Combat the WAT this MBA season

Being a Manager requires an overall personality and that can be cannot always be tested by a mere aptitude test. Your decision making and time management can be tested by the numerous management aptitude tests, but, when it comes to judging your communication, leadership and other behavioral skills, there is need for a test which is more than a written examination.

Over the years, Group Discussion (GD) and Personal Interview have been used to test a candidate’s personality and knowledge both. However, with the advent of the new IIM’s and other B-Schools, there are some new processes incorporated in the management school selection process.

Where a GD is on its way out as a selection process, a Written Ability Test (WAT) is somewhat taking its place as most of the B-Schools are adopting it to select the eligible candidates.

What is Written Ability Test (WAT)?

The written ability test is nothing but essay writing, where a topic is assigned to the test takers and there is a time limit allotted to finish the essay.

Top Management institutes like IIM- A, B, and L have already been conducting WAT in order to test the written communication, ideation and time management of the CAT takers. Following the league, most of the new IIM’s, are also doing away with GD’s and are incorporating the WAT. The idea behind this is to know the depth of the student’s reasoning and logical skills, which is usually overshadowed by the personality traits in a GD.

WAT Vs. Essay Writing

The difference between the two is that the WAT is conducted by most of the IIM’s whereas, the essay writing is conducted during the Xavier’s Aptitude Test (XAT). The other factor which affects the importance of both these rounds is the authority with the institutes to include or exclude the the scores of these.

Where all the colleges associated with XAT need to comply with its conducting body in order to accept or do away with the essay writing scores, B schools accepting the CAT score need to conduct the WAT on their own.

Essay writing in XAT

A student needs to take the essay writing test once he/she clears the written test. The essay writing test is for 20 minutes and the success of clearing the test depends on the candidate’s coherence,

comprehension, grammar and reasoning. The selection to the last round of admissions to XAT colleges (SPJIMR, IMT Ghaziabad, Tapmi, LIBA Chennai etc.) depends largely on the essay writing. A student must write and clear this test in order to secure his position in the final round of admission.

WAT in IIM’s

The weightage given to WAT ranges from 10% to 20% in all IIM’s. There are different time limits alotted by each IIM for the test e.g. IIM B gives 30 minutes, IIM L gives 15 minutes and IIM A gives as bleak as 10 minutes to complete the test.

Tips and Tricks-

Keeping the time constraint in mind, students must focus on finishing the essay by concluding the idea on time. There are certain measures one can takein order to prepare for this test as well as perform on the day!

* Write and write to practice- Practicing to write as much as you will help the most. Pick a topic and time your writing. See how well you can express and at the same time structure your thoughts. You can also practice precis in order to check your time, word count and the structure.

* Start with the easy way out- Pick easy, relatable topics first and then switch to the current affairs and other prevalant themes which require some reasoning.

* Latest is the best- Read well and be aware of the current affairs as you will not have much to say if you do not know what the topic is about.

* Do away with jargons- Flowery language is not the way to go here. What can really save you and fare you well in this round is your ability to reason things and support them with relevant data.

* Be content rich- It is important to logically reason your opinions but, make sure that you support it with valid facts and figures.

* Remember the aesthetics- There’s no way you can ignore correct usage of grammar, spellings and lastly, your writing. Make sure it’s readable even if you are catching your breath in those last moments of the exam!

GM, Academics, Triumphant Institute of Management says, ''It is important that the student strives for a constant improvement in his/her ability to express himself/herself, whether written or oral, in a simple and crisp manner; fancy language is no substitute for content! Nor should the students try to attempt complicated words if they are not sure of the spellings! Equally crucial is avoiding slangs like ‘guys,’ ‘wanna’, and ‘bucks’!

He further adds, ''the student will need to adhere to the word and time limit, be legible, be grammatically correct, avoid spelling mistakes and ensure that there is no scoringoff. The thoughts will need to be organised well in separate paragraphs for introduction, main body and conclusion. As always, the challenge for the aspirant is to give the reassuring impression to the reader that she/he is well informed and is thus open and free from dogma. The additional challenge in WAT is that, unlike in a GD, there are no fellow-participants on observing whom, the candidate can do mid-course correction in case the topic was initially incorrectly interpreted.

So, now that you have some pointers, you must practice your write ups. Make good use of the time in hand and master the art of essaying your thoughts!