Classroom revisited..

My fondest memories of the classroom experience are spread over the latter part of high school , engineering and now at TIME CAT coaching classes. The last one is still not that much of a memory as I am in the midst of it.

Now you might be wondering whats so special about going to a CAT coaching class , a large number of people are doing in presently. The essential difference here is that this is the second time I am doing it! Shocking , surprising whatever it is , its a decision I won't regret , judging by the classes, tests,faculty , material ... and most of all how much my earlier classes at IMS sucked!

Yes, its true ... TIME rocks and IMS sucks. This conclusion is based purely on my experiences alone and anyone is free to contend or concur with me. Here are some of the key differences between the two ( both centres are in Adyar, IMS is near near Adyar Signal and TIME is near MGR Janaki college).

1) Ambience

IMS is awfully cramped , it is a small shady place with A/C and all , but hardly any place to walk around . TIME is conducted in decent classrooms (MGR Janaki college).

2) Basic reference / study material

IMS material sucks big time. They dont realise that people preparing for CAT come from different backgrounds and dont have the time to read a text book kind of material each of which is bigger than any you might have had in school! ( except perhaps your Atlas).
A word list "book" is given to you... which is not even as useful as a dictionary .Who the hell will carry it around everywhere , most of all office?

TIME material is concise, with relevant problems ( in the case of Math) and to be honest , I ve not gone through the english stuff yet. The cue cards though are impressive, if not sufficient to learn all words , at least they are more handy and digestable than one big book which we already have in the form of a dictionary.

3) Faculty

This is one department where TIME scores way above IMS. Most of the IMS faculty are very good, with relevant experience with whatever they are teaching . Its really heartening to meet English teachers of rare quality after school ... in fact better than those at school ( FAPS,Bangalore). The maths teachers are very good as well . Some are excellent and others are satisfactory, but overall standard is good and they do their job well.

At IMS , I found there was a fifty - fifty distribution of bad and good faculty . There was one good English teacher , but the other one was so horrible that english rated negative for me at IMS. This I was able to make out because I knew what mistakes and negligence was being meted out to the students there .

4) Class room material

At IMS: From day one , even at the concept building classes , you are expected to race with time! When you are learning something , its against logic to hurry it. And when I used to try clarifying things, it would be pushed to the end of the class... which is of no use most of the time.
I know for a fact that if I did nt understand something , most of the class would not have. And this speaks poorly of the design of the material to be completed in a short time and also by the staff handling the classes. The class room material is awfully rigid , with fixed deadlines for every set of problems and leaving little scope for the faculty to be flexible.

At TIME: Concept building is learning how to solve problems in Maths ,with a good reason behind every formula used ; learning ways to identify errors in English, logical explanations of some features of the language and the like. It all boils down to the experience and ability of the staff. The class room material is NOT used to govern the class room experience... in fact , the faculty relies on his/her own experience and the material is used as a tool not as a fetter .

5) Timings

There is a slight difference here , I went to the evening classes at IMS ( 7 to 8 30 pm) and attend morning classes at TIME ( 6 to 7 45 am). Comparing the morning classes at TIME to the evening classes at IMS may not seem fair, but I ll do it anyway.
Evening classes at IMS are affected by things such as traffic leading up to the classroom from a days work at office; people coming in late from work, college ; even the faculty coming in after a day's work ( most of them are not full time); change in shcedule because of faculty not turning up because of problems arising in the day time and spilling over into the class time.

The morning classes at TIME pose a different problem : getting up and ready by 6 am! Once this task is accomplished , the rest is easy. The faculty is almost always on time and not more than 5 minutes late and there is no problem with the class going on for even half an hour more than scheduled because its early in the morning and there's the whole day ahead! There is a world of difference between the two... anyone who wants to go for coaching classes, morning is the time for it... and this is coming from a hard core night gaming guy!

6) Centre manager

This might not apply to all IMS centres but the one at Adyar has a real bad one is all I can say. Yeah , before collecting the fees , she was very polite and all, but after that all experiences left a bad taste in my mouth. With unpredictable merging of batches to suit her whim and fancy and some bullshit reasons , she used to pre pone classes to 6 30 pm.. when coming at 7 pm itself was tough for the working folk like me and couple of others. I had paid my hard earned money for class room coaching and she comes and preaches the good of the "majority" and all that. I wonder how I actually went through this without running her over with my yamaha... guess it would nt have made any difference , my bikes as dirty as it can get anyway.

At TIME, the centre manager is a voracious speaker to say the least. May not be eloquent in the strictest sense , but has amazing focus on what he is saying ... if he can speak about test taking strategies for 2 hours at a stretch! That is the only experience with him I have had until now . He is also a member of the teaching faculty at TIME , so I guess I will meet him sometime as the faculty allocation works on a rotation basis across all centres in Chennai. I ve got some intuitive and logical approaches to take the test which nobody at IMS able to offer with the conviction as he did.


7) Human touch

This is a very important factor which I found mostly missing at IMS , whether it was the faculty , centre manager or the receptionists for that matter. During the month of July last year ,I was down with Jaundice and staying at home in Bangalore . I tried in vain to get the material to be sent to me from the centre at Adyar... thanks to the apathy of the centre manager. At the end of the recovery period, I got a big bundle of material for the time I missed.

I cant say much about the office staff at TIME , most of them are cooperative. Faculty again I say is very good and they are genuinely helpful when you ask them for help.

8) Mock/Sim CATS

An important thing I almost forgot!
At TIME , there are 20 mock CATS! right from the time you join classes for you to get a feel of the real thing . Its not an overkill at all, considering that you get an idea where you stand right from the beginning , with good feedback as well.Many toppers who eventually make it to the iims say that this is the most important part of their preparation for the real thing in November.

At IMS , there are 8 Sim CATS in total and a whole lot of other home based or class room based tests which I think is something like Ruffles lays giving chips in different coloured packets . Even if you are just planning to take a test series, theres more value for money with TIME...

To conclude , I ve not felt any better than I do now about my prospects at CAT. At IMS , you are made to feel how difficult it is to get there rather than showing how to get there... but at TIME , that is not the focus, they do their job and if you do yours, theres no stopping you!