Hola Amigos! How are you? You must be thinking, "Buddy, it's pandemic all over the world, and you know the answer." Yeah, I know the answer. But for CAT 2020 aspirants, it is a blessing in disguise. In his book -The ONE thing, Garry W. Keller tells us to narrow down our focus on one crucial thing. For all the B-school dreamers out there, one thing is the Common Admission Test 2020, and this pandemic has given you a chance to sit at home and narrow down your efforts effectively and strategically.
Today, in this article I want to present you a blueprint for your success. We resemble our ancestors in the way we approach things, and we are also as much hunter-gatherers as them. They needed to remember places and locations, and we need to remember buildings or houses. Let's compare the CAT preparation strategy to how you navigate when you are going to someone's house. First, you should know the area very well, and for aspirants, that place is CAT, narrow down your focus. Now, you saw the house, and when you entered, you found three rooms. Similarly, in your CAT examination, there are three sections, i.e., Verbal Ability/Reading Comprehension, Data Interpretation/Logical Reasoning, and Quantitative Aptitude. Further, narrow down your focus, each room has it's uniqueness, and we will discuss the preparation and test-taking strategy for each of the three sections.
1. Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension
The first room and the start of the test. The first and most important thing while preparing is to practice 3-4 RC's of different kinds daily and try attempting in 8-10 minutes. This will inculcate a habit so that you will be acquainted with different types of RC's. For the Verbal Ability part again, practice is the key. While attempting mocks and VA/RC as a section, divide timings as 40 min for the RC part and 20 min for the VA part. You can increase the RC timing to 45 min and then VA timing will be 15 min. Usually, this comes with practice. What is essential in the test is picking up the right RC passage first and gradually moving towards harder ones. According to my own experience, try attempting the VA part first. Analyze what is your strength in VA, attempt those questions.
2. Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning
The middle and crucial room. While preparing for DILR, start from basic sets and then gradually build upon that. Speaking from the experiences of many, try solving sets from past year question papers. Repeat if needed to settle them in a time-bound manner. In mocks, while taking DILR as a section, the most crucial thing is skimming and dedicate at least 8-10 minutes for that. Practice 3-4 sets daily; familiarity with the sets gives you an edge while attempting DILR in the actual test.
3. Quantitative Aptitude
Third and final room. My experience says that this section requires more strategy than any other section during preparation and taking a mock-test. Preparation should start with basics, and one should divide this section into five parts while preparing, i.e., Geometry and Mensuration, Arithmetic, Algebra, Number system, and Modern maths. One should analyze one's strengths and weaknesses and focus more on the former. Be thorough with the basics so that you won't miss a simple question from a hard topic. In mocks, the best strategy is picking up easy questions first, moving to moderate, and finally solving harder questions. Ideally, give 20-25 minutes for easy questions, 20-25 minutes to moderate questions, and rest time to solve hard questions.
Folks, In the above discussion, one thing was common, and that is mock-test. If three sections of the cat are rooms, this is like a hall. Near about 90 days are remaining for CAT, and at this juncture, even if you are half prepared, I recommend taking mocks. May-June is the ideal time to start with mocks. Until and unless you put yourselves in the vulnerability, you will not learn. Take mocks and check your preparation. Don't carry bearings of the previous section to the next section; practice resetting your mind for each section. Analyze your results after every test, give a considerable amount of time for analyzing mocks. Make a note of areas in which you excel and areas you are failing and rectify those errors.
Few personal tips could help save time. Before reading RC passages, give one minute to read questions (one-liners) for that RC passage. You will have a grasp of what passage is about and which questions you can tackle. For DILR, keep the last 5 minutes for TITA questions that you previously left, don't leave those questions unanswered. Try attempting the quantitative aptitude section from question number 18 onwards till the end and then start from 1st to 17th.
Cheers! The house tour is complete. Now I want to make you wary of one potential risk that an aspirant must avoid, the risk of 'Presumption.'
We will analyze the VARC section for the last four years. To explain, I have taken cut off marks for 95 percentile for all these years.
You can see for 2016,2017, and 2018 the average normalized score required to get 95 percentile in the VARC section was 63. Whereas in 2019, the score dropped to 50. In 2019, many aspirants had this presumption that the VARC section will be on the same line of the previous years, i.e., the easy-moderate question will dominate but, CAT being unpredictable, found a perfect spot to attack. VARC being the first section and this surprise, made many aspirants lose their natural pace and stratagem. So, the bottom line is don't presume.
To sum up, be consistent with your studies and strategize all your efforts. In your train of thought, you should live in these four rooms and a hall to win the house of CAT and get your dream B-school.