What the WAT is, in one paragraph
WAT topics for the IIMs in 2026-27 fall into six families: economy and business, policy and governance, technology, society and education, environment and international affairs, and abstract one-liners. Sixty of them, each with a three-point outline, are below, with six model essays. The Written Ability Test (IIM Calcutta's procedure calls it the Writing Ability Test) is a short, timed essay on a topic you see for the first time in the room, usually written by hand on the day of your IIM personal interview, as candidates report it. It tests whether you can take a position, order three or four ideas and write clean English under time, which is what a case write-up or a client note asks of you in the programme. Per IIM Calcutta's MBA 2027-29 admission procedure (iimcal.ac.in, read on 21 October 2026), the WAT carries 8 of 100 points in final selection, next to 48 for the personal interview, 30 for the CAT score, 6 for academic diversity and 8 for work experience. Other IIMs weigh it differently and we quote only the policy we have read. IIM Ahmedabad runs a different written round, the Analytical Writing Test (AWT), which asks you to analyse a given argument rather than argue your own; its format is known only from candidate reports because the IIMA admission page returned 404 to our fetcher this week. The round comes after the CAT 2026 result (the test is on Sunday 29 November 2026 per iimcat.ac.in; the result is expected in early January 2027) and the January shortlists, in the February to March 2027 WAT-PI window shown in the dates block above, which is marked expected because each campus announces its own schedule with the call letter.
- One topic, one sitting, usually by hand, on the day of the PI at most IIMs, as candidates report it.
- Official weight we can quote: IIM Calcutta 8 of 100 in final selection (2027-29 procedure). No official duration or word limit was readable this week.
- IIM Ahmedabad: AWT, argument analysis. IIM Bangalore and most others: WAT, opinion essay. Both labels from candidate reports where not from a policy page.
- Topic types: current affairs with an opinion, business and economy, social, technology, abstract lines.
- The winning shape: position in line one, two reasons with examples, the strongest counter conceded, the same position restated.
- Everything below marked TalkDrill is a worked example written by us, not a candidate's script.
The format: what is official and what is only reported
This table is deliberately split into two columns, because the WAT is the part of IIM admissions with the thinnest official paper trail. The policy pages name the round and, at IIM Calcutta, its weight; they do not describe it. Everything about minutes and words comes from candidates, varies from campus to campus and from year to year, and should be treated as a pattern until your call letter says otherwise.
| Institute | Official, from a policy page we read | Reported by candidates (unofficial, varies by year) |
|---|---|---|
| IIM Calcutta | WAT named in the 2027-29 admission procedure; 8 of 100 points in final selection; PI 48, CAT 30, academic diversity 6, work experience 8 | One current-affairs or business topic, a short window, written just before the interview; panels sometimes refer to it |
| IIM Ahmedabad | Nothing readable this week: the PGP admission page returned 404 to our fetcher on 20 and 21 October 2026 | Analytical Writing Test (AWT): a short argument is given; you analyse its reasoning, assumptions and gaps rather than give your own view |
| IIM Bangalore | Nothing readable this week: the admission process page returned 403 to our fetcher | WAT on a current topic before the PI; essay-style, a page or so |
| IIM Lucknow, Kozhikode, Indore and the others | Not fetched this run; each publishes its own admission policy PDF on its site | WAT before the PI at most campuses; some newer IIMs have run a common process in past cycles with one WAT and one PI feeding several lists |
Two things follow. First, when a coaching page gives you "WAT is 20 minutes and 300 words", ask where it got that. Second, prepare for a range: train at a hard ceiling so a shorter real window still feels workable, and have a plan for writing the same piece at two lengths. The selection criteria page keeps the official weights per institute as we read each policy; the dates page tracks the shortlist and WAT-PI schedule as each campus announces it.
How a WAT is read, and what a good one does in the first line
Picture the reader. A faculty member has a stack of handwritten scripts and a few minutes for each, often between interviews. They are not grading literature. They are asking three questions: does this person have a view, can they support it in order, and can they write English a client could read. A script that answers all three in the first four lines is already most of the way to its mark; the rest confirms it.
That is why the first sentence matters more than anything else you write. "The question of whether India should adopt a four-day week is a complex one with many dimensions" tells the reader nothing and signals a writer stalling for time. "India should not legislate a four-day week, but it should let firms try one" tells the reader your position, hints at your nuance and promises a structure. Everything after it is easier to read because the reader knows where you are going.
| Paragraph | Job | Length in a short WAT (TalkDrill guide) |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Position | Answer the question in one sentence; one sentence of context if needed | Two to three sentences |
| 2. First reason | Claim, then one concrete example or mechanism | Three to four sentences |
| 3. Second reason | A different kind of reason (economic after social, long-term after short-term) | Three to four sentences |
| 4. The counter | The strongest objection, stated fairly, then why your position survives it | Two to three sentences |
| 5. Landing | Restate the position with a "so what": what should be done, by whom | One to two sentences |
Notice that the counter paragraph is not optional. It is what separates an opinion from an argument, and it is the paragraph that tells a panel you would survive a seminar room. If you can only fit four paragraphs, cut the second reason, not the counter.
The twenty-minute method (TalkDrill training setting)
We train the WAT at twenty minutes and about three hundred words. That is our ceiling, chosen so that a shorter or longer real window feels manageable; it is not an institute's rule and no IIM has published one that we could read. Inside the twenty minutes the split is fixed, because the one thing that reliably ruins a WAT is starting to write in the first thirty seconds.
- Minutes 0 to 3: decide and outline. Read the topic twice. Write your position as one sentence in the margin. Under it, two reasons and the strongest counter, as single words or phrases. If you cannot find a counter, your position is probably too safe to be interesting; sharpen it.
- Minutes 3 to 15: write. The five paragraphs above, in order, without going back. Short sentences. One idea per sentence. If an example will not come, write the mechanism instead ("firms that cut a day without cutting output must raise hourly productivity, which is possible in offices and not on assembly lines").
- Minutes 15 to 18: read once. Fix the three things readers notice: a first sentence that does not state a position, a paragraph with no example, and the English errors that are common in timed writing (articles, subject-verb agreement, "the" before abstract nouns, a comma where a full stop belongs).
- Minutes 18 to 20: the landing. If the close is weak, rewrite it now. The last line is the one the reader carries into your interview.
The two-length rule
Practise every topic at two lengths: the full five paragraphs, and a four-paragraph version with one reason cut. If the real window is shorter than you trained for, you will already know which paragraph to drop. If it is longer, add one more example to each reason rather than a new argument; new arguments found at minute fourteen are usually bad ones.
The AWT at IIM Ahmedabad: argument analysis, not an essay
As candidates report it (the IIMA admission page could not be read by our fetcher this week, so nothing here is quoted from the institute), the Analytical Writing Test gives you a short passage that makes an argument, often a recommendation with a reason attached, and asks you to analyse it. Your own opinion on the subject is not the point. The question is whether you can see what the argument assumes, what evidence it lacks, where it jumps, and what would make it stronger or weaker. It is closer to a case-method habit than to a school essay, which is exactly why the campus that teaches by case uses it.
The method is a checklist, applied fast:
| Step | Ask | Typical finding |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Conclusion | What is the passage asking me to accept or do? | A recommendation ("the city should ban X") or a prediction ("sales will rise") |
| 2. Premises | What reasons does it give? | Usually one or two facts, one of them a comparison |
| 3. Assumptions | What must be true for the premises to produce the conclusion? | That the two things compared are alike; that a cause is the cause; that the past will repeat |
| 4. Missing evidence | What would I need to see before agreeing? | A base rate, a control group, the cost side, who is affected |
| 5. Alternative explanations | Could the same facts support a different conclusion? | Almost always yes; name one |
| 6. Strengthen or weaken | What single fact would change my view most? | Give one of each |
Write the analysis in the same five-paragraph shape: a first sentence that names the conclusion and says the argument is weak (or partly sound) and why; one paragraph per major flaw, each with the assumption named and the missing evidence stated; a paragraph on what would strengthen it; a close that says what the decision-maker should do before acting. Model essay six below is a complete worked AWT written by TalkDrill, with the prompt. Never argue the topic itself in an AWT; a response that says "I agree that two-wheelers are dangerous" has misread the task.
The 60 topics with three-point outlines
Sixty topics in six groups of ten. Each row gives a point for, a point against and a place to land, so that you can plan a WAT in three minutes or speak a GD entry in thirty seconds. The rows are deliberately free of statistics: a WAT does not need numbers, and a wrong number costs more than no number. Where a topic turns on a figure (a growth rate, a deficit, a poll), look it up the week before your interview and write it in the margin of this page. The GD topics page has a further eighty topics built the same way for XLRI, SIBM, NMIMS and IIFT rounds.
A. Economy and business
| Topic | For | Against | Where to land |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. India should adopt a four-day working week | Output in offices depends on focus, not hours; trials abroad reported stable output | Factories, hospitals and shops cannot compress a week; it widens the white-collar gap | No law; let firms try and publish results |
| 2. The 70-hour work week debate: is hard work the answer for young India? | Early-career intensity builds skill; nations industrialised on long hours | Hours are an input, not an output; burnout and health costs land on the public | Measure output; protect the right to switch off |
| 3. Quick commerce is good for India | Jobs for delivery workers, convenience, data-driven retail | Dark stores hollow out kirana shops; rider safety and pay are weak | Allow it; regulate rider pay and insurance |
| 4. Should India's public sector banks be privatised? | Governance, speed of lending decisions, capital from markets | Priority lending, rural reach and crisis stability come from state ownership | Consolidate and reform first; privatise selectively |
| 5. Start-up layoffs show the funding model was broken | Growth bought with cheap capital collapsed when capital priced in risk | Layoffs are a correction, not a verdict; the survivors are stronger | Fund unit economics, not valuations |
| 6. Family businesses are India's real economic engine | Long horizons, patient capital, deep local knowledge | Succession fights, weak governance, nepotism over merit | Professional management with family ownership |
| 7. Are Indian unicorns overvalued? | Valuations followed foreign capital cycles, not Indian profits | A large consumer market justifies long payback periods | Judge by profitability within a stated horizon |
| 8. Should India sign more free trade agreements? | Market access for services and pharma; cheaper inputs | Domestic manufacturing and farmers lose protection | Sign, with sectoral safeguards and a timetable |
| 9. The gig economy: freedom or exploitation? | Flexible income for millions without formal jobs | No social security, algorithmic control, no bargaining power | Portable benefits funded by platforms |
| 10. Manufacturing or services: where should India bet? | Manufacturing absorbs low-skill labour at scale | Services already lead exports; manufacturing faces automation | Both, with manufacturing targeted where labour is intensive |
B. Policy and governance
| Topic | For | Against | Where to land |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11. One nation, one election | Lower cost, less policy paralysis from permanent campaigning | State issues drown under national ones; mid-term collapses are hard to handle | Phased alignment with safeguards for state autonomy |
| 12. Election freebies: welfare or bribery? | Direct transfers reach the poor without leakage | Unfunded promises crowd out investment and debt-load states | Disclose the cost; let voters judge funded promises |
| 13. Should there be a legal guarantee for the minimum support price? | Income security for farmers; counters market power of traders | Fiscal cost, crop distortion, storage burden | Price deficiency payments over physical procurement |
| 14. Lateral entry into the civil services | Domain expertise, fresh thinking, competition for generalists | Reservation questions, accountability, insider capture | Limited, transparent, time-bound posts |
| 15. Should India have a Uniform Civil Code? | Equal personal law for all citizens, especially women | Diversity of custom; trust deficit in how it is drafted | Gender-just reform first, built by consultation |
| 16. A caste census is necessary | Policy without data is guesswork; reservations need evidence | Deepens identity politics; data misuse | Count, publish methodology, limit political use |
| 17. Old pension scheme or a market-linked pension? | Defined benefits protect retirees from markets | Unfunded liabilities fall on the next generation | A guaranteed floor with a funded, invested corpus |
| 18. Should voting be compulsory? | Legitimacy, less capture by mobilised minorities | Coercion is not participation; enforcement is impractical | Make voting easier before making it compulsory |
| 19. Women's reservation in legislatures: enough or overdue? | Representation changes agendas and role models | Proxy candidates; merit arguments | Implement, with party-level reform on candidate selection |
| 20. Delimitation and the South: is population the right basis for seats? | One person, one vote demands equal constituencies | Punishes states that controlled population growth | Freeze shares, grow the house, protect federal balance |
C. Technology
| Topic | For | Against | Where to land |
|---|---|---|---|
| 21. Generative AI will do to office work what automation did to factories | Routine cognitive tasks are already being done by models | Judgement, accountability and relationships stay human | Jobs change shape before they vanish; retraining is the policy |
| 22. Should AI be regulated by law or by industry codes? | Law gives rights and remedies; codes are self-serving | Law lags the technology; it freezes incumbents' advantage | Regulate uses and harms, not the models |
| 23. Deepfakes threaten democracy | Cheap, convincing fakes at election speed outrun fact-checkers | Voters adapt, as they did to photo editing; provenance tools exist | Platform liability plus provenance standards |
| 24. Is India's digital public infrastructure a model for the world? | Identity, payments and data-sharing rails at population scale | Exclusion when systems fail; surveillance risk; state dependence | Export the design with the safeguards attached |
| 25. Should children's social media use be restricted by law? | Evidence of harm to sleep, attention and mood | Enforcement means identity checks for everyone | Design duties on platforms over age bans |
| 26. Can India build its own semiconductor industry? | Strategic necessity; subsidies and a large market | Capital intensity, talent, decades-long learning curves | Start at assembly and design; fabs as a long bet |
| 27. Data is the new oil | Value accrues to whoever holds and refines it | Data is non-rival and reusable; the metaphor misleads policy | Treat data as infrastructure with access rules |
| 28. Should India privatise more of its space sector? | Capital, speed, a global launch market | National security, public research mission | Private launch and services; public science |
| 29. Cryptocurrency: ban, tax or regulate? | Innovation and remittances; bans push activity offshore | Fraud, capital flight, monetary sovereignty | Regulate exchanges, tax gains, keep the rupee central |
| 30. Work from home is here to stay | Productivity held, talent pools widened, cities decongested | Culture, training of juniors and innovation suffer | Hybrid by default, with the role deciding the mix |
D. Society and education
| Topic | For | Against | Where to land |
|---|---|---|---|
| 31. Coaching culture is damaging Indian education | Rote drilling, student stress, schools hollowed out | Coaching fills the gap bad schools leave; it is a symptom | Fix school quality and exam design; coaching follows |
| 32. Should board exams be replaced by continuous assessment? | One bad day should not decide a life; learning over cramming | Continuous assessment invites bias and inflation | Two attempts plus moderated internal marks |
| 33. Is the three-language formula right for India? | Mobility, national cohesion, cognitive benefits | Imposition fears; teacher shortages; burden on children | Choice of third language, state-led delivery |
| 34. Social media is making young Indians lonelier | Comparison, displaced sleep and real contact | It connects the isolated; the lonely use it more, not the reverse | Design and habits matter more than the medium |
| 35. Should the legal age for marriage be the same for men and women? | Equality, education and health gains for women | Enforcement in rural areas; criminalising families | Equalise, with schooling and livelihood support |
| 36. Mental health should be treated like physical health at work | Productivity, retention, ethical duty | Cost for small firms; privacy concerns | Insurance parity and manager training |
| 37. Are Indian cities liveable? | Jobs, services and opportunity concentrate there | Air, floods, traffic, housing costs | Empower city governments with money and powers |
| 38. Should the IITs and IIMs be reserved for Indians, or go global? | Foreign students and campuses raise standards and revenue | Public money, domestic seats, mission drift | Expand first; international campuses as a complement |
| 39. Is the four-year undergraduate degree good for students? | Flexibility, research exposure, global parity | Cost of a fourth year; weak colleges cannot deliver it | Optional fourth year with real exit options |
| 40. Cricket crowds out every other sport in India | Money, media and talent flow one way | Recent medals in other sports; cricket funds facilities | Fund grassroots in other sports from cricket's surplus |
E. Environment and international
| Topic | For | Against | Where to land |
|---|---|---|---|
| 41. Developing countries should not bear the cost of climate action | Historic emissions lie with rich nations; development comes first | Climate harm falls hardest on the poor; waiting costs more | Finance and technology from the rich; action by all |
| 42. Should India bet on nuclear power? | Firm, low-carbon electricity; small modular designs | Cost, waste, time to build, public fear | A limited role beside renewables and storage |
| 43. Electric vehicles are India's answer to urban air pollution | Zero tailpipe emissions; falling battery costs | Coal-heavy grid; stubble, dust and construction matter more | Electrify buses and two-wheelers; clean the grid |
| 44. Heat waves are India's biggest climate risk | Outdoor workers, crops and power demand all break at once | Floods and water stress kill and displace more | Heat action plans at city level, funded |
| 45. Should India host the Olympics? | Infrastructure, soft power, a sporting culture | Cost overruns, white elephants, displaced residents | Only with reusable venues and public audit |
| 46. Is globalisation in retreat? | Tariffs, reshoring and sanctions are rising | Services trade, data flows and migration keep growing | Goods trade regionalises; services globalise |
| 47. India should pursue strategic autonomy, not alliances | Freedom to deal with all powers; no entanglement | Isolation in a crisis; smaller partners get less | Issue-based coalitions with clear red lines |
| 48. Should river water be a national resource rather than a state one? | Inter-state disputes stall for decades | Federalism; local knowledge; political backlash | Binding tribunals with timelines, basin authorities |
| 49. Tourism is the easiest growth engine India is ignoring | Jobs across skill levels; foreign exchange; heritage | Infrastructure, safety perceptions, over-tourism damage | Invest in a few circuits well before marketing all |
| 50. Plastic bans do not work | Enforcement fails; substitutes cost more and pollute too | Bans shift norms and supply chains over time | Producer responsibility and collection over bans alone |
F. Abstract and proverb topics
| Topic | One reading | The counter-reading | Where to land |
|---|---|---|---|
| 51. A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are for | Risk is the price of purpose | Ships also need harbours; preparation is not cowardice | Leave when ready, not when comfortable |
| 52. Success is a journey, not a destination | Goals move; the habits remain | Without destinations there is no direction | Fixed direction, moving goals |
| 53. Power corrupts | Unchecked power removes feedback | Power also enables; corruption needs character and opportunity | Design checks; do not rely on character |
| 54. Black | Absence, mourning, the unknown | Elegance, profit ("in the black"), the ink on this page | Meaning is assigned, not inherent |
| 55. The customer is always right | Revenue follows the customer's choices | Customers can be wrong about what they need and abusive to staff | Right about their problem, not always the solution |
| 56. Failure is a better teacher than success | Failure forces diagnosis; success hides luck | Repeated failure teaches helplessness; success teaches what works | Reflection teaches; the outcome is just the prompt |
| 57. Is honesty always the best policy? | Trust compounds; lies need maintenance | Kindness and timing sometimes matter more than full disclosure | Honest in substance, humane in delivery |
| 58. Silence | Space for thought; consent; dignity | Complicity; the silence of the unheard | Silence is a choice only for those who can speak |
| 59. Leaders are born, not made | Temperament is partly innate | Skills, context and practice make most leaders | Raw material is given; leadership is built |
| 60. The road not taken | Choices define us; regret is the cost of agency | Most roads converge; we overrate the difference | Choose, then make the road taken the right one |
Six model essays (written by TalkDrill)
Each piece below was written by TalkDrill at our training setting of about three hundred words, as a model of shape rather than of opinion. You may disagree with every position taken; the shape is the lesson. Read one, close the page, and write your own on the same topic in twenty minutes. Then compare first sentences and last sentences only.
Essay 1 (economy). India should not legislate a four-day week, but it should let firms try one
India should not write a four-day week into law. It should remove the obstacles that stop firms from trying one and ask them to publish what happens.
The case for shorter weeks rests on a simple observation about office work: output depends on focused hours, not total hours. Anyone who has watched a team in the last week before a deadline knows that the same people can do in three days what they usually spread across five. Firms abroad that have tried compressed weeks reported that work got done. If that holds for Indian offices, the gain is real and costs the state nothing.
The case against a law is equally simple. Most Indians do not work in offices. A hospital, a textile mill, a petrol pump or a kirana shop cannot compress a week without hiring more people or serving fewer customers. A law written for software parks would either exempt most of the workforce, which makes it a privilege, or bind them, which makes it unaffordable.
The strongest objection to my position is that voluntary trials never spread beyond a few firms, and that only a law changes norms. That is partly true. But the norms around leave, remote work and flexible hours did spread without legislation, because firms competing for talent copied each other. A four-day week will spread the same way if it works, and will deserve to fail if it does not.
So the task for government is narrow: make sure labour law does not punish a firm for paying five days' wages for four days' work, and ask firms that try it to report output and attrition. Let the evidence, not a statute, decide.
Essay 2 (policy). Election freebies are not bribery, but unfunded ones are a fraud on the next government
A promise made to voters is not a bribe; it is the content of democracy. The problem with "freebies" is not that they are free to the voter but that their cost is hidden from the voter.
Start with what the word covers. Free grain, cash transfers to women, bicycles for schoolgirls, waived electricity bills and loan write-offs are all called freebies by whoever opposes them and welfare by whoever proposes them. Some of these have strong records: direct transfers reach poor households with far less leakage than subsidised goods, and a bicycle that keeps a girl in school is an investment by any accounting. The label tells you about the speaker, not the scheme.
What the label does catch is a real abuse. A party that promises a benefit without saying what it costs, who pays, and what will be cut to pay for it is asking voters to sign a blank cheque that a future government must honour. State debt rises, capital spending falls, and the bill lands on people who were children when the promise was made.
The strongest counter is that courts or election authorities should simply ban such promises. I think that cure is worse than the disease. No neutral body can decide which welfare is legitimate, and an unelected one that tries will be accused, fairly, of taking sides against the poor.
The better rule is disclosure. Every manifesto promise with a fiscal cost should carry an estimate and a funding source, published before polling and audited after. Voters can judge a funded promise. What they cannot judge is a hidden one.
Essay 3 (technology). Generative AI will change office jobs the way machines changed factories: slowly, unevenly and permanently
Generative AI will not empty offices next year. It will do to office work what machines did to factory work: remove the routine parts of many jobs, change what the remaining parts are, and reward the people who learn to work alongside it.
The parallel holds on the first point. Factory automation did not begin with robots that could do everything; it began with machines that did one repetitive task faster than a person. Drafting a standard letter, summarising a long document, producing a first version of code or a slide: these are the repetitive tasks of office work, and models already do them acceptably. Where a job is mostly those tasks, the job will shrink.
The parallel also holds on the second point. The factory did not disappear; the factory worker became a machine operator, a maintenance technician, a quality inspector. The office analyst becomes the person who frames the question, checks the output, and takes responsibility for the decision. Judgement, accountability and trust are not yet things a model can be fired for.
The strongest counter is speed: factories changed over decades, and software spreads in months. That is fair, and it is why the policy response matters more this time. But adoption inside real organisations is slower than demonstrations suggest, because data is messy, liability is unclear and people resist.
The right response is therefore not a ban or a panic but a shift in what we teach: less production of routine output, more checking, framing and deciding. Those were always the valuable parts of the job.
Essay 4 (society). Coaching culture is a symptom; the disease is the exam
Coaching has not ruined Indian education. It has grown in the space that weak schools and single-day exams left open, and attacking coaching without touching either will change nothing.
Consider why a family pays for coaching. A school that does not teach the syllabus well, and an entrance exam that decides a life in three hours with a syllabus wider than the school's, together create a gap. Coaching fills it. From the family's point of view it is a rational purchase, often made with real sacrifice. Blaming the family, or the coaching centre, for responding to incentives the system created is misplaced.
That said, the costs are real. Children leave home at fifteen for coaching towns, sleep too little and learn to solve patterns rather than problems. Schools in those towns become attendance registers. And the exam itself bends towards what coaching can drill, because the exam setters know what has been drilled.
The strongest counter to my view is that coaching should be regulated directly: age limits, hours, counsellors, fee caps. Some of this is humane and should happen. But regulation of the symptom does not shrink the gap that created it; it only changes who fills it, and the unregulated fill it worst.
The lasting fix is two-fold. Make the school the place where the syllabus is actually taught, which is a question of teachers and accountability. And change the exams so that they reward understanding over pattern recognition, with more than one attempt a year. Do that, and coaching will shrink to what it should be: help for those who want more, not a second school for those who got none.
Essay 5 (abstract). A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are for
The line is usually quoted to praise risk-taking. I read it differently: it is about purpose, and purpose includes knowing when to leave the harbour.
The obvious meaning is true. A ship that never sails is a warehouse with a hull. A person who never takes a job they might fail at, a company that never enters a market it might lose, a student who never applies to the college that might reject them, is safe in exactly that way. The cost of the harbour is invisible because it is a cost of things that did not happen.
But the saying is not an argument for sailing into every storm. Ships are built in harbours, loaded in harbours, repaired in harbours. A captain who leaves before the hull is sound is not brave; he is a danger to his crew. The harbour is for preparation, and preparation is what makes the voyage possible rather than fatal.
The strongest counter to my reading is that people use preparation as an excuse, and that most of us stay in the harbour far longer than readiness requires. That is true, and it is the real force of the line. The question is never whether to prepare, but whether you are still preparing or simply afraid.
So the test I would apply, to a career move or a business launch, is not "is this safe?" and not "am I brave enough?" but "is the ship ready, and if it is, what am I still doing here?" Leave when ready, not when comfortable. The two rarely arrive together, and comfort is the one that never arrives first.
Essay 6 (AWT, argument analysis). Prompt and response, both written by TalkDrill
Prompt (TalkDrill): "The city of Rampur recorded fewer road accidents on its main road in the month after it banned two-wheelers from that road during office hours. The city council should therefore extend the ban to all main roads, all day, to make Rampur's roads safe." Analyse the reasoning.
Response: The council's conclusion, that a city-wide, all-day ban will make roads safe, is far stronger than the single fact offered for it. The argument rests on at least three assumptions it does not examine.
First, it assumes the fall in accidents was caused by the ban. One month is a short window; accidents vary with weather, festivals, road works and school holidays. Without the same month's figures from previous years, or from a comparable road without a ban, we cannot separate the ban's effect from ordinary variation.
Second, it assumes accidents fell overall rather than moved. Two-wheelers banned from the main road did not vanish; they used side roads. If accidents rose on those roads, the city is no safer, only the main road is. The argument counts one road and draws a conclusion about the city.
Third, it assumes that what held during office hours on one road will hold all day on every road. Night-time accidents have different causes, drink and speed among them, and a ban on two-wheelers may do little about them while removing the cheapest transport the poor have. The cost side of the proposal is absent entirely.
The argument would be strengthened by year-on-year comparison, by accident data for the side roads, and by evidence on who was hurt and how. It would be weakened by any sign that accidents simply moved. Until the council has those figures, the honest recommendation is a longer, measured trial on the one road, not a city-wide ban built on a single month.
Mistakes that cost marks
No IIM publishes a WAT rubric on the pages we could read this week, so this is a list built from the task, from the shape of good writing, and from common errors in timed writing, not from an official criteria sheet. Use it as a self-score sheet: one point per line, out of ten, after every timed practice.
| Check | What loses the point | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Position in line one | "This is a complex issue with many dimensions" | Answer the question in the first sentence |
| 2. One idea per paragraph | Five arguments in one block | Plan three paragraphs in the margin before writing |
| 3. An example or mechanism per reason | Adjectives in place of evidence ("hugely beneficial") | "Because X, Y happens; for instance, Z" |
| 4. The counter stated fairly | A straw man, or no counter at all | Write the objection as its best advocate would |
| 5. Numbers only when certain | An invented figure or a stale one | Use the mechanism; put the number in only if you know its source |
| 6. Plain English | "Paradigm shift", "synergy", "since time immemorial", "a double-edged sword" | Short words, short sentences, no openers |
| 7. Grammar our readers slip on | Missing articles, "the" before abstract nouns ("the poverty"), subject-verb slips, comma splices | The three-minute read-through fixes most of these |
| 8. Legible handwriting | Cramped lines, no paragraph breaks | Skip a line between paragraphs; write slightly larger than usual |
| 9. The landing | "Thus it can be concluded that both sides have merit" | Restate the position with a "so what" |
| 10. Finished in time | A missing last paragraph | Write the close at minute eighteen even if the body is short |
Two of these deserve a word for candidates whose first language is Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati or Bengali. Articles and "the" before abstract nouns are common slips in timed writing for these speakers, and they are the easiest to fix in the read-through because they follow rules. The spoken English for the PI page covers the same patterns in speech, where they matter more.
Practice route: from the CAT result to the WAT desk
The WAT is the cheapest round to prepare because every practice session costs twenty minutes and a sheet of paper, and because the same preparation serves the interview and the GD. The route below assumes the January shortlist and a February or March WAT-PI date; the full six-week version with documents and travel is the CAT result to PI day roadmap.
- Week 1: shape. Write one essay a day from group F (abstract), because abstract topics force structure without the comfort of facts. Score each with the ten-point sheet. Read model essays 1 and 5 for first and last sentences only.
- Week 2: current affairs. One essay a day from groups A to E, choosing the topic you know least about. Build a one-page fact sheet per week from official sources (the budget speech, the central bank's policy statement, a ministry release), dated, and keep it for the PI.
- Week 3: the AWT. If IIM Ahmedabad is among your calls, write three argument analyses this week using the six-step checklist; if not, write one anyway, because the habit of finding assumptions improves every other essay. Then speak each topic as a one-minute extempore, and as a thirty-second GD entry with the lines from the GD phrases page.
- Week 4: under conditions. Two essays a day, by hand, on unfamiliar topics drawn at random, with a timer you cannot see. Then a full mock day: a WAT followed immediately by a twenty-minute AI mock interview in which the first question is about your essay, which is how several panels open as candidates report it.
- The night before: read your best three essays, not your worst. Decide your opening sentence pattern and your closing pattern in advance. The topic is the only unknown; the shape should be automatic.
Speaking the topics matters more than it seems. A WAT written by someone who has argued the point aloud reads as a position; one written cold reads as a summary. The group discussion practice room lets you argue any of the sixty topics against AI participants before you write it.
Sources
- IIM Calcutta, MBA 2027-29 admission procedure for domestic candidates: the WAT (named there as the Writing Ability Test) and its weight in final selection (CAT 30, PI 48, WAT 8, academic diversity 6, work experience 8 = 100) and the Stage II composite (CAT 56, class 10 10, class 12 15, gender diversity 4 = 85). The page gives no WAT duration, word limit or format. Re-read 21 October 2026.
- CAT 2026 official site: the test on Sunday 29 November 2026; the site is a script-driven portal that our fetcher cannot read, so the date is stated per iimcat.ac.in and the CAT 2026 advertisement.
- IIM Ahmedabad PGP admission page and IIM Bangalore MBA admission process page: not readable this week (404 and 403 to our fetcher on 20 and 21 October 2026). The AWT description, and every campus format in the table above, is from candidate reports and is labelled unofficial.
- The twenty-minute, three-hundred-word setting, the ten-point self-score sheet, the sixty outlines and all six model essays are TalkDrill's own work.
Last checked 21 October 2026. The dates block at the top of this page is rendered from our exam calendar and is re-checked weekly; the WAT-PI window is marked expected until each IIM publishes its schedule.