"Aim for the moon; if you miss, you may hit the stars." - W.Clement Stone
To aim higher in my life, I use to dream of being a part of the top MBA colleges of India while I was doing my mechanical engineering at BITS Pilani. To fulfil my dream, I started my preparation for CAT just
five months before the CAT 2019. My hard work paid off, and I cracked CAT in my first attempt and scored
99.06 percentile (VARC - 97.7; LRDI - 96.34; Quant - 98.72). Currently, I am a part of one of the prestigious B-school of India,
IIM Lucknow. But I use to feel the same anxiety and nervousness that you all might be feeling right now. This article will share my journey on
How to crack CAT by following the right approach.
My Preparation Funda:
My strategy was straight and simple, but the dream was big. I set for myself to get 180+ marks; the biggest mistake most people I believe make is they see their percentile in the institute, which they gave the mock, but that's misleading. So I had set a target of 60 in VARC, 50 in DILR, and 70 in QA. This aligned with my strengths, and everyone should do this, I feel.
For VARC, I didn't have to do much thankfully; I just started reading a bit more; apart from that, one peculiar thing I did was to
almost always skip the jumbled sentences as it would give me adequate time to cover the other questions. Also, I'd suggest that always read the passage before attempting the questions; CAT
doesn't have reading passages like in school where direct lines in the passage are the answers; it's heavily inference-based and understanding-based, so
read it without any preconceived notions.
I used to
struggle in meeting my
DILR targets, so I
went back to the basics, but I was short on time; other than that, I would religiously analyze my DILR performance after the exam, look at the solutions, and
figure out where I went wrong. An important strategy for DILR is to
choose the right sets; doing 3-4 sets are more than enough because DILR is a section where you should
aim for 100% accuracy.
For quant, I didn't need much help, so I only used to practice and solve as many questions I can.
One standard tip across all the sections is
not to fixate or get stuck on any question; try it for a minute or two, then let it go, come back after solving other questions; you might get it right the second time around.
What I followed few days before CAT?
I would mostly
analyze my past mocks and revise, didn't solve a lot of mocks or previous years in the last month. There's no point in practicing if you aren't working on your past mistakes. I would often take 2-3 hours to analyze one single paper, so try going into that much detail if possible.
My word to CAT aspirants:
I know the time has been tough on you, the lockdown has affected everyone's mental strength, but I hope each of you pulls through. One good thing coming out of this is that you need to focus and expense your mental strength for only 2 hours instead of 3. Lastly, a lot of things boil down to the D day, your attitude, your composure.
So eat healthy, sleep well, and be optimistic. You've worked extremely hard for this, so you'll end up in the best place for you. Even I had prepared for a 180 but ended up getting 160; that's just life.
So believe in yourself and put your best foot forward.
All the Best guys for CAT 2020.
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