The night before my CAT D-Day was exhilarating. The electricity at my place was unavailable and mosquitoes didn't let me sleep till 4 am. I had the first slot of that day. So I got up at 6 am. Now when you get only 2 hours of sleep just before your slot, you are pretty much done with your normal mind. Now on top of that, when the first section you see is VARC, and by your sheer bad luck, it comes as the most difficult one, all you can trust is your practice and brain cells.
All this happened on that day and still, I scored 99.91 percentile in VARC. This surely makes me think I should really share some tips which will help you score well even if you face, god forbid, a situation like I did.
So now let's talk about these 5 myths which I constantly heard during my preparation and which you should ignore. I hope It will make our road to preparation easy.
5 Myths about CAT VARC preparation:
1) You need to be a voracious reader: Well, I for one, never was. The fiction didn't interest me and academic books don't count as normal reading I guess. So, even if you don't read 1-2 books a week or let it be a year, it is not going to matter in your VARC test. But if you do read, I guess it won't harm you either. The reader is wiser in most cases.
2) You need to be a fast reader: I have taken those online tests which are supposed to check your speed and retention. My recent score was 180 wpm and 70% retention. This score is just equal to an average reader. This didn't make me score less, did it? So what helped me? The answer is my interest in reading. Whenever I was presented with a passage, it was trying to tell me something. All I did was pay attention to what it tried to say. The speed and retention were automatically taken care of.
3) You shouldn't be reading the lines again in the passage: This could result in spending more time on the passage which I agree. But is this the mantra? Absolutely No! Let me tell you, CAT will present you with all sorts of topics. From biotech to Infotech. Now if something is out of your normal topic, it would definitely take more time or more revisions of lines to understand what it is trying to say. So, read the lines again if you want. But make sure you understood what those lines said.
4) Read questions first then passage or vice versa: Well, there is no hard and fast rule for this! If you ask about my experience, reading questions beforehand made my attempt less accurate. The reason? Once I read the questions, my mind automatically went into the mode of searching for answers or references to those questions in passage. This made the understanding of the passage and my interest in the passage go haywire. So it's total up to you, which way you want to go. But choose wisely!
5) Don't spend time on VARC sectional tests, rather read books: Believe me, Taking VARC sectional tests is as serious as you take sectionals for Quants and DILR seriously. I don't know whether reading books would help you on D-Day or not, but when you give VARC sectional, be sure that your preparation is going the right way.
Well, these are my few cents on this dreaded section of VARC, which shouldn't dread you anymore. The last tip which goes without saying and you must've heard a zillion times.
Keep giving mocks as many as possible.
Thanks for reading and All the best for your CAT!
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