One of the important aspects in the journey of CAT preparation is taking mocks. But what most new aspirants miss out on is an equally important or even more important activity called MOCK ANALYSIS. Taking mocks without proper analysis is like exercising without proper diet, it is definitely helpful but we will miss out on the full benefit without the latter. So it’s important to know how to go about analysing
0) Don’t worry about poor mock scores. Keep in mind that almost every aspirant who are in their dream b-schools now, got poor mock scores at some point in their preparation.
1) VARC:
Read each and every passage again before looking the solutions.
- If you got the question right, check whether it was just a guess or whether you really knew the answer. If it was a guess, you should treat it like a skipped question
- If your answer was wrong, analyse the thought process behind it. Try to determine what made you choose the wrong answer instead of the right one. Find out what tricked you into choosing it and try to avoid it the next time.
- For a skipped question, check whether you are able to get the answer without guessing, through logic or reason.
Some questions are known to be ambiguous in VARC and you might not be satisfied with the solution given. You can ignore those questions if there are one or two like that in a mock. But if you find majority of the questions like that, then probably you have to practice more before attending further mocks.
2) DILR:
During analysis, go through all the sets again.
- For the questions you got right, check whether there is a shorter/better approach to solve which could have saved time or calculations.
- Try to arrange those sets which you skipped or got wrong according to the level of difficulty. Start from the easiest and try solve each one of them.
- Time yourself and note down the time taken for each set you solve. Every set which could be solved under 10-12 mins is a must do and if you had skipped it/got it wrong, analyse what was your thought process during the exam.
- What made you think the set was difficult? Was it the length of the set? Or that you were not used to this type of question? Was it something else? For the questions you got wrong, check whether it was a calculation/silly error or whether the whole approach was wrong.
Only when you analyse in depth each and every action of yours during the mock, you will be able to avoid the pitfalls in the next mock.
3) QA:
This section is the easiest to analyse among the three sections. You just have to solve each question one by one after the mock.
- For the questions you solved correctly, check whether there are different methods which take lesser time. If it was a guess, treat it like a skipped question. It is advisable to not take guesses in CAT except for TITA questions, even for those you should guess and move on in few seconds without wasting time.
- For the questions you went wrong, find out whether it was a conceptual error, calculation mistake, etc and try to improve on it before the next mock. Fill the knowledge gaps before the next attempt.
- For the questions you skipped, check whether it was really a tough question that you needed to skip or a sitter that you missed scoring on.
TRACK YOUR MOCKS:
Last but not least, track your performance in mocks. You get ample amount of data from each mock which you can use to analyse and get insights into your own performance. This will help you to check whether you are making progress with each mock. You can break down data into topics of different sections or types of questions or calculate things like 3 mock moving average to quantify your improvement. I would recommend using excel sheets for this purpose.
Keep solving, analysing and improving. You will get there.
Cheers and Best of Luck!!