Let's be real. The Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC) section of CAT, XAT and other MBA entrance exams can be really tricky. More so if English is not your strongest suit (Read: me). When I started my preparation, I kept staring at RC passages to try and make sense of what was being said. So if the VARC section is what scares you, fret not! With proper preparation strategy and hard work, you can tame the beast. Let me tell you how to go about it (or rather how I went about it).
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To score well in VARC, one needs to:
- Have a good vocabulary
- Read through passages at a reasonably fast pace, while also being able to make sense of it
- Retain key ideas and points by the time one gets to questions
- Power through dense and dry passages that may not be of personal interest
- Keep a calm mind under pressure
Luckily, the key to achieving all of the above points rests in one thing - reading. But not just casual reading; one needs to read extensively, widely and avidly. Apart from solving practice RCs and mocks, it is crucial to include a good amount of daily reading in your preparation schedule. But what does one read?
To master your reading skills, keep the following pointers in mind:
- Read from a wide range of topics: This will help you get comfortable with topics that you are not especially interested in. Make sure to include a healthy bit of reading from all kinds of different topics.
- Read long passages: This will help you build stamina to read and solve one passage after the other while also retaining key ideas. Magazine articles are a good resource for long reads.
- Read good English: This one’s a no brainer. This will help you build up your vocabulary. Remember - it is impossible to learn the meaning of every word in the dictionary. The idea is to be able to get a fair bit of sense of what the author is trying to say with a particular word or sentence, in the given context.
To get you up and running, use the following list of reading resources to take your VARC prep to the next level. And remember, reading is the way (The Mandalorian would agree)!
Textbooks
| Name of the book | Author | Publisher |
| How to Prepare for Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension for CAT (9th Edition) | Meenakshi Upadhyay and Arun Sharma | McGraw Hill |
| The Pearson Guide to Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension for CAT (2020) | Nishit Sinha | Pearson Education |
| Word Power Made Easy | Norman Lewis | Goyal |
Note: Not an exhaustive list.
Fiction and Non-fiction books
| Name of the book | Author | Genre |
| The Kite Runner | Khaled Hosseini | Fiction drama |
| Animal Farm | George Orwell | Fiction, Political Satire |
| Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Robert M. Pirsig | Philosophy |
| A Christmas Carol | Charles Dickins | Classics |
| The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway | Literary Fiction |
| 1984 | George Orwell | Political Fiction |
| A Brief History of Time | Stephen Hawking | Science |
| A Gentleman in Moscow | Amor Towles | Historical Fiction |
| Future Shock | Alvin Toffler | Science Fiction |
| Tuesdays with Morrie | Mitch Albom | Non-fiction, Inspirational |
Note: This is by no means a definitive or exhaustive list. The goal is to read as much as possible and one can pick up any book that catches their interest.
Magazines, Newspapers and Websites
Note: Some of these websites may require a subscription for unlimited access.
Other Resources
Did I miss out on a useful resource? Let me know in the comments. Happy reading!
