With less than 60 days to go, preparations for CAT 2020 are on in full swing across the country. One of the essential things that stump many MBA aspirants is managing their time efficiently while preparing for CAT and other entrance exams. Not everyone takes a year off to prepare. Most CAT aspirants tend to their preparations alongside their final year of college or a hectic work-life. The time management issue has been further aggravated this year due to the pandemic and the lockdown. For college students, this means attending online classes, often for longer durations to compensate for the lost class hours. For working professionals working from home, the work might start cutting into any free time as the gap between work and personal life reduces. How can a person find enough time to devote to preparation amidst all the other vital things in life? How many hours of practice per day are considered sufficient to get a good score?
Sticking To The Schedule
No CAT 99 percentiler has ever made it where she/he has without a strategy in place. Creating a schedule and sticking to it is the oldest advice that an MBA aspirant can get regarding the preparation. A schedule helps you stay on track and not get distracted or overwhelmed. Usually, this step is to be done a few months before CAT, considering your current level of preparedness and the remaining time. If you’re yet to create a schedule, do so immediately, for it is never too late to start preparation in earnest.
You can refer
here for a time table for working professionals aspiring to cross 99 percentile.
If you already have a schedule and strategy in place, now might be a good time to analyze it. Ask yourself some hard questions.
- How closely have you followed the schedule so far?
- Are you currently in line with the preparation goals you had set for yourself?
- Is your performance in mock tests up to your expectations?
If you don’t believe your strategy to be working, you should not hesitate to modify it. Identify where you have succeeded and where you have lagged behind. Rework your schedule to include topics that you were supposed to cover earlier but couldn’t.
Introspection Is The Key
Introspection will help you discover breaks in your routine that you didn’t know existed. CAT is an intense test of aptitude, and the key to crack it is hours of practice. Try to combine your fragmented breaks throughout the day into one long break of 2-3 hours, so you get enough time for uninterrupted preparation. For example, if you realize that you get short 15-30 min breaks throughout the day, but your work stretches till late in the night, try pushing these breaks to the end of the day. Read newspapers when you travel to work, if you do, or while having breakfast before you start your work. Try to keep your weekends free from all work or college activities so that you can devote enough time to practice mock tests and analyze your performance.
Stay Motivated!
Year after year, CAT aspirants go through similar struggles of juggling preparation with their other work. Focus is essential in achieving this, but so is motivation. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you miss deadlines you set for yourself due to other commitments. Strive to make up for it within the next few days. Reward yourself for small successes, be it a great percentile in the last mock, or finally understanding a concept that had been bugging you for long. Above all, share stories with those in a similar situation as yours. No road will be too long with good company.
Happy CAT preparation to everyone!
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