Pavneet Singh tops CAT, scores 100 percentile
10 Jan 2009, 1233 hrs IST, Gulveen Aulakh, ET Bureau

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUobmVQDI1Y

CHANDIGARH: For Pavneet Singh Gulyani, the 22-year-old Punjab Engineering College student who topped the IIM Common Admission Test with a 100-percentile score, the world is a different place. And he knows it. “Recession, lay-offs , bail-out and stimulus packages have become household words. In a capitalist system, this happens as it did for a brief period in the 1980s,” he says.

The final-year mechanical engineering student, who aspires to become an entrepreneur, sees a ray of hope. “I guess there is someone out there making money even in these grim times. Someone like Warren Buffet has faced tougher times than what we are facing today and is still going strong.”

Son of a shopkeeper, Mohali-based Pavneet is one of the many Indians who believe in the power of the domestic economy. “In India, I think recession or slowdown should not last for more than a year or so. In the long run, things will be better and Indian markets could regain their lost position.”

It is with this confidence that Pavneet hopes to fulfil his entrepreneurial dreams of bringing quality education to the Chandigarh region. “My focus will be on the education sector and especially on higher education. To begin with, I would like to begin a business school in the region since we lack quality education,” he adds. Not to disappoint, the region fared equally well, adding bling to the celebrations . Saurabh Verma, also of PEC and the only student in the region to report calls from all seven IIMs, secured a score of 99.94 percentile . Sanjot Malhi, son of DGP Haryana Home Guards and Civil Defence Gurjot Singh Malhi, scored 99.83 percentile.


According to Bulls Eye north head Hirdesh Madan: “Overall, close to 50 students from the region got calls from IIM. The results affirm our perception that more of non-engineers are making it to the IIMs. Even though most successful students from the region are still from an engineering background, there is a distinct bias in favour of candidates with strong linguistic abilities.” Pavneet’s preparation, consisting of continuous mock exams, trained him for every possible situation that the surprise-springing CAT is known for. Eventually , it was thinking straight and executing a strategy to perfection that helped him crack the CAT. “Verbal ability was my weak point and the first look at the paper gave me made me nervous! Since there were 40 questions in the verbal ability (VA) section, it meant nearly more than half of the score would depend on English. But since I was strong in data interpretation (DI) and quantitative analysis (QA) I wrapped up both the sections quickly and gave more time to VA. Still, I expected the least score from English,” he said.