What advice do three IIM ABC first-year MBA students have for CAT preparation, profile building, and MBA placements?

Three first-year PGP students at IIM ABC — one with a 9/9/7 academic profile from a tier-one NIT, one with a 9/9/6 non-engineering background from a top-ten QS-ranked university, and one with a 9/9/6 engineering profile from a tier-one college — have shared perspectives across CAT preparation, admissions, and placement outcomes that are worth examining carefully.

On CAT Preparation

The picture that emerges is that mock scores alone don't determine success. One of these students actually attempted the 2023 CAT Slot 2 paper as a practice exercise the night before the exam — a reminder that time invested isn't always proportional to percentile gained. For DILR specifically, the advice from this group is consistent: practice at least one set daily, and lean on resources like Anastasia Academy. Prioritise accuracy over speed in the early stages. One important caution we'd flag from their experience — skipping even a single topic, such as mensuration, can cost you if direct formula-based questions appear on exam day. These aren't the areas to leave to chance.

On Profiles and Admissions

Academics carry real weight at the shortlisting stage, but once you cross 99%+ in CAT, interviews tend to shift focus away from grades. From what we've tracked across student conversations, this is a fairly consistent pattern at IIM ABC. The 9/9/6 candidate who attended a top-tier global institution found that the interview performance — combined with that institutional brand — compensated for the lower academic score. Their GNEM candidacy also played a role. The broader signal here: tier-one college status does matter during SIP (summer internship placement) shortlists, but its influence diminishes considerably after the interview stage.

On work experience, the consensus from these students tends toward quality over quantity — having something concrete and demonstrable from those years matters more than the number of years themselves. One of the three, with two years in analytics, ended up choosing product management over finance as their post-MBA direction. Gaps after graduation aren't automatic red flags, but they need to be explained logically and convincingly.

On Placement Outcomes

For career outcomes, we've seen this perspective come through clearly from experienced professionals and recent graduates alike: FAANG SWE roles tend to offer better work-life balance and comparable — sometimes better — compensation than MBB consulting. That said, one of these three students chose consulting specifically because of entrepreneurial aspirations, which is a legitimate reason to weigh the trade-off differently.

For those with lower academic profiles going into placements, the 9/9/6 student was candid: "the 6 hurt." But tier-one college pedigree and a strong CAT performance did provide meaningful compensation. This isn't a universal guarantee, but it reflects a real dynamic we've observed.

On specialisation choices for freshers: product management roles carry "very low" placement odds for candidates with zero work experience. Consulting, by contrast, tends to favour freshers more — particularly those with 9/9/9 academic profiles from tier-one colleges. For borderline profiles with 7s in academics, a CAT percentile of 99.8+ combined with a strong interview can compensate, though finance role outcomes heading into placement season remain harder to predict until the process actually unfolds.

These are not guarantees — placements vary by batch, season, and individual performance. But the patterns here are grounded in real experience from students who navigated this process recently, and we think they're worth taking seriously as you plan your own journey.