Soumyadeep Chakrabarti, an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad, had scored a double whammy by securing a 100 percentile each in CAT 2015 as well as IIFT. The article gives you some tips from the man who truly tamed the CAT, that too upon his first attempt.
In short, can you state all points necessary to score a 100%ile and getting into IIM A?
They are actually two different things. Preparing for PI and studying for CAT. For CAT, you should try to develop your overall game as much as possible. For English, the best prep is reading books in different genres and by radically different authors. And for LR I solved some of the standard books on puzzles and teasers available in the market. I think these two are skills which take longer to master. For quant, I will suggest you go through 2 standard books and the course material of any reputable coaching centre and create your own cheat book - sort of like a compendium of the typical problems solved in the way you feel is the most efficient if you are targeting CAT. That solution can be your own method or someone else, this helps in revising and applying those techniques with the speed which CAT demands.
I got a 99.41%ile in CAT '14 and this year am getting about 10-30 rank in the 8 odd mocks of Career Launcher I have given so far. What would you suggest for me to further improve on the score to reach a maximum percentile in CAT?
Near the end, I did something which boosted my scores by almost 10 marks on average in the mocks. I just started doing all the RCs first and let go of one LR. Now this was a personal decision since my LR took more time than RC. So I would suggest you to tinker with the order in which you answer the questions in any section and see if you can answer those 3-4 question more.
Considering verbal being a separate section and not clubbed with LR, how do you think will it affect the overall percentile as people before could easily manage a decent percentile by doing only the LR part and few areas of verbal. Now, do you think the overall cutoff for the verbal section alone would come down drastically low compared to previous years?
I think you are right. This is a ploy to help non-engineers have a better chance at scoring in CAT, so those who are better at the non-analytical parts will have an advantage. This will reduce the verbal cutoff as most are weak in this section. But if anyone is aiming for the top IIMs, you should not worry about the cutoff. In fact, English is and always has been make or break. Most of the top guys are good at the maths CAT offers so just because the cutoff may decrease, don't take English less seriously, in fact now it has become more important than before.
(this is not applicable for CAT 2020)
Any concrete suggestions to improve the VA-RC score for a greater overall percentile?
I suggest you brush your Para Jumble and para completion if you are weak in them, personally they took less time and were very high scorers for me.
I'd like to know everything I can do in the coming days to reach 95+?
I suggest you review your test-taking strategy. Shift the order in which you attempt VA-RC questions, and in maths make multiple passes through the paper. At least 2, if possible 3, do the easiest in the first pass, the ones you know you can do but takes time in the second pass and if you have time, then the rest in the third pass
We thank Soumyadeep for doing this!
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