With two weeks to go before we meet and greet the Common Admission Test, it is time to put the gears into the final lap mode. We bring to you some pointers to help you distil your learning and efforts of the last few months into maximum action on the D-day.
- While it is inevitable to be jittery and full of nerves now, it is very essential to maintain your calm. You have put in your maximum effort, and they are bound to pay off. It is almost guaranteed that your preparation level and your final performance are directly correlated. So, if you know you have worked hard with sincerity, there is no reason why you shouldn’t get your payoff.
- These last couple of weeks can be used to revise the notes that you might have made through your preparation. Formulae or concepts that you have found easy to forget, or difficult to grasp, can be readily reckoned. It helps even more if those notes are in your handwriting, so that you know what was the difficulty you had faced when you had approached the topic.
- This is time to completely let go of weak areas. They would only contribute to a sense of under confidence, and this is something which is best avoided now.
- Focus on your strengths, and make all efforts to avoid missing a question from those topics.
- The number and frequency of practice tests and their analyses should go up now, ideally to 4 tests per week. Remember, CAT is all about practice and application of concepts. There is nothing more dangerous than giving up on practice these last few days. You need to maintain your own balance between accuracy and number of attempts.
- Do take the CAT official mock test. While it might not be an actual gauge of the difficulty level, it would give you an idea of the navigation panels and other features.
- Don't start any new topic now; it would just be a waste of time.
- It is time you finalize your test taking strategy. Months of taking mock tests would have given you a fair idea of things like: Which questions to skip, and which to attempt, How much time to allot to each question, How many attempts to target, Buffer time allotted for revision and for coming back to the marked questions, etc.
- It is advisable to solve the paper in three rounds: do the questions, that you are the most sure of (The Sitters), then come back to the questions marked for later, and then go for the most difficult areas in the end (The Bumps). This way, you can ensure you are able to see all the questions of that section at least once, and judge which ones to focus on immediately. However, do keep in mind the running clock - this decision of ‘to solve or not to solve’ has to be taken within moments.
- You need to focus on the first section the most now. You need to give yourself a positive start in the exam, not to mention the fact that you need to meet sectional cutoffs. This sectional time-limit, a recent development in the exam pattern, is a bane for many aspirants. But we need to face whatever CAT throws at us, don’t we? In fact, the good part about sectional cutoffs is that the questions are so designed that would be solved within the given timeframe. So someone else has done the hard work for you!
- Try using the Elimination Rule. Sometimes, the options are so designed, that you do not need to even solve the question. Just by carefully analyzing the options, you can eliminate the incorrect ones.
- Avoid late nights in the last 15 days. It is important to keep your mind and body well-rested and relaxed. Try to take mocks at the same time as your actual CAT time slot. It accustoms your mind and body to be fully alert during those hours.
Remember, the basic concepts remain the same. If your fundamentals are strong, and you have taken your mock tests seriously, go full throttle, and bell the CAT!