How I Cracked CAT In My First Attempt With 4 Months Of Preparation - Dheeraj Jain, IIM Kozhikode

My CAT story is quite simple and short though I would say a demanding journey of 4 odd months

I took me 1 attempt to crack CAT. It has taken me to 2 years at IIM K and MDI, SPJIMR converts. Here’s how I prepared and utilized my limited resource of 4 months to score 99+ percentile in CAT 2018.

Result Day:

I took this snap after the interview with all the dreams and doubts of meeting it again, but this time for a longer interval. I had just woken up after a day nap with plans of enjoying a cricket game. So, I take my phone out of charging. I see an mail from *IIM Kozhikode* and my heart starts beating faster than ever. I read the mail and then, blissfully jumped in joy. A one-time moment and a feeling to arrest.

Finally, It was happening!

My friends and relatives reaction after looking at the exact same post on my facebook feed

Brief Background:

Being 100% clueless at the age of 15, I followed the well-known advice of Indian fathers and school teachers (IIT Karlo life chill ho jayegi). I prepared and appeared for IIT JEE Mains and Advance and got admission into NIT Warangal after securing AIR 4140 in JEE Mains over a few IITs. After this, I made the best mistake of my life by begging PPO from Reliance Industries Limited. I consider it the best mistake of my life because it's only my job that forced me to look at other career options :P. Here starts the second phase of my life. My job was a really demanding plant job. It was a 9 hours rigorous field job (6 days a week) and the plant was located on the outskirts of the city which added some travel hours to the work hours. These periods of my job brought a lot of deadly bouncers and Yorkers. By the end of my 10 months stay with RIL, I realized I need to make a move in pursuit of my happiness.

The pursuit of my dreams:

Just out of curiosity gave a mock AIMCAT. If I remember correctly it was in May, I scored an overall percentile 82 and 67 percentile in VARC during my very first mock test. It was an eye-opener, forced me to think and analyze on the forward path to CAT. I was not getting any time to prepare because of the tedious job. In spite of having no Back-ups, I decided to move on with my job in the pursuit of my dreams. On July 17th, I submitted my Identity documents to the security department and informed my colleagues and manager this is my last day with you.

Amidst lots of insecurities, worries and open to all possibilities, I joined coaching for CAT and started preparing pretty late in August. Guided by the best faculties in Vadodara, in the presence of the best students in the city like Rutvik, Kunal, Ankur and many more, my wonderful journey from August to November 2018 kicked on. I started dedicating all my time to CAT preparation and used to study for 6 hours daily. It took me about 30-32 mocks to come to a stable score in Quant and DI/LR sections but the Verbal section was still very dicey. By the end of 30 mocks, I used to score overall more than 98 percentile in Time and IMS test series starting from 82 odd percentile 4 months back. Mocks helped me to trace the lag in each stage of the preparation and gave me the impression that I was headed straight for the 99+ bracket. This boosted my confidence and courage to take the CAT fearlessly and nail it. Finally, I Ended up, with the desired score to get into one of the old IIMs.

I would like to share some things that I did during my preparation

 Study Material:

·         IMS Material (could only solve 30% of it due to lack of time)

·         TIME and IMS test series (gave 30-32 mocks including both)

·         Solved Face To Face CAT completely

·         Gave sectional tests in DILR and VARC offered by TIME

·         Solved RC99

1.    Started giving and analyzing mocks: Even if I was not prepared to give the mocks, I started giving them for the sake of time management. I saw 100s of new questions that were to be solved in the proper time frame. Analyzed all the mocks religiously by devoting at least 1.5 * the time taken to take the test.

2.    Verbal: Read more than an hour every day to develop reading speed and solved 5 RCs each day to improve critical reading skills. Note both reading diverse topics and solving RCs are necessary to score well in VARC. I gave the majority of the preparation to this section since I was below average in VARC. I improved from 67 percentile to 85 percentile in VARC by the end of 30 mocks( Don't get stressed out by one or two outlying tests in between where you end up scoring in 60 percentiles again)

3.    DILR - gave sectional tests, mock tests solved Face to Face CAT. The trick with DILR is that more the no of sets you have seen better you become at it. I scored 99 percentile in LRDI by focusing on solving the above mentioned three things in the time frame.

4.    Quant – understood every topic logically and solved a seriously high number of questions to increase speed and reduce errors. Don't leave any topic as you can get the easy question out of the same topic.

5.    Enjoyed the process. A major key to success and healthy life is to enjoy yourself during the process of whatever you are trying to accomplish. Believe me, you don’t any kind of motivation to be on the track if you are simply enjoying the process. The journey becomes a cakewalk and in no real-time it gets finished.

6.    Studied only what is required – Left all the topics which are irrelevant for CAT like grammar, word meaning, etc. I tried to focus more on the portions with high weightage like RCs (80% VARC weightage), Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic.

To all the CAT Takers:

Be like Dhoni:  Enjoy the process, it’s a journey. Stay composed, don't worry if you don't score well in initial mocks. Give regular mocks as all say. Don't get distracted, disheartened watch movies to keep your mind healthy, stress-free and stay focused.