It was 4th December 2016, the day my journey had inadvertently begun. I got up early in the morning and started revising all the formulae for the Quantative Aptitude section. My mother thought I was being a show off. Had I been serious, I would have spent my weekends not touring the whole of Karnataka, but studying. Well, hard to argue with that logic.
After the exam, I knew I wouldn’t even cross 90 percentile. My paper had been worse than last year. I had attempted lesser questions and I wasn’t even sure that I had reached the correct answers. Lack of preparation does that to your confidence.
To say I was shocked, after checking my result would be an understatement. I had scored 97.75 percentile, without even an hour of proper preparation. How was it possible? Everyone was baffled. Well, so was I. Was it luck? Maybe.
In hindsight, I now know. CAT is an exam that tests your aptitude. It doesn’t check your ability to mug up answers and reproduce them. It doesn’t evaluate you on your ability to solve lengthy sums or be a grammar-Nazi. It just tests your basic English comprehension skills, logical ability and speed. Nothing more and nothing less.
You do need to work on developing those skills and your speed of attempting the paper. That requires practice. I’m not undermining that. In fact, the effort I put in for my first attempt was the reason I could get that score the second time even without any studies. But what is more important than practice is developing concepts. The concepts had stayed with me even when I lost touch with the practice.
My preparation for the first attempt didn’t prove fruitful because CAT is an unpredictable paper. You can never predict how those 3 hours would turn out. Maybe that day, I was too cautious about getting negative marks for wrong answers, which wasn’t the case the second time. Maybe all others had outperformed me the first time, and even with lesser questions attempted than the previous attempt I outperformed others the second time (Sometimes the paper is just plain tricky.) You never know what will happen and no one can predict. But what can be assured is that once your concepts are build, they will help you out sooner or later.
So, what I want to tell all you CAT aspirants is, don’t pressurise yourself into scoring that perfect 100 percentile. Don't practise 10 hours a day because that's what others do and you've got to beat them. Hone your strengths. Identify your areas of improvements and work on them. Don’t run a rat race. It will not get you anywhere. Just be calm and work smart. You’ll surely be able bell the CAT.
Comments
Neha Singh
After reading this article you have pretty much solved my issues. Please suggest how to learn basic concepts and some books you studied in your first attempt.
5 Aug 2017, 11.15 AM
+Read Replies (1)
Parul Gupta
Parul Gupta is currently a PGP student of 2017-2019 batch at IIM Indore. An electronics and communication engineer, she graduated from Jabalpur Engineering College. She loves to read and write fiction.
I had joined CL... my class sheets, packages and test gym had proved to be adequate for concepts... I diligently gave the test series though... That's the kind of practise you need... Time bound and set at an appropriate level... Although if you are preparing on your own... A good place to start would be Arun Sharma... But do join some test series... Hope that helped! All the best! :)
7 Aug 2017, 12.42 AM |
prakash Gupta
Thank you so much for providing your experience.
12 Sep 2017, 06.38 PM
faraz hussain
about myself i am indefatigable,scrupulous,confidentand i am a ivestment banking aspirant.mile walker.searching about finance and listening to music are my hobbies.
Nice article.. thanks for sharing.. you are right .. need to clear concepts n practice to bell cat.
12 Sep 2017, 07.22 PM
Rohit Bhosale
After completing B. Tech in Mechanical Engineer, he joined Siemens PLM and had two of the best years of his life there. Currently, he is Pursuing MBA from Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay. When you don't see him listening to music and singing songs, he might be found discussing Cricket and Tennis with his friends.
IIM I convert at 97.75 ...you must have strong 10th and +2 scores? ?
12 Sep 2017, 08.13 PM
Chapala Kavya
Can you please share your percentile the first time you gave the exam?
21 Nov 2017, 03.02 AM