Take it from me - if you are not good at VARC, you will have to put in a lot of effort to get through it. Effort?? Umm might both be the right and the wrong word here. I'd say working on VARC needs discipline and persistence.
As a GEM Fresher candidate, an enormously overrepresented demographic at B-Schools, I was hounded from the beginning by all the people around me. I was told that you need to have an exceptional CAT score and stellar academics to make it through, given how cut-throat the competition is in your pool. And as someone who had 4 backlogs in his first year, this definitely did not feel like an appealing path to tread.
Here is the pen picture of the intended reader- A person who did schooling in vernacular medium, haven't read more than 5 English books in addition to curriculum books and is not good with the English language. [in short an engineer belonging to rural India] If you fall in the pen picture, go ahead; this article has been written for you, although categorization might look judgemental, but hey! You need to be realistic, and some time to move forward you need to accept reality, I did!
VARC – Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension is the first section that appears on the CAT. It is considered to be the most scoring section, unless things get really bad as they did in CAT 2019. So, let’s first understand how the VARC section looks like in the CAT and what are the areas that we as an aspirant need to prepare for –
Arihant is a Chartered Accountant and CFA Level 3 candidate by qualification. He started his career as a business analyst for Intrasoft Technologies Limited. 6 months into the job, he came across a national level start-up competition where he pitched a business idea he had to Shopclues.com and ended up winning the title of India's next big e-preneur 2016. He was able to raise seed funding for his start-up and since then he have dedicated his life to business and entrepreneurship. He will be joining the PGP batch of IIM Kozhikode this year as he begins the next chapter of his career.
Having called herself a "changemaker-in-progress" oftentimes, Sanjana has often looked for opportunities where she could bring some tangible impact on field. She pursued her Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce. During her undergraduation, she worked with various non-profit organisations and also expanded two such organizations, called Project FUEL and CrossBow Miles, to Delhi. Sanjana did her pre-final year internship with Duff & Phelps where she designed the Social Impact Value Framework for them. Post that, she worked with the Public Sector Practice (within Strategy and Operations) of Deloitte India for about a year. She has a very deep interest in Public Policy and Economics, and would like to combine her managerial skill sets with these interest areas.
Ask any CAT Topper and he or she will tell you that VA-RC is the most unpredictable section when it comes to scoring in CAT. In fact, many toppers have pointed out that the VA-RC section in CAT 2019 was particularly difficult. With answers being largely subjective, there's a lot of grey area when it comes to this section of the CAT. This section generally consists of 34 questions of 3 marks each. So how do you go about preparing for this section right now? How do you gain mastery over the reading comprehension section, which historically has the most questions and takes the most time? How do you stay away from negative marking? How do you pace yourself during this seemingly long and exhaustive section? If these are some questions bothering you, this article will provide the answers in this article.
VARC is a section which gives nightmares to many CAT aspirants. A low score can drive down your percentile. The sectional cut-off can also become problematic. It can however also be a section which can really push forward your score. The difficulty level of the section changes every year and even with every slot.
Take it from me - if you are not good at VARC, you will have to put in a lot of effort to get through it. Effort?? Umm might both be the right and the wrong word here. I'd say working on VARC needs discipline and persistence.
As a GEM Fresher candidate, an enormously overrepresented demographic at B-Schools, I was hounded from the beginning by all the people around me. I was told that you need to have an exceptional CAT score and stellar academics to make it through, given how cut-throat the competition is in your pool. And as someone who had 4 backlogs in his first year, this definitely did not feel like an appealing path to tread.
Here is the pen picture of the intended reader- A person who did schooling in vernacular medium, haven't read more than 5 English books in addition to curriculum books and is not good with the English language. [in short an engineer belonging to rural India] If you fall in the pen picture, go ahead; this article has been written for you, although categorization might look judgemental, but hey! You need to be realistic, and some time to move forward you need to accept reality, I did!
VARC – Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension is the first section that appears on the CAT. It is considered to be the most scoring section, unless things get really bad as they did in CAT 2019. So, let’s first understand how the VARC section looks like in the CAT and what are the areas that we as an aspirant need to prepare for –
Arihant is a Chartered Accountant and CFA Level 3 candidate by qualification. He started his career as a business analyst for Intrasoft Technologies Limited. 6 months into the job, he came across a national level start-up competition where he pitched a business idea he had to Shopclues.com and ended up winning the title of India's next big e-preneur 2016. He was able to raise seed funding for his start-up and since then he have dedicated his life to business and entrepreneurship. He will be joining the PGP batch of IIM Kozhikode this year as he begins the next chapter of his career.
Having called herself a "changemaker-in-progress" oftentimes, Sanjana has often looked for opportunities where she could bring some tangible impact on field. She pursued her Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce. During her undergraduation, she worked with various non-profit organisations and also expanded two such organizations, called Project FUEL and CrossBow Miles, to Delhi. Sanjana did her pre-final year internship with Duff & Phelps where she designed the Social Impact Value Framework for them. Post that, she worked with the Public Sector Practice (within Strategy and Operations) of Deloitte India for about a year. She has a very deep interest in Public Policy and Economics, and would like to combine her managerial skill sets with these interest areas.
Ask any CAT Topper and he or she will tell you that VA-RC is the most unpredictable section when it comes to scoring in CAT. In fact, many toppers have pointed out that the VA-RC section in CAT 2019 was particularly difficult. With answers being largely subjective, there's a lot of grey area when it comes to this section of the CAT. This section generally consists of 34 questions of 3 marks each. So how do you go about preparing for this section right now? How do you gain mastery over the reading comprehension section, which historically has the most questions and takes the most time? How do you stay away from negative marking? How do you pace yourself during this seemingly long and exhaustive section? If these are some questions bothering you, this article will provide the answers in this article.
VARC is a section which gives nightmares to many CAT aspirants. A low score can drive down your percentile. The sectional cut-off can also become problematic. It can however also be a section which can really push forward your score. The difficulty level of the section changes every year and even with every slot.
