Delhi student Shashank Prabhu tops CAT

Firstpost did a quick interview with Shashank Prabhu, who has topped the Common Admission Tests (CAT) 2011. Low-profile by nature, he is currently pursuing MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), University of Delhi. He had also topped the CET in 2010. Here is a quick excerpt from our conversation with him: Q: So how does it feel to top the CAT? Was it your first attempt? It feels good. Its a big thing to do and whosoever is planing for an MBA entrance has a dream of cracking the CAT. Getting 100 percent is a big thing. This was my third attempt. Never before have I come close to 100 percentile. In my first attempt I got 98.26 percentile and in my previous attempt I had got a 93.79 percentile. Q: What are your future plans now? [caption id=“attachment_179247” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Shashank Prabhu/linkedin”]  [/caption] I have not thought about whether I would be leaving FMS after the first year or I would be continuing here. But yes I would like to  consider my options. Q: Do you have particular college preferences like say, IIM A,B, C? IIM A,B,C are some of the best colleges where one would want to pursue management. FMS is also a good place to be in and I would place it right up there with the big names. I think the experience is different at every college. I am not sure if I would prefer one college over the other. A lot depends on the kind of experience. If I were to elaborate on this, FMS or take Delhi University, we have a semester pattern or percentages which are not grade points like the IIMs. There is less competition here and so you have more time to pursue what you want to which may not be the case in the IIMs. How did you prepare? For this attempt, I did not do anything. I hardly studied anything as I was busy with college and other activities. This was not a serious attempt. For my previous attempts, I had give a lot of mocks and solved a lot of questions. Do you have advice for students? Your basics have to be strong. You do not know what can come in the CAT. You need composure and patience so that in case you have any setback you should be able to come back from there. If one works on these things and has self-belief, then it should work. You shifted from medical studies to management. Why? I got through Grant Medical College but soon realised there is more to life than just practising. I could not see myself practicing for 30-35 years of my career. So I decided to look for options where I would be comfortable and that would also have an impact on society. So then I spoke to a few seniors and then weighed my career options along with my personality type and things I would enjoy doing. I  zeroed down to management. In management do you have any preference like marketing or finance? I am more interested in marketing rather than finance but I have my summer internship coming up with Tata Administrative Services, which offers a general management and strategy profile  and would like to do some thing on those lines. What are your long-term plans? I do not have an elaborate plan. Take it as they come. Times are changing- who would have imagined this, I would have been doing MBBS and then taking up the role of a journalist and then doing an MBA. This experience taught me that one cannot plan too ahead of time. How have your family and friends reacted after the CAT result? They are very happy for me. Last year, I did not get the score people expected. People are excited about these results and also very few people knew that I had taken the tests. So it was a shock to most people.