While pursuing my graduation in electronics engineering,I had planned to pursue MTech. as a natural career progression. I was taking regular classes for GATE and was dedicatedly studying for the same. It was during the winter of 2019 that I came to know about CAT Examinations. When I was researching the exam structure and its subsequent syllabus, the LRDI section really fascinated me. I felt it was a section that was tailor-made for me and played to my strengths. I loved interpreting data and finding logical conclusions right from my childhood. I felt as if the entire CAT paper was a check of one's logical reasoning. During the lockdown of 2020, I decided to take the gamble of completely shifting my focus to CAT from GATE. I heard warnings from people around me suggesting to not swap with so little time remaining for CAT but I was very confident of my abilities and strengths. It is the sheer belief in one's own potential that allows an individual to take risks.
As the catchline of Scam 1992 goes,
"Risk hain toh Ishq hain"
And so I decided to take the risk of switching to CAT with less than 6 months remaining. This shortage of time meant that I had to plan my schedule well. In the first couple of months, I decided to attempt sectional mocks and learn from my mistakes in the mocks. I did not enroll for any coaching but purchased multiple test series because I wanted to have a varied range of preparation through mocks. After completing every sectional mock, I would go through the solutions to the questions I couldn't solve. In this way, I not only had an assessment of where I stood but also constantly learned new formulas, tricks from the solutions of mocks. In the next 2 months, I shifted to full-length mocks from the sectional ones and maintained an excel sheet to keep a check on how I was performing across various sections.
During this stage, I was having my fair share of problems in the VARC section, and to resolve this, I started to try out different strategies. Since my accuracy wasn't very high in this section, I decided to increase the number of attempts and this strategy did work in the mocks that followed. I also attempted topic tests for those topics which I thought I wasn't scoring high enough. I would credit my entire preparation to the mock tests. Every time I would come across a difficult sum or a brilliant LRDI problem in a mock, I would keep its solution saved and later go through the saved problems. This immensely helped me in getting accustomed to the different tricks and patterns of the exam.
In the last couple of months, I would set targets for myself in mocks and try to achieve those. I would often challenge myself to score 99+ percentile in 3 consecutive mocks and reward myself every time I do that. These small targets getting ticked off gave me immense confidence for the D=Day.
Then came the D-Day, my examination was in the 3rd slot and I had all sorts of feedback coming from my friends who had their exams in the first two slots. The day didn't start particularly well for me as my puppy had been vomiting and was extremely ill. Just a couple of hours before the examination, we had to hospitalize our puppy and I wasn't sure if I would even sit for the exam. My family gave me the strength to appear for it, although the only concern that I had in my mind was about my puppy's health. This helped me during the exam because there was no room for exam stress and my mind was completely engrossed in my puppy's health.
I wasn't applying any strategy in the final exam, rather I was just looking to solve the maximum number of questions that I could have. This worked well for me and come the result day, I was extremely pleased by the fact that I had scored 99.92 percentile.
My advice to future aspirants would be to have self-belief and back your own abilities to achieve any target. Also do not be afraid to do something different from the crowd, as they say, the biggest risk is not taking any risk. It was during the winter of 2019 that I came to know about CAT Examinations. When I was researching the exam structure and its subsequent syllabus, the LRDI section really fascinated me. I felt it was a section that was tailor-made for me and played to my strengths. I loved interpreting data and finding logical conclusions right from my childhood. I felt as if the entire CAT paper was a check of one's logical reasoning. During the lockdown of 2020, I decided to take the gamble of completely shifting my focus to CAT from GATE. I heard warnings from people around me suggesting to not swap with so little time remaining for CAT but I was very confident of my abilities and strengths. It is the sheer belief in one's own potential that allows an individual to take risks. As the catchline of Scam 1992 goes, "Risk hain toh Ishq hain"
And so I decided to take the risk of switching to CAT with less than 6 months remaining. This shortage of time meant that I had to plan my schedule well. In the first couple of months, I decided to attempt sectional mocks and learn from my mistakes in the mocks. I did not enroll for any coaching but purchased multiple test series because I wanted to have a varied range of preparation through mocks. After completing every sectional mock, I would go through the solutions to the questions I couldn't solve. In this way, I not only had an assessment of where I stood but also constantly learned new formulas, tricks from the solutions of mocks. In the next 2 months, I shifted to full-length mocks from the sectional ones and maintained an excel sheet to keep a check on how I was performing across various sections.
During this stage, I was having my fair share of problems in the VARC section, and to resolve this, I started to try out different strategies. Since my accuracy wasn't very high in this section, I decided to increase the number of attempts and this strategy did work in the mocks that followed. I also attempted topic tests for those topics which I thought I wasn't scoring high enough. I would credit my entire preparation to the mock tests. Every time I would come across a difficult sum or a brilliant LRDI problem in a mock, I would keep its solution saved and later go through the saved problems. This immensely helped me in getting accustomed to the different tricks and patterns of the exam.
In the last couple of months, I would set targets for myself in mocks and try to achieve those. I would often challenge myself to score 99+ percentile in 3 consecutive mocks and reward myself every time I do that. These small targets getting ticked off gave me immense confidence for the D-Day.
Then came the D-Day, my examination was in the 3rd slot and I had all sorts of feedback coming from my friends who had their exams in the first two slots. The day didn't start particularly well for me as my puppy had been vomiting and was extremely ill. Just a couple of hours before the examination, we had to hospitalize our puppy and I wasn't sure if I would even sit for the exam. My family gave me the strength to appear for it, although the only concern that I had in my mind was about my puppy's health. This helped me during the exam because there was no room for exam stress and my mind was completely engrossed in my puppy's health.
I wasn't applying any strategy in the final exam, rather I was just looking to solve the maximum number of questions that I could have. This worked well for me and come the result day, I was extremely pleased by the fact that I had scored 99.92 percentile.
My advice to future aspirants would be to have self-belief and back your own abilities to achieve any target. Also do not be afraid to do something different from the crowd, as they say,
the biggest risk is not taking any risk.