Tips To Transform Your Low DI/LR Score To A Winning One

By Aroon Koshy

In the previous two CATs, the DI/LR section has been quite tricky. The level of difficulty has increased over the past few years. It is possible that this year as well, CAT will follow the same trend and the questions will be very different from what you have been practising in your mocks. So how do you make sure that you make the cut and get that competitive score.

The mock tests are the best way to develop your skills in the DI/LR section. If you have been scoring low in the section, it is high time to increase the number of mocks that you take. To put it plainly, practice is the only solution. When I was struggling with DI/LR, I studied it for seven days at a stretch without touching the verbal or quant section. This helped me to stay in the zone and get a knack of solving charts and logical cases.

At first, try solving the question without any time limit. Take your time. Understand all the details in the question. A concentrated reading of the case will almost show you the way of proceeding for the solution. A superficial reading will only make the problem look more than what it is. If you are unable to find the starting point to solve the case or find yourself stuck at any point while solving the question, check the solution. It is important to make a mental note of the approach used to solve the question. Whenever you encounter a similar question, you will know what your approach should be and this will save time.

After, you are comfortable in decoding questions, set time limits to solve the question. Initial results may be disappointing, but keep doing it. The scores will improve slowly. Identify which is your strong zone, DI or LR. Try to attempt your strong zone first while taking the mocks. This will help you build more confidence in the section. If there is time left, look at the cases which you think are tough. Now, there may be questions with no negative marks in some of the cases. Make intelligent guesses for these questions if you are unable to solve the question in its entirety. You may get lucky!

It is possible that while taking the test your results may fluctuate. You may score high marks in some of the tests and low marks in some others. That is okay. But your review of the mock, should reveal to you which angle about the solution you were not able to think. Keep a mental note and never make the mistake again. Once you spend some time working on your skills in this section, you will be able to solve cases accurately. In more than 75% of the cases of DI/LR, either you will solve the case correctly or you will not solve the case at all. There is little chance that you will solve the case incorrectly.

I would like to encourage you by giving my example. I was terrible at solving DI/LR sets. I was not even close to 70 percentile marks in the mocks initially. I put in some effort and developed my skills around it. My DI/LR percentile in CAT 2016 was 99.7 and my XAT Decision-making percentile was also more than 99 percentile. This year again, CAT may include surprise questions which may not be easy to solve, but if you are able to develop the skill of decoding questions, you will make the cut easily.

“If you want to play, then practice. If you want to win, practice harder.”