QA (Quantitative Aptitude) is probably the most dreaded section for every non-engineer appearing for CAT. As a commerce student myself, I was very much afraid of quants for a vast part of my preparation. There was a point of time during which I wanted to quit my CAT prep just because my quant mock scores were very low. But I kept practicing without losing hope and eventually got a 97.1 percentile in QA. It may not be considered as an excellent score but it was a great improvement from my first mock score of 42 percentile and being afraid of not clearing sectional cut-offs for QA. Here are a few steps/tips which can help a non-math student crack the QA section.
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Back to the Basics:
It is as simple as it sounds. If you don’t know the basics of any topic, there is no use in practising tough questions. Don’t compare yourself with your peers who might be able to solve complicated sums from the start itself. You have to assess your level of knowledge and prepare accordingly.
Please don’t fall into the trap of shortcuts at this stage. Focus on getting your fundamentals right. If you build a solid foundation of the concepts, you will be able to solve the questions easier and faster later.
You can use books like Arun Sharma, Nishit K Sinha or your own coaching class materials for this purpose.
Solve A Variety Of Questions:
After you become strong on the concepts, the next important step is to practice as many varieties of questions possible from those concepts. As you might be already aware, merely memorizing formulae is not enough to crack CAT. You have to learn to apply those concepts and formulae in a wide variety of circumstances and contexts to ace CAT.
So try to solve questions of various types and difficulties to be prepared for the surprises that CAT might throw this year.
Focus on Arithmetics, Algebra and Geometry:
You can call these three the holy trinity of CAT QA. Consistently over the past few years, Arithmetics, Algebra and Geometry has accounted for around 75-80% of the questions asked in the QA section. So it is evident that an aspirant should be well versed in these topics, at the least two of them.
This doesn’t mean you should ignore Modern Math and Number Systems. You should definitely prepare for them too but don’t focus too much of your energy on those topics without preparing for the three main topics.
Topic Tests/Mocks:
The most important step in the preparation of any aspirant is test-taking. So try to solve topic tests, sectional tests and full length mocks to get used to the testing pressure and environment. Don’t be bogged down by bad test scores initially. Focus on analysing the test sincerely and finding the knowledge gap or competency gap and try to improve on that aspect till the next test.
I would recommend taking test subscriptions from two providers (preferably two out of Time, CL and IMS) in order to get questions of different variety and quality.
Finally, It is important to assess yourself and find what the right target is for you. Even though it’s recommended that everyone should aim for 99.5+ percentile, it is important to keep small achievable targets in the beginning to make progress.
Keep practising and improving and you will get there.
Cheers and Best of Luck!!