Five visually impaired students clear CAT to join IIMs

Five visually impaired students secure admission into top business schools after receiving free coaching, emphasizing the importance of technology and support.

Five students with visual impairment are set to join top business schools, including Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, after receiving free coaching in Chennai for the Common Admission Test from Mockat, following their graduation from Sathyabama University.

Sharath Kumar, one of the candidates who has secured admission in IIM Ahmedabad, said tech tools developed for persons with disabilities facilitated his preparation for the examination and helped him emerge successful against candidates who did not face such challenges. He had to convince his father, who is a farmer, that he would get unsecured loan for his education.

“I faced many challenges because of my condition, but received a lot of support from my school, Devnar School for the Blind, Hyderabad, where I learnt a lot of tech tools such as NVDA (Non Visual Desktop Access) and focussed on education to get good grades. This helped us get into Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology for our BBA degree where we met our mentor Vignesh from Mockat in Chennai, who inspired us. Once I complete education, I want to start a community of visually impaired people from the management field, so that we can help each other get ahead,” he said.

Munnur Rahul, who has also secured admission in IIM Ahmedabad, said he got the opportunity because the government has brought in reservation for disabled persons.

“There is government support. I hope for more improvements and faster processes so that no one faces any obstacle in their way. Online processes will be best, and they can also bring in technology to help visually impaired and other disabled people work in government and private companies. We are also planning to use high-tech tools such as Smart Glasses to help us navigate easily once we graduate.

“We understood from our mentors Mr.Vignesh and Ms.Sanjana, founders of Mockat, who are IIM Lucknow graduates, that the CAT exam is different from other exams, and we need to prepare the concepts and test strategy; and they guided us on the preparation. All of us decided that we will make it our primary goal to crack CAT. Our preparation strategy included classes on mental arithmetic and visualise the data interpretation and logical reasoning problems. Our mentors helped us understand the Author’s Point of View (POV) for daily articles to solve reading comprehension questions. We conducted group discussions among ourselves to understand concepts and improve our knowledge of different subjects, for reading comprehension passages and interviews. During regular scribe sessions with 100 volunteers from IIMs we practised questions and clarified doubts through Google Meet,” said Mr. Rahul.

Daya Preveen, who secured admission in IIM Rohtak, said it was difficult for a visually impaired person to manage in the competitive world, but the technology was making it possible to compete and work with others. “There are some issues but I am confident that it will be improved in the future. Many different NGOs have also helped us. I was part of the Telengana Blind Cricket team and many seniors from school and the team shared their experiences and boosted our confidence. Many NGOs helped us to participate in various events across India and get exposure. Now all of us want to encourage people. I want many disabled people to take CAT and become managers, and I want to encourage and guide them,” he said.