I am writing this because I don’t want any CAT aspirant to go through what I did. But please ensure this will stay confidential because I don’t want to get blocked from my coaching institutes. I am just sharing this because I feel there are so many candidates from underprivileged category who go through the same thing every year.
Last year, I trusted what looked like genuine advice on Reddit and Quora, posts that repeatedly praised certain coaching programs and mocks. They looked like real student opinions, but later I learned that many of those accounts were actually marketing handles, bots, or paid promoters.
I joined one of those programs, paying nearly Rs 30,000, money I convinced my father to arrange after months of pleading. Once the payment was done, nobody cared enough. Over the months, my confidence broke. I felt cheated, trapped, and worthless. There was a point where I even thought about ending my life, because I felt like I had failed my family. That was the darkest moment I have known.(I literally cried for several days unable to share all these to anyone)
But today with some courage left, I am here. And I am writing this because I realized something important: it’s not my fault, and it’s not yours either. There’s an entire system quietly manipulating aspirants’ trust through Reddit, Telegram, and so‑called many more “student communities.”
They:
● Create fake review accounts that look like real students.
● Use coordinated upvotes and comments to make one brand look “trusted.”
● Silence or remove genuine criticism.
It’s marketing disguised as mentorship, and it’s breaking the spirit of genuine aspirants.
I learned this the hard way. I joined Rodha’s course because of all the online hype, but it turned out to be quite disappointing. The overall content and support weren’t up to the mark, the mocks, their solutions, and even the VARC lectures in their coaching didn’t add much value. What misled many students like me was their aggressive promotion through fake organic posts, which made it seem like everyone was enrolling, so we felt pressured to join.
I am not sharing this for sympathy, I am sharing it for awareness. No student should feel suicidal because they trusted the wrong advice online.
Your voice matters. Students on social media listen to you. From my own experience, following wrong advice on Reddit and Quora pushed me into the dark. I ended up being depressed (it can shake confidence, motivation, and mental well-being.) Every rupee spent comes from parents’ hard work, and misleading guidance wastes more than money.
With your experience and influence, you can guide students the right way. Please use your platform to promote honesty and fairness, just making students aware about this can help many. With your experience and influence, you can guide them the right way and protect their dreams and their parents’ efforts.
Here are some attached proofs showing what’s actually happening this year too.
Link of the post:
You can see how students are being misled and manipulated unnecessarily. Please take a moment to read all the comments on the post, it’s completely wrong, these bot armies manipulate students.
Link of the post:
I am also attaching one drive link showing three accounts that keep doing this repeatedly. With your experience and influence, raising awareness about this can help protect many students from confusion, wasted effort, and frustration.
Drive Link: Click Here
This analysis has been done by one another student and the drive link has been shared in the comment section itself.
Few more screenshots
Because of all this, many students like me end up wasting a lot of money, as coaching institutes like these use an army of bots to whitewash the reality and create a false image of success. I don’t want juniors to go through the same thing, some of them even sell their parents jewelry just to afford coaching fees. So please help us bhaiya.