The clock is ticking. CAT 2020 is roughly 4 months away. You are preparing hard for your CAT examinations. You are triumphing every chapter of QA, reading articles from various sources for VA and solving puzzling problems for DILR. And all that is great; because you have to first build your fundamentals to move efficiently forward in your prep journey. But, you might be neglecting one thing - Mock CATs.
You might say that you aren’t neglecting it. You are taking it regularly. But, if you are taking mocks just to test your knowledge then you aren't utilizing its full benefits. CAT Mock exams are there not just to test your knowledge but to put you in a simulated environment of actual CAT. And, if you aren’t taking your mock exams seriously then all of your hard work might go in vain. Let me explain.
When we do something that we perceive to be very important and believe that it has very high stakes then we get a little nervous, which is quite natural. This psychological phenomena is called “performance anxiety”. It affects everyone - athletes, public speakers or students taking an exam. It occurs due to worries, doubts, fear or pressure. These things take away some of our mental processing capabilities, and since our mental processing capability is limited, our performance at the task in hand deteriorates.
So, how do mock exams help in reducing performance anxiety? Mock exams, if taken seriously, help you to simulate the actual CAT environment in your mind and thus help you work in a pressurized environment (you can see this yourself, next time you take a mock exam, assume it is the actual CAT. And if you are like most of us, you will get a little anxious).
And, if you take enough mock exams with actual seriousness then you will find that your anxiety level significantly drops and you are able to concentrate more in consequent exams. Now, when you appear in the actual CAT you will be aptly prepared to deal with the pressure and will perform to your best of ability.
Learn more about performance anxiety and different ways to overcome it here -
How to stay calm under pressure - Noa Kageyama and Pen-Pen Chen - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqgmozFr_GM
How to reduce test prep anxiety: 3 tips from Sal Khan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZcbCnZsl5c
How to Overcome Test Anxiety -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PgEIlewf7Y
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