Most of the aspirants after the CAT exam are haunted by their failures. Some even start doubting their abilities after the debacle in CAT. It is often said that “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan". Same is the case after CAT. Toppers are flooded with those congratulatory messages from friends/relatives, start sharing their success mantras with people around, but people who fail are many times left with just regret of failure. On the basis of my two attempts in CAT, let me state some reasons for failure:
CAT is Unpredictable
Even if you have given 100 number of mocks, believe me, CAT will shock you on the D-day. For instance, the verbal section in previous years was almost a cakewalk but in 2019 people were up for a shock. For me it felt like that I was reading a Chetan Bhagat novel in my mocks RC but in an actual paper, I got Arundhati Roy’s work to read. Also, LRDI section each particular year has a new kind of problem set which increases this uncertainty. Even the people who obtained 99.7+ in CAT 2019, can’t say with full certainty that they will even cross 99+next year.
Everyone doesn't have the potential
As harsh as it sounds but everyone can't get a 99 percentile. It may be that you don't have that required aptitude for cracking CAT and your potential is a little bit different. Maybe you are made for subjective or more theoretical tests. That's the reason why our board toppers and JEE toppers are different. Even in MBA exams your XAT toppers and CAT toppers might differ as both the papers require a little different skill and aptitude. Hence, I advise everyone to take up exams like XAT, SNAP, NMAT etc. also with CAT as you never know what might work for you.
Fear of exams
Some of us including me can't perform well in a tense situation. This leads to below-par performance. Also, the errors which you call silly mistakes aren't just silly but a result of exam pressure. (I still hate myself for committing some blunders in the CAT paper). So, my mantra to deal with such a situation is a little different. Think about what worse can happen and how will you cope with it. Once you have your damage control plan ready, most of the times it will put your mind to rest. When I appeared for my CAT 2019 paper I had applied for a teaching job in a CAT coaching and if things didn't work out, I would have pursued that as I liked teaching.
Moving further I can mention lack of dedication and a lesser number of mocks also as the reason for failure in CAT. But to be true I have seen people with 5 mocks also going on to get a 99.5+ and contrastingly, focused people who gave a good number of mocks scoring even below 90%ile. Still, I will advise everyone to give 30+ mocks before appearing for CAT.
This all being said, just remember the fact that CAT is a 3-hour exam with the purpose of filtering candidates and is not a measure of one’s ability or talent. One particular scene from Batman movie always strikes me. Here goes the dialogues of that scene :
Alfred: Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.
Bruce: You still haven't given up on me?
Alfred: Never
In your situation, you wouldn’t be lucky enough to have a guide like Alfred and in that case, you have to become the Alfred for your own defeated inner-self. Whenever I failed in something, my Father used to tell me,” A person who fell and got up is much stronger than the person who never fell”.
I hope you will also follow the same. Please like if you feel that the article helped you…!!!