When it comes to CAT, the preparation is not standard. Someone who has taken CAT before will prepare quite differently for his/her next attempt than someone who is taking it for the first time. Someone who is strong in quant will focus more on VA or someone might think of maximizing his/her score only in the strong section by putting more efforts in that section alone. With different objectives in mind and different natural inclinations and strengths, people prepare in different ways for the same exam.
A lot of students prepare for CAT full time. They leave their jobs either six months or a year before the exam and study as much as they can. From here, there are two possibilities. One, they get the B-school that they desire. Two, they don’t get where they want to land up. The first case is the ideal scenario. But if that doesn’t happen, you don’t know what you are going to do. Let’s take a case of a candidate who has decided to leave his job to prepare for CAT.
January/March 2015: Starts preparing for CAT, joins a coaching institute, attends regular sessions.
May 2015: Still not serious about CAT, doesn’t get time to study because of work.
September 2015: CAT pressure has finally hit the high point, wants to give 100% but not getting enough time due to work. Decides to leave his job.
October 2015: Has quit his job and is now studying full time. How many hours per day? Starts with 10 hours. In a week’s time, it falls to 9 hours, after two weeks, just studying 7 hours a day.
November 2015: Has prepared enough now. Doesn’t know what to do.
IIFT, CAT
December 2015: Mostly, will not take up a job. Will start working after SNAP, NMAT
January 2016: Oh wait! Still wants to take XAT. Will look for jobs after XAT.
February 2016: Might as well take CET and CMAT.
March 2016: GD PI WAT. Definitely can’t work now.
So all of us have this tendency of waiting for the best case scenario to happen and we probably wait hoping that the things will turn in our favor, we need to understand that we all submit ourselves to errors unknowingly. After March, if this person gets into a good business school, he will be rejoiced and will tell everyone that it was the best decision that he ever took in his life, completely ignoring the fact that it could have been random and he could have got the same result even while working the whole time.
The Yerkes–Dodson law is an empirical relationship between arousal and performance, originally developed by psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson in 1908. The law dictates that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point. When levels of arousal become too high, performance decreases.
By leaving one’s job, one actually increases one’s stress (arousal), because there is a constant thought of ‘what if this doesn’t work out’ and that may hamper the performance. Also, there is a high chance that your preparation will follow Parkinson’s law even if you leave your job (Work expands to fill the time available for its completion) and the ‘incremental’ effort or preparation will not be ‘significantly different’ from the current effort or preparation.
On the other hand, there are aspirants who ‘definitely’ know that by putting in x hours over the next three months, they ‘for sure’ will get a good score. This is completely different from someone who leaves his/her job for the sake of it, just because someone in a similar situation did it, or because they ‘think’ that it will solve all their problems.
Over the years, I have seen aspirants leaving their jobs and getting their dream institutes. It requires a strong faith in one’s ability and one must do everything right to make it work. I have seen aspirants leaving their jobs and not knowing what to do after March of the next year or ‘settling’ on something. You have to decide for yourself what is right and what is not. In your case, things might be completely different. Whatever I have written may be completely irrelevant in your case. And it’s okay. I just want you to make a choice after considering all the factors.
Ask yourself:
1. What is my current preparation level?
2. To increase my score, what ‘exactly’ is required?
3. In the current set of factors, can I squeeze in 2-3 hours on weekdays, 6 hours on weekends, and 2-3 mocks in a week with analysis?
4. How confident do I feel about my preparation?
5. Is leaving my job the only alternative?
6. How ‘differently’ will I use my time if I quit?
7. Am I doing this because X person in my office did that and was successful?
8. What will I do if this fails?
In any case, work hard and make sure you achieve the goal that you have in your mind. For any feedback and queries, feel free to get in touch!
The idea behind this post came from a Quora question
Hi,
I am presently working for an MNC, and my annual package is 9L. I am very passionate to get a MBA degree from an IIM. I belong to a lower middle class family, so i have to make money to overcome our financial Problems. My uncle says ” if you choose to do MBA by leaving your current job , then its absolutely wasting two years . Because, even after studying for 2 years, the job you will be getting pays not more than what your current employer pays you”. Is it true?? please help me out with a suggestion, because i am in a great dilemma. Thanks in advance.
I think the way we look at MBA degree as an option that gives us more money is flawed. If you are pursuing MBA from a top b-school, you will definitely get good opportunities right after completing your course. Does that mean that everyone gets the same kind of opportunities? No! When we say average package is 15 Lac, we need to understand that half of the batch is below 15 Lac. Your uncle’s reasoning makes sense if we talk about the three four year time period from now.
If you decide to do MBA, which I think you should, you will not earn salary for two years, so there is a significant opportunity cost, plus you will incur additional cost (course fees) which if you look at it from a pure monetary point of view, might keep you away from the MBA dream. but there is a high chance that a few years down the line, your promotion will need you to possess professional qualification/management education. You will see a lot of MBAs in your organization with lesser experience drawing the same or more salary than you. So rather than doing it at that point of time (where you will pay more in the form of opportunity cost as well as course fees), it’s better to do it now.
As I began writing my response, MBA is not your easy way out or something that one does only for money. It’s definitely more than that. You will learn a lot in the two years of MBA which you may or may not while working in your current job. Don’t think short term, think long term. I will go with what Benjamin Franklin said: “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”