SimCAT 1: Ghanchakkar Perfrormance

PS : I am partially drunk while writing this post,high on Coca Cola .

PPS : No Cheers !!

Paper Analysis:-
The easiest VA and DI sets i would have ever seen,and i still managed to screw up both.
(ab to hadd hi ho gyi yaar)

QA was one of the most difficult ones,IMS guys were able to make it more difficult than TIME,

and that is i think one of the reasons i was able to clear the cut-off in it

How i wasted and will always be embarrassed of those 150 minutes ?

Well long story short,started the paper very happily,
thinking that i have been able to crack the algorithm to clear all the sectional cut-offs.
But as they say : "dude its CAT ! "
who are "they" ?

But Khuda ko kuch aur hi manzoor tha,
pata nahi shayad wo din hi manhoos tha.

How everything went into pieces:
Started off with RC solved one RC and attempted a couple of VA questions,
obviously its not about solving large no. of questions,but about accuracy even if the attempts are very low.

(What i learned : This is Not always true!...LoL)
Now 25 mins were over and i felt that i should better head off to DI,

During the entire paper i thought that DI was difficult and again Low attempts - High Accuracy shall rule,
"Sob !"
Now 75 mins had gone,it was Half Time.
Time to go for the kill- Quants ! (My Strongest Section, always true)
I will always be thankful to IMS for making such a difficult Quants section,
Automatically it was again like: Low attempts - High Accuracy shall rule,
Coz if it would have been easier then i would have to solve many more questions,
which i did not,had to just attempted 8 simple questions.
It was all about looking for Sitters.
(all my friends did more questions,and they payed ..mu ha ha ha ha!!)

Now approx. 20 minutes left and still VA left to solve,now under such circumstances no one would consider solving RC as an option,hence had to solve Verbal in less time and accuracy gone for a toss !!

Scores : "Not Worth Sharing"
%ile : "Jane bhi do yaron,Jaan kar kya karoge"

Way Ahead :

Now after this kind of performance i needed something to satisfy myself,
And the answer lied in AimCAT 1016 by TIME,which coincidentally was on the very same day,
I took the question paper from one of my friend and solved it with a new algorithm :
"Sticking to the Basics - No time for experimentation"

Well this was the same algorithm which i applied in SimCAT Zero and got 95.12 %ile.
Now the results of the 1016 is out and i have managed to clear all the cut-offs,but can't be confident enough,took the test at Home and not under some official Proctored environment,obviously the scores will vary under different circumstances.
(Environmental conditions like Temperature,Atmospheric pressure and humidity also play a crucial role,
Mind It !)


[The season has just begun...]

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

N.P.H is totally awesome!!
Seen him in HIMYM,
then in Harold and Kumar movie,

has already written "Bro Code",
and,
now Acting + Singing in a single documentary. Incredible !

The soundtrack is also great,can't stop listening to the songs: "Brand new day", "Laundry day", "On the Rise", "Slipping".

Premiered exclusively on the Internet -- for free! -- in July of 2008, the three-part web series Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is an absolutely wonderful gem of a comedy. The relatively brief super-villain musical brings needed mirth and frivolity to a field clogged with brooding "dark" comic sagas ... we keep waiting for a noirish, nightmarish film adaptation of Dagwood and Blondie or Nancy and Sluggo to appear.

Originally brainstormed as a creative activity to fill time wasted by the writers' strike, Horrible showcases the talent of Joss Whedon & company and points toward the future of entertainment.

Beware : " He has a Ph.D. in horribleness! "

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

"dextermanky Whiteboard" is also now on Flickr !!

Verbal Shots

As in my previous post i had mentioned about the new Mentor and the POA thing,now it seems they want me to regularly practice the IMS word list.

Target: "30 words a day"
"That's Extreme " is what i thought when i heard this target for first.


Plan :
For the next few days its going to be only the alphabets "E-X-T-R-E-M-E" that i will be doing.
This kind of a plan will be implemented on a weekly basis,with change of alphabets,they say its always good to keep knowing words as in mystery than to cram the word list in alphabetical order,so they say :)

The Word list "Lexicon" from IMS is quite a big and exhaustive study material having 3500 words (approx.),
It also covers many Supplementary lists:
Frequently Misspelled Words,
Prefix and Suffix list,
Foreign terms in English,
And many special lists for -Manias,-Phobias,Animal terms,Economic terms etc. etc. etc.

Lets see how that helps...more to follow !!

[The season has just begun...]

New Mentor : New Direction

“Mentor: Someone whose hindsight can become your foresight”
This just in,IMS is providing the top 100 scorers(or so) of SimCAT Zero ,a special mentor.
Mentor to help and guide the students in order to cross the barrier between the 95+ to 99.

My Mentor : Amrita Dutta(Regional Mrktg. Manager,IMS)
Just one session with her,and it has been a complete phase transition in my seriousness towards studies, started taking my mocks very seriously, (u can see that : 2 posts on a single day)

A new POA will be made and i must follow it,beginning with the completion of BRMs
(Basic Reference Material).

[The season has just begun...]

The season has just begun...

Its too hot right now in India,temperature in Delhi is reaching new heights,rainfalls are the blessings of GOD and it seems the Indra devta(deity) is not in a good mood these days,and Surya devta is enjoying every bit of it.
LoL
The summer has already passed,the monsoon (well usually) starts in mid-June,
then which season i am talking about ?

Well not any other season,
Here i am referring to the Mock CAT season- Season to test and strategize yourself for that C-Day : CAT day, the day of reckoning when you appear for the CAT exam.

As of now i have appeared for 4 mock tests
1) IMS SimCAT Zero ..................................: 95.12%ile
2) TIME AimCAT .......................................: 90.18%ile
3)IMS AceCAT 1 ........................................: 88.30%ile
(i seriously doubt the %ile mapper for this one,more on this later)

4)TIME AimCAT 1018 .............................. (just took it today) !!

So much to work on,more about these in later posts.

My dig into the Yashpal Report

The Government has finally realized that something is wrong with our Educational system. And this is not the first time. However, with the abolition of AICTE and UGC and the implementation of the Yashpal Report within the coming 100 days, it wants to make sure that something substantial does happen this time. A big hoopla surrounds the Yashpal report and it is the current ‘new’ topic of discussion. However, as was with the nuclear deal,
do we really know how it will affect us once it is implemented?

The Yashpal report is a comprehensive document that lists out the proposed changes that need to be undertaken by the Indian Education System in order for it to be viable in the changing face of education. However, it has come out to be as vague as the Government’s whole idea of quality education.

The ideas presented, though noble, are certainly not clear. For example, an excerpt from the report under the head “The idea of a university” reads as follows:

Apart from resisting fragmentation of knowledge, the idea of a university should aspire to encompass the world of work in all its forms. Work constitutes the human sphere where knowledge and skills are born, and where new knowledge takes shape in response to social and personal needs. Indeed, the experience and culture of work represents that core space where the humanities and the sciences meet.

As can be seen, there is a lot of thought but absence of an implementable idea.

Further, the report discusses the ‘Problems of the Education Sector’. Though the identification of the problem areas is right, there is a failure in quantification of the amount of damage done. Explaining the teaching method and mode of transmission in class rooms, it says: “mode of transmission is generally quite poor”. This kind of generic terminology might undermine the immediacy of the need to address the issue and thus affect the motive of the report.

The report has little or no data to prove or corroborate many of its claims. For example, it says that in the past, some institutions after being declared as universities had promised to give degrees for a certain amount of money; however, there is no data present to prove such an allegation. In the absence of data, all claims just become mere observations which do not have the capacity to bring about any change.

The report proposes an end to the ‘Deemed University’ phenomenon. If, implemented, no new institution will be accredited with the ‘deemed university’ status and the existing ones will be given a period of three years to develop into a university (fulfilling all the prescribed norms), failing which their deemed university status will be withdrawn. It is a difficult idea to implement as it is unfair to expect an institution to start with university level standards. A better idea would have been to declare an institute a university in stages; the first stage being a deemed university.

In the Indian higher education scenario, there is one regulatory body to cover all possible areas of education. For example, University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), Medical Council of India (MCI), Bar Council of India (BCI), Council of Architecture (COA), National Council on Teacher Education (NCTE), Indian Nursing Council (INC) and Pharmacy Council of India. The Yashpal Report proposes the development of a single regulatory body called the ‘National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER)’ to overcome the chaos created by the confusing rules of a large number of bodies. This will certainly make regulation more effective and transparent and also reduce corrupt practices by institutes. According to the report, the new regulatory body will move from the current method of the ‘inspection-approval’ to a new method of ‘verification and authentication’. This will ensure that the educational institutions work in co-ordination with the regulatory bodies and the upgradation of an institute becomes an ongoing instead of a one time process.

The report lays down the objectives for higher education which indicate that there will no more be any confusion in policy decisions as there will be a single point of contact of all policy related queries. Also universities will become autonomous which will give them more freedom. It has mentioned continuous reforms in education, although again specific details about them are missing.

Amongst all other recommendations of the report, the one that grabs attention is the proposal to convert universities like IITs and IIMs into full fledged universities imparting knowledge in all areas. This proposal, if not implemented with caution can ruin the engineering or the MBA education of the IITs and IIMs.

The ideas presented in the report can improve the quality of higher education in India only if it provides tangible ideas that can be implemented in reality. Although it has started a debate which is necessary for reform, resenting merely ‘what needs to be done’ will not help any one.

Source :[PaGaLGuY : My dig into the Yashpal Report ]

Recess from Recession

The day started usual,read a few editorials from the Hindu, just in order to keep myself at bay from the regular "YADA YADA" of the other newspapers,and then headed off to read the news on the Internet,and then i came across this particular news, a news of everyone's interest.

"The International Monetary Fund’s latest forecast upgrades its global economic growth predictions for next year by 0.5% from its predictions three months ago, but warns that the pace of recovery remains uncertain."

Hell yes!! finally the economy is coming out of recession, well of course it will take some time for an overall settlement or more precisely put as "creation of balance in the global economies,"but the good news that stays at the top is the tough times are about to be over.

Well if u are "still" employed this news is like Christmas,the layoffs which tormented the lives more fiercely than any cyclone are to be reduced by the issue of this report. (Fingers Crossed)
In times of crisis companies appear to be cutting back even on false hopes of career progression.

A Strip from the Dilbert clearly signifies how difficult it has been for those which are "still" employed,forget the promotions:
"Who needs shelter, food or health care? We should be happy to have a job."