusion using deductive logic.

Well, here i am putting some D Iquestion for you to solve them from one of the DI doc i have with me. These examples are fro mCAT 2001 and are really simple..Give yourself a quick shot and test where you stand...

Question 1 to 3

There are six companies, 1 through 6. All of these companies use six operations, A through F. The following graph shows the distribution of efforts put in by each company in these operations

Q1. Suppose effort allocation is interchanged between operations B and C, then C and D, and then D and E and if companies are then ranked in ascending order of effort in E, what will be the rank of company 3?
1. 2 2. 3 3. 4 4. 5

Q2. A new technology is introduced in company 4 such that the total effort for operations B through F gets evenly distributed among these. What is the change in the percentage of effort in operation E?
1. Reduction of 12.3 2. Increase of 12.3
3. Reduction of 5.6 4. Increase of 5.6

Q3. Suppose the companies find that they can remove operations B, C and D and re-distribute the effort released equally among the remaining operations. Then, which operation will show the maximum effort across all companies and all operations?
1. Operation E in company 1 2. Operation E in company 4
3. Operation F in company 5 4. Operation E in company 5

Question 4 and 5

Answer the questions based on the pie charts given below

Chart-1

Chart-2

Chart-1 shows the distribution by value of top 6 suppliers of MFA Textiles in 1995. Chart-2 shows the distribution by quantity of top 6 suppliers of MFA textiles in 1995. The total value is 5760 million Euros (the European currency). The total quantity is 1.055 million tonnes.

Q4. The country, which has the highest average price, is
1. USA2. Switzerland 3. Turkey 4. India

Q5. The average price in Euro/ kg for Turkey is roughly
1. 6.20 2. 5.60 3. 4.20 4. 4.80

Question 6 to 7 (Source: CAT 2004)
The profitability of a company is defined as the ratio of its operating profit to its operating income, typically expressed in percentage. The following two charts show the operating income as well as the profitability of six companies in the financial years (F.Y.s) 2001-02 and 2002-03.

Bar Graph-1

Bar Graph-2

Q6. Which company recorded the highest operating profit in F.Y. 2002-03?
1. A 2. C 3. E 4. F

Q7. The average operating profit in F.Y. 2002-03, of companies with profitability exceeding 10% in F.Y. 2002-03, is approximately:
1. 17.5 crore 2. 25 crore 3. 27.5 crore 4. 32.5 crore

I will levae this question unanswered for a day and tomorrow i will post the detailed answers and aslo LR inputs. I will also try to post some more difficult question i have come across through my this journey to CAT 2008.

I am also planning to update this blog with some more inputs on QA topics like Logarithms, Progression.

Also on 18th we have a national MOCK CAT..All the best to all fellow aspirants..

Regards,

Ameya

How inflation affects your investments??

Currently inflation is soaring at almost 4 years hight as 7.5% + (Figure is not precise). Now for a common man like you and me, how does this increasing inflation hurts your investments?
Are you still thinking about this and looking for a solution? Here are a few points on this..
Whenever you invest any sum of money in any of the financial instrument, you expect a decent rate of return, we call this as ROI (Return on investment). Now whenever you earn the intrest money which is your return on the money is not the actual return. How!!?? Because of Inflation !! , I should try explaining this with one exmaple.
For E.g. You have invested 10000/- Rs. for 1 year in any financial instrument at annual 10% return. At the end of the saving scheme period of 1 year you would expect a return of 1000 Rs. as your income and total sum shold be 11000/- Rs. But if inflation is acting up at 5% then your rate of return becomes 10% - 5% = 5% !! so your actual rate of return besomes 5% only !! and not 10%. So your actual return becomes 500/- Rs. only and not 1000/- Rs. which is just half of your retyrn. So because of 5% inflation your return becomes half of of what you expect.
So what we have to do is, plan your investments such that your savings should not get reduced by inflation but you achieve at least break even point i.e. point of no loss no gain.
Finally i just want to say is, Money making is an art, you have to learn it diligently.

Regards,
Ameya

Lets learn some quick fundas on Indian economy !

Friends, here are some concepts that appears infront of us manytimes, often daily. Some concepts like what is CRR? what is CDR? what is REPO? blah blah blah..so lets discuss some of them here..

I will try to post as many terms as possible but if i miss anything then please excuse me.



1) CRR :

Cash reserve Ratio (CRR) is the amount of funds that the banks have to keep with RBI. If RBI decides to increase the percent of this, the available amount with the banks comes down. RBI is using this method (increase of CRR rate), to drain out the excessive money from the banks.



2)Relation between Inflation and Bank interest Rates
Now a days, you might have heard lot of these terms and usage on inflation and the bank interest rates. I am are trying to make it simple for you to understand the relation between inflation and bank interest rates in India.
Bank interest rate depends on many other factors, out of that the major one is inflation. Whenever you see an increase on inflation, there will be an increase of interest rate also.



3) What is Inflation?
Inflation is defined as an increase in the price of bunch of Goods and services that projects the Indian economy. An increase in inflation figures occurs when there is an increase in the average level of prices in Goods and services. Inflation happens when there are less Goods and more buyers, this will result in increase in the price of Goods, since there is more demand and less supply of the goods. infaltion is determined on WPI, and friends here the concept of weighted averaegs comes into picture.

You can see how it is calculated in my earlier blog named "Soaring inflation"



4) What is REPO rate?

Whenever the banks have any shortage of funds they can borrow it from RBI. Repo rate is the rate at which our banks borrow rupees from RBI. A reduction in the repo rate will help banks to get money at a cheaper rate. When the repo rate increases borrowing from RBI becomes more expensive.



5) What is reverse REPO rate?


Reverse Repo rate is the rate at which Reserve Bank of India (RBI) borrows money from banks. Banks are always happy to lend money to RBI since their money are in safe hands with a good interest. An increase in Reverse repo rate can cause the banks to transfer more funds to RBI due to this attractive interest rates. It can cause the money to be drawn out of the banking system. Due to this fine tuning of RBI using its tools of CRR, Bank Rate, Repo Rate and Reverse Repo rate our banks adjust their lending or investment rates for common man.



6) PE Ratio:

The P/E ratio (price-to-earnings ratio) of a stock (also called its "earnings multiple", or simply "multiple", "P/E", or "PE") is a measure of the price paid for a share relative to the annual income or profit earned by the firm per share.A higher P/E ratio means that investors are paying more for each unit of income. It is a valuation ratio included in other financial ratios. The reciprocal of the P/E ratio is known as the earnings yield.



7) What is EPS?

The portion of a company's profit allocated to each outstanding share of common stock. EPS serves as an indicator of a company's profitability.Calculated as:




In the EPS calculation, it is more accurate to use a weighted average number of shares outstanding over the reporting term, because the number of shares outstanding can change over time. However, data sources sometimes simplify the calculation by using the number of shares outstanding at the end of the period.

8) What is IRR?
The internal rate of return (IRR) is a capital budgeting metric used by firms to decide whether they should make investments. It is an indicator of the efficiency of an investment, as opposed to net present value (NPV), which indicates value or magnitude.
The IRR is the annualized effective compounded return rate which can be earned on the invested capital, i.e., the yield on the investment.
A project is a good investment proposition if its IRR is greater than the rate of return that could be earned by alternate investments (investing in other projects, buying bonds, even putting the money in a bank account). Thus, the IRR should be compared to any alternate costs of capital including an appropriate risk premium.
Mathematically the IRR is defined as any discount rate that results in a net present value of zero of a series of cash flows.

I think i should stop here, i will update this post in near future..
All the best, hope it helps..

Regards,
Ameya

Some quick inputs on RBI policy

Here are some good inputs on RBI's recent policy, i am posting summary of this article which is followed by a link to download the PDF article..

RBI Policy

At last week’s policy meeting, the RBI left the repo, reverse repo and bank rates
unchanged at 7.75%, 6% and 6% respectively but hiked the cash reserve ratio
(CRR) by 50bps to 7.5%.
RBI's stance retained the earlier emphasis on price stability and anchoring inflation
expectations as well as the emphasis on ensuring credit quality and orderly
conditions in financial markets. We retain our expectations for another 50bp
CRR hike in 1Q08 and look for more sterilisation bond issuances before policy
rate hikes are eventually seen as “unavoidable” in 3Q08.

Growth forecast maintained

3% WPI goal really a long-run “wish”
The RBI maintained its GDP forecast for FY2007 (Apr07-Mar08) at 8.5% and
repeated that the goal is to contain inflation close to 5%. It also mentioned
that the endeavour would be to condition inflation expectations in the range
of 4.0%-4.5%, so that in the medium-term, inflation can be brought down to
3%. We would not pay too much attention to this 3% medium-term inflation
target. Given the government’s fear that higher rates would slow growth, the
RBI would probably not have the freedom to raise rates sufficiently to bring
inflation down to 3%. RBI moves are, therefore, likely to be restricted to the
objective of containing inflation below 5%.

Here is the link to full article on this :

https://www.dbsvresearch.com/research\dbs\research.nsf/(vwAllDocs)/D5CFD6CDB260D21E482573F000354306/$FILE/in_2007nov6.pdf

Enjoy reading.

Regards,

Ameya

Quant Concept - Functions Part-II

Continuing to previous post on Functions, here are some more concepts on Functions..

Inverse of a function :
Inverse of a function exist only if, for every value of a dependant variable "y", ther exists only and only one value of independant variable "x".
So when ever question comes to find the inverse of a function, what you have to do is:
Replace every occurance of x with y, for e.g
you are given following function f(x)= 1/(x-2), and you have to find an inverse of this function, now, replace every x with y, so we have x= 1/(y-2)
Make this equation in the form of y,
therefore, y=1+2x/x => 2 + 1/x which is an inverse of the function.

Relationship between y=f(x) & y=f(x)+c
If you have a function of the form y=f(x)+c, then graph of your function will be shifted up on the x-y axix by "C" units.

E.g :
1) y=f(x)-c
Graph will be down by "C" units on x-y axis.

2)y=f(x+c)
Graph will be shifter to the left on x-y axix by "C" units.

3) y=f(x-c)
Graph will be shifted on to the right on x-y axix by "C " units.

Some important points:
For two functions to be identical , their domain should be EQUAL.
Domains of some functions:
1) y= root X => x>=0
2) y= root x => x>=0
3) y= root x^2 => x>=0

Hope this helps to many..
Happy studying..

Regards,
Ameya

Finally IIM results are out !!

Hey guys,
After long wait, IIMs have declared their results, i am posting some of the links and also some links from pagalguy forum where the discussion is going about the final calls. Enjoy..And all the best to all for next CAT 2008..

IIM-A
http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/cat-and-related-discussion/31201-iim-pgdm-2010-results-out.html
IIM-C
http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/cat-and-related-discussion/31220-iimi-2008-2010-final-results.html
IIM-K
http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/cat-and-related-discussion/31199-iim-k-pgdm-2010-results.html
IIM-L
http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/cat-and-related-discussion/31213-iim-l-2008-2010-final.html
IIM-B
http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/cat-and-related-discussion/31183-iim-b-pgpm-final-results.html
IIM-I
http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/cat-and-related-discussion/31220-iimi-2008-2010-final-results.html

Regards,
Ameya