Chirag Gupta is one of the nine candidates who have scored the perfect hundred percentile marks and topped the CAT exam in his first attempt itself. The 21-year-old is pleasantly surprised by his performance and said that even he was not expecting 181 marks.
Are you a CAT 2021 topper? Or do you know who is the CAT topper? Reach out to us to get interviewed.
Chirag, who is a resident of Goregaon, Mumbai is actually native to Ahmedabad. Born to Mr. Dharmendra Gupta who works as a deputy general manager in SBI life, and Mrs. Anita Gupta, a homemaker, Chirag was an above-average student in school. Though he secured a decent 83.8% in his twelfth class, he still managed to score an All India Rank of 5064 in the JEE advanced examination. His top score was enough to get him into the prestigious IITs but still, he chose IISER Pune to pursue a dual BS-MS degree owing to his interest in physics and research areas.
As time flew by, he grew more interested to pursue a career in consultancy. Then in March 2021 Chirag finally decided to start preparing for the CAT exam. He decided to do a complete preparation by only following online resources. Initially, he started by giving one mock paper per week and clearing doubts and concepts which he found difficult on platforms like YouTube. By the time he was nearer to the exam, he had already given 50-60 mock tests. Interestingly, in the last months, he gave only 2nd slot mock papers because his entrance was scheduled in the second slot only.
Consistent and repeated practice is the key to reduce mistakes and get better – Chirag put emphasis to mock tests and explained that it helps in pointing out the weaknesses and provides the space to make rectifications. He did almost 60 sample papers from IMS and Time. For the verbal section, he suggested to pick up classical novels and non-fictions based on philosophical contentions. These helped him in enriching his vocabulary and widdening his thought process. He also adds that he used to attempt nothing in the first 15 minutes just to build up pressure. Chirag advises the future aspirants that the data interpretation section should be handled last because even though it is time-consuing, it gives guaranteed results.
Chirag who is also an avid chess player aims to get into one of these three IIMs- Ahmedabad, Bangalore, or Kolkata. He advises future aspirants to be welcome to changes. He also added that he is very flexible and may change his stream from consulting to something else if he enjoys it.
