The month of the August has just started and CAT is just 4 months away from now. So it is the time to accelerate your CAT preparation and improve your skills and knowledge for those 3 hours for which you prepared for last 1 or 2 years. In January 2018, when the result of the CAT will be published the thing which will most matter is the performance of those 3 hours, not the effort you gave for the last few years. So failing at those 3 hours means that you have to wait for another 1 year to get your dream.
Last year I was taking the mock tests from various coaching institutes. For the first few mock tests, the most challenging thing was the time. After solving each question I looked at the timer at created more pressure on me. So I tried to solve each question with less time and it affected on my accuracy of solving the questions. After taking 4 or 5 mock tests I tried to analyse how could I overcome this difficulty. So again I tried to solve those mock test papers with no time limit and found that that time most of the answers were correct. Then I realised that the pressure of limited time affected on my performance. To manage this situation I tried a totally different procedure. Instead of solving the questions one by one from practice book, I asked someone to choose randomly 34 questions from the practice book and I tried to solve those 34 questions in one hour. At the time of solving those questions, I set a target of solving 24 questions with 80 percent accuracy. But in my first attempt, I could not achieve my target. So for that week, I tried to improve my performance with this process. At end of the week, I noticed there was a little bit improvement on my performance and the accuracy level was better than previous. So for the rest of the remaining time, I continued this procedure of solving questions with a time limit rather than free practice.
So from my point of view CAT is not just an exam of your knowledge, it requires an art of taking exams. If you are stuck with a question in CAT and you spend more than 3 minutes on a particular question, it will affect your overall performance of your CAT exam. Besides knowledge about QA, DI-LR, RC and VA you need to develop the skill of taking the exam. To build this skill you need to take a lot of exams. You can start with my procedure which I mentioned above or you can take mock tests from various institutes. When you get successful at this process, then you should try to take 3-hour test at least one in two days. After taking those exams you need to analyse all the questions and your mistake. You can easily find out your weaknesses and strength. While taking the next mock test you should solve those type of questions first which are your strengths and after solving those questions you can see there will be plenty of times in your hand for the other questions. Simultaneously you should work on your weaknesses also. To improve your weaknesses you can take 1-hour tests on the topics which are your weakness. This whole process will take a lot of time, you need to take plenty of tests to know your strengths and weaknesses.
The more number of tests you will take more you will know about your strengths and weaknesses. If you can overcome your weaknesses on a particular topic, it will be a matter of time that topic will be your strength and as much as your strength will increase your it will help you to attain more questions with high accuracy.
In the month of October, you have to sacrifice those topics which are your weaknesses and need to give more time on your strengths. Try to solve as many questions as possible from the topics which are your strengths. This will increase your efficiency and speed for the CAT.
When you will go to take the CAT you should have a very clear concept which questions should you attempt or which you should not. While taking CAT you should first go through the all questions and decide which questions you should do first. When you will answer some questions very quickly and with confidence, it will remove the time pressure from you and will give you an extra confidence for solving the other questions.