Engineers from Bengaluru ace CAT, set eyes on IIMs

BENGALURU: An aspiring management student from the state is one of the 11 candidates who have scored 100 percentile in the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2018, results of which were declared by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta on Saturday.
Around 2.5 lakh students had appeared for the exam, which was conducted on November 25. A formal announcement on the Karnataka student who has secured 100 percentile is yet to be made.
Toppers from Bengaluru include Disha Harish Jain, who is working in Gurugram and has scored 99.98 percentile.A chemical engineer, Disha is keen on joining IIM-Ahmedabad and says her working hours from 1pm to 10pm — she caters to clients from the US and UK — helped her devote morning hours to studies.
“I am a proud father. She did engineering from IIT Chennai and always dreamed big,” said her father Harish Jain, a Bengaluru resident. In her previous attempt in 2017, Disha had secured 99.83 percentile, but as she couldn’t land a seat in top IIMs, she wrote the test again. “As there aren’t many managerial jobs for fresh engineering graduates, many aspire to do MBA after engineering,” said Disha.
For Kamal Karan, 24, who scored 99.91 percentile in his first attempt, preparing for CAT was nothing more than a revision of all that he had studied in school. A mechanical engineer, Kamal is a resident of Marathahalli and works in a multinational company. “I was not tense at all. I took mock tests during weekends but I was equally focused on my work. I felt it was the right time to make a shift,” said Karan, who’s from Ahmedabad.
Like previous years, most of the toppers are from an engineering background and are working professionals. Ishaan Mudgal, 23, a software engineer working and living in Doddanakkundi on the outskirts of Bengaluru, the CAT result has been a dream come true as he scored 99.6 percentile. “Inspired by senior managers in my office, I was encouraged to write CAT. I followed online lectures and took mock tests. I studied for nearly three hours a day during weekends and for over 90 minutes during weekdays,” said Mudgal, who belongs to Delhi.
Fahad Thasim, 26, a techie from JP Nagar, scored 99.47 percentile. He wants to pursue management as he feels there are not many prospects in his current job. “As I work from 9am to 6pm, I managed to take out time to study. I was expecting the same result and I’m happy,” he told STOI.
The number of female candidates who appeared for CAT 2018 was 73,326, while the number of male candidates was 1,36,075. Besides, four transgender candidates had taken the test.