The current concern among the student fraternity is what to do after their graduation. This dilemma is all the more prevalent in students who are in the Arts and Science stream i.e. the non engineering stream. Students who've joined the non-engineering stream should focus on the positives, one of the major ones being an MBA in the top B-Schools in India through Common Admission Test (CAT) and other management entrance tests.
Most of the B-Schools, especially the IIMs, have started looking forward to admitting non-engineers into the system, since they want a better heterogeneity amongst the students who join. The non-engineering stream students are awarded extra points during the selection of the students who receive calls from the IIMs, which makes the entry into these prestigious institutes a little easier.
The doubt in most of the non-engineering students is whether they are capable of competing with engineers and this is evident from the analysis of people who have registered for CAT. However, non-engineering students should understand that they have also got the ability to do things as well as engineering students do, in fact sometimes a bit more as most of the engineering students have a thought process which is streamlined but may tend to be uni-directional whereas the non-engineering students usually look for non-linear and creative methods for solving problems. This is extremely helpful especially in the Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension and Data Interpretation sections of CAT.
Another major apprehension that most of the non-engineering students have is associated with their lack of touch with the Quantitative Ability section of CAT. Non-engineering students need to understand that most of the questions are associated with 8th, 9th and 10th class maths. The trick to cracking not only the Quantitative Ability section but also CAT is to pick out the easy questions and do as many as possible while leaving the difficult questions. Hence basic focus on the areas of Quantitative Aptitude like Numbers, etc should help.
With more than a month left for CAT, non-engineering students should utilize their semester break from colleges. A proper study plan also should be designed with the help of a mentor who can help differentiate the difference between the strong and weak areas of the student. It is extremely important that along with the preparation, non-engineering students should also allocate time to take mock tests. The most important aspect is to analyze the performance of the student in the mock tests and ensure that their performance in the mock tests improve constantly.
—Arvind Mantry, T.I.M.E. Chennai