How I Went From 71.6 %ile To 98.13 %ile In DILR Section

By Dikshant Yadav

First Attempt, CAT 2018:

I didn’t care much about the DILR section in my first attempt. Most of the time I used to prepare QA. This is the worst thing you can do for any exam. I didn’t have any particular strategy for DILR and just used to solve the sets that looked easy. Because of this, there was a huge variation in my mock scores. So, my DILR performance was simply a function of luck.

On the D-day, I fared well through the VARC section and then came the DILR where the bloodbath started. I was already nervous, and on that day none of the sets looked easy. From there the panic started, and I presumed the section was difficult. I tried solving a set and things didn’t work out. Then I moved to another set and made very silly mistakes while interpreting the data which wasted some of my time there. After 25 minutes, I could solve only 2 questions (not sets). I lost all hopes and started to think that all the hard work was in vain. I settled myself and dived into the section again. At the end, I attempted 13 questions and I wasn’t even in the mood to solve QA which hampered my performance there also.

Second Attempt, CAT 2019:

So, this time I knew where I messed up. I didn’t have a strategy and a section that demands a high level of thinking, the strategy is crucial.

I started trying different ways to go with the set and finally came up with my own strategy. I used to read all the sets and questions in the first 7-8 minutes. Once, I was done reading, I used to assign them difficulty out of 5. This sounds time-consuming but takes less than half a minute once you are able to judge the sets. After that I used to solve the sets from easiest to difficult. There are always at least 4 sets in the section which are doable. Once I started to get answers for the easy sets, it made me more confident for the next set. Selecting the right sets to solve is very important to ace in DILR.

Apart from this, a proper illustration of the data given in the questions makes them much simpler to solve.

On the D-day, this strategy worked for me.