July mid 2019, four months to CAT. My son who had done his BA in English, came up to me and said that he wants to crack CAT. Knowing that he was not extraordinary and that he had scored only 70 percentile in CAT 2018, I asked him his target colleges. Pat came the reply ‘the top 10’. Probably he did not realise the enormity of the task that lay in front of him.

His next question was “When should I join T.I.M.E?”. He asked ‘T.I.M.E’ because I was part of it for 18 years. I had trained 10000 aspirants with hundreds in top schools. I’ve also cracked CAT multiple times with a personal best of 99.87 percentile. I knew a bit about cracking CAT.

I said, “T.I.M.E is good, but in my opinion, not the right choice for you. Only really good students can survive their course. You’re an average student. You could easily get lost in a big ocean like T.I.M.E. (or for that matter IMS or CL). Within a month of classes and a few mock CATs you may get demoralised. With only four months to go, I don’t see you scoring more than 85 to 90 percentile if you join them.”

The next decision was a life changing one for me. I had quit coaching a year ago and I enjoy my farming, cricket, business coaching and travelling. I didn’t want to compromise on that.

I was tense. A doctor never does ‘surgery’ on one’s child and I was going to do just that. If it fails, he would lose a year, or join a ‘C’ category college. The emotionally safe option for me was to allow the surgery to be done by one of the big three (TIME, IMS or CL) or some popular online CAT preparation centre. But I knew that he would stand a far better chance with me because I could actively mentor him.

I gave him an option, “You will need an individualised preparation plan, a stage wise material plan, a personalised strategy, a personalised daily, weekly and monthly schedule and someone to mentor, coach and handhold you.” I warned him. “Things will go bad, may get worse before it gets better and you will need a lot of emotional support, if you are aiming for the top schools. I can help you get there, provided you ‘stick’ to the plan inspite of all obstacles, disastrous mockCAT scores and fatigue.”

He signed up. There’s enough quality material available in the market and I took all the classes. He joined for a couple of mock test series. By Aug end, he started hitting the 85%, and by Sept end he crossed 90% for the first time. It was a slow journey to the top and there were many situations where he felt depressed with the mock cat scores, the silly mistakes, the lack of speed, the inability to pick up easy questions, the fatigue and the mentoring from one’s dad. That was the worst part for him. How many of you would like your dad to mentor you?

But once he saw that his scores on the rise he started trusting me far more.

With a score of 144 (98.1 percentile) and interview calls from IIMA among others, he told me that some of his friends were asking whether I could help them for CAT 2020. My son was insistent.

18 years I’ve done CAT training. It was in my blood. I realised that I missed teaching and being part of the lives of young energetic souls. Maybe, I could help a few serious students every year, crack CAT. And I decided an upper limit. Only 25 students per year, if I have to do real justice to them.

Thus was born catmentorship.com and my second innings with CAT preparation.