I will keep this short not because brevity is the soul of wit but because my IPMAT prep journey was not longer than two months. While it is hard to now believe what I would have done otherwise, I did not have a set ambition to come to IIM Indore and was looking into abroad opportunities with greater seriousness. However, in that process I fell in love with math and the logic underflowing it, the beauty that connects multiple domains. I never practiced hundreds of sums like I did for board exams, but chose questions that looked interesting and worked them out to the fullest. Perhaps, this wove in me a problem-solving ability that came to use in the SA and MCQ sections, and made them a piece of cake that I did not expect.
As for my VA section, I have always had a thirst for knowledge and reading was the way to quench this. Since the age of five or six, I have read voraciously and indiscriminately; women’s magazines to fiction to encyclopaedias. I never felt afraid to grasp long texts and English passage-based exams soon became a challenge, a thrill, an adventure. Thus, even for IPMAT, I took up no specialised training for VA but merely fostered my love to learn.
In a complete U-turn, after getting shortlisted for PI, I decided to take my Indore aspirations seriously. I began to research on Youtube and Reddit about interview patterns, general knowledge forums, and confident charismatic speaking skills. This was unfamiliar terrain because I was good with words, but not with people. Soon, my fear of interviews eroded as I became more confident in my knowledge and started deflecting the pressure to get in.
I believe it was a journey of much twists and turns, but (at the risk of sounding cliché) thinking less of the consequences and enjoying the process in real-time definitely made my IPMAT prep experience as successful as it was.
