Anubhav Singh has done his graduation in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from IMSEC Ghaziabad in 2018. Post that he worked in a manufacturing firm as a production manager. In his engineering final year, he realized that the technical domain is not his cup of tea. So he explored few other options and finally decided to pursue a career in the management domain. Anubhav has scored a whopping 99.64 percentile in the Quantitative Aptitude section of CAT-2019, which played a crucial role in getting an overall high percentile in the exam. He is currently pursuing his management degree from IIM-Lucknow. In this article, he shares his insights on how to score 99+ percentile in CAT. Read on!
1. Hi Anubhav, can you please tell us how one should start their preparation for the quantitative aptitude section of CAT?
Before starting sectional preparation, I would suggest taking one or two sectional mock tests. These are freely available in the market. Taking these mini mocks will tell you where you stand and how much effort you need to put in to cross the 99 percentile mark. To start the preparation, I would not suggest any heavy books available in the market, even if you are a non-engineer. Instead, you can purchase funda books from any of the CAT coaching. These are topic-based booklets and are very helpful in understanding the concepts required to solve CAT questions. Go through these booklets once or twice to make sure you understand the concepts very well. Then start solving questions and take mocks parallelly. Remember, mocks are part of the preparation, don't wait for your syllabus to end to take mocks.
2. What are the resources one should go through to be prepared for the QA section?
For resources, I relied on my coaching institute. I solved their booklets, question sheets, and their mock tests. One more thing that helped me was solving old mock papers of different coaching institutes and CAT old papers. That really helped me in improving my ability to identify whether to attempt the question or leave it. In CAT, where time management is everything, the candidate must learn to leave the question he/she is unsure of.
3. Having scored 99+ percentile in Quantitative aptitude of CAT, What was your study plan?
I started my preparation by understanding the syllabus. My plan was to cover all the important topics except a few. I left modern maths for last and started with understanding concepts of the most important topics first. I covered all the topics by August and was also taking mock tests parallelly. By the end of August, I have taken 15 mocks. I took approximately 20 more mocks in the next two months i.e., September and October. And around 3-4 mocks in November, just to be in the flow of taking tests. I studied modern maths in November itself. Actually, I was planning to leave this topic as I was scoring good percentile without solving any questions from modern maths. But then I thought, why not study and solve a few questions just in case CAT throws some basics from these topics. So, I studied log and coordinate geometry. And it somewhat helped me in the actual exam. In November, I mostly relaxed and revised on a daily basis.
4. How many mock tests have you taken? How you went for their analysis?
I took around 40 mocks. These exclude the old mock papers that I used to solve. The mock analysis is one of the most critical activities in preparation. It gives you lots of insights. During analysis, I usually focused on the questions that wasted my time. Questions that you think that you can solve yet you can't. These are very important to identify, as they waste lots of your time. Apart from that, I used to analyze the questions which were easy and I left them assuming that they would be difficult to crack.
5. Which are the topics to focus on in the last 3 months?
In the last three months, I covered only a few of the left-outs like modern maths. I covered the basics of these topics just in case there is any level 1 question in the actual exam. So, if you have left any topic, I would suggest getting a basic understanding of it and not leaving it entirely as it might be disadvantageous for you in the actual exam.
6. Any advice you would want to give, you wish you would have known earlier regarding CAT preparation?
Yeah, just a few pointers: Take mocks religiously. Don't worry if you are scoring low; that is because you are still in the preparation stage. Have faith in yourself and the process.
Analyze the mocks very very well. Spend at least 3 hours in one full-length mock analysis. Don't take the next mock before analyzing the last one.
Do not panic in the last 30-40 days before D-day. Do not try to cover lots of things during these days. Mostly do revisions and take 3-4 mocks just to be in the practice of taking tests.
And lastly, If you have prepared well, then do not worry; you will sail through smoothly. CAT will be just like your next mock test.