• Reschedule activities that can be postponed: As a professional or a student, there are bound to be some tasks you can put off to post CAT. For me, those activities happened to be my guitar classes and college activities. It's still important to do things that take your mind off things and not frustrate you too much, and for me, that was reading fiction. I would not recommend completely cutting off social media, but do keep in check how much time you spend on it. However, be careful to not cut down on activities that can possibly be included on your CV, such as academic projects or positions of responsibility.
• The book of shortcuts: I belonged to the category of people who are more inclined towards hard work, compared to smart work. Therefore, I started my preparation a year before CAT 16, while I know friends who landed up in the same place with half or less of the prep time. I happened to own a big diary where I worked out quant problems chapter wise and sticky note marked each new chapter. On the flip side of the book was a section where I had written down all the major formula and also the mistakes I made in every Mock test that were conceptual and not careless. You would be surprised to know how many pages that section ended up occupying by October. It was exceedingly convenient to ditch all the books on different topics and just sit with the diary which was concise and in my own version.
• Avoided reading too many tips at once: I cannot stress enough on the fact that it is important to hear out as many people as possible, but act according to what suits you best. Tips are meant to motivate you to do better not intimidate you or make you want to throttle the narcissistic writer who seems to believe his way is the way. We don't want to make you spend more time being confused about whether you've done enough, than actually spending time productively.
• Attended on-demand tutoring sessions: While I was going through the answer scripts of some of my Mock tests, I realised that out of some folly, I had skipped one of the most important topics of CAT year after year-Number Systems. I decided to try to be as practical about it as possible. I wasn't looking at attempting most of the questions from that topic, just those that I could read and understand which topic they were from and the difficulty level. Then, I would only choose the easy category of questions to attempt. To aid this plan, I requested the coaching centre I was a student at to provide additional coaching on weekends on topics that were requested by students and were known to occur in exams. These classes were very small in size and the faculty had the time to give us individual attention and clear doubts. I will not forget to this day the patience that teacher had with us when we asked the simplest of doubts barely days before CAT. I would cross my heart and say that those sessions helped me survive quant in CAT 16.
• Tried to stay calm: For two reasons 1) There really wasn't much else to do. 2) It definitely helps the mind focus more. This was the best time to convince myself that things like destiny existed and I had to have the patience and courage to watch it unfold.
It's possibly a good idea to stay away from people intent on constantly discussing CAT and the future, and try to lighten up with your real well wishers.
It's going to come down to those 180 minutes and like a lot of reasonably important things in the world, it's quite unpredictable. So, hold your head high, and face CAT 19, but always remember, there are many roads to an MBA, you're just going to see if this one takes you to yours.
Godspeed.
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