Riya was born, brought up, and educated in Ranchi till class 12 after which she completed her Bachelors in Technology in Electronics and Communication Engineering from NIT Jamshedpur. She has been a sincere student and an all-rounder throughout her student life with good academic scores (Class 10- 96.8%, Class 12- 93.6%, B.Tech- 8.90) as well as prizes in National as well as Regional athletic championships. Right after college, Riya joined the steel giant, Tata Steel as a Management Trainee (Technical). She currently works there as an Electrical Maintenance Manager looking after the day-to-day maintenance, Spare management, while managing a team of 40 employees. Riya aspires to work in Consulting and Business Development with the application of data analytics. She is an active athlete, a yoga enthusiast, and a consistent reader. She also actively writes about her thoughts on life and career on LinkedIn. In this interview, she shares her CAT preparation strategy and her advice to future aspirants.
Q) Please Share Your Month-Wise Preparation Insights For Upcoming Aspirants.In my journey, November was the most crucial month in my preparation journey. It was in November that I gave the maximum number of mocks, revised all that I had studied, and got into the rhythm of sitting for a 2-hour test at my allotted time slot.
Q) Please Share The Section-Wise Strategies Followed By You During Preparation.For VARC, I solved RC 99, solved sectional and full mocks, and prepared my strategy for attempting the various kinds of verbal ability questions.For LRDI my only goal was to practice as many unique kinds of sets as possible. I solved various mock questions and past year questions for the same.Quant was my weakest section, and though I had tried completing the syllabus, my honest strategy was to solve 10-12 questions with 100% accuracy.I did not practice all three sections daily. I preferred doing QA for 4 days followed by LDRI in an alternate manner. For VARC, I tried doing 1 RC every day and 1 sectional mock every week
Q) Please Talk About The Role Of Mock Tests While Preparing.Mock tests were a very crucial part of my preparation journey. I initially started with the VARC sectional mocks as it was the only one I could take before finishing the syllabus. Then I moved to LRDI sectional mocks. And in around October, I started with full mocks when around 75% of my syllabus was complete.Every mock I analyzed taught me a new way to solve a problem I had either gotten wrong or took really long to solve.I took approximately 25 sectional mocks and around 20 full mocks, along with past year CAT papers from 2018.I also noted down formulas or shortcuts that I learned while analyzing the mocks for future reference.In the beginning, I scored close to 25-30% marks but knowing that the scores will only improve with time made it easier.From the beginning of November, I increased the frequency of full mocks, and close to the exam, I gave a mock every alternate day. But in the last week before CAT (CAT 2021 WAS ON 28th November 2021) I did not give any mocks, only revised my formulas and old mocks.I believed the news article that CAT 2021 would have fewer questions than CAT 2020, so I was prepared for 66, 70, or 72 questions. IMS had mocks for all these different numbers of questions in the paper, but the number of questions wasn't so crucial as long as my strategy was in place. And on the final day, 66 questions didn't come as much of a surprise.
Q) Is There Anything Else That You'd Like To Add?Please understand that CAT is not a very tough exam in itself. You just need to brush up on the basics and a lot of practice. A good past academic record certainly helps to get interview calls and if you don't have them you need to work a little extra, but it isn't impossible.Stay consistent and you can certainly bell the CAT!