The CAT 2019 exam is scheduled for November 24. ANKUR JAIN shares last-minute tips that can help ace it
With only a month left for CAT 2019, for admission to the coveted IIMs and other good management institutes of the country, the preparation is moving to higher gears. We look at how to prepare for maximum success.
The exam has three main sections — VARC, DILR and QA. First of all give two-three mock tests to assess your current level of preparation. Find where you are weaker or stronger based on your percentiles (ranks) not just scores. Weaker areas should be allotted more time. The general rule is that the weaker you are in an area, the more time you allocate for the section.
Most students allot more time to those areas which they prefer and are therefore stronger. Resist this temptation and spend more time on the areas you like relatively less. This will help you with the sectional cutoffs.
As the exam setters provide less time than required to solve the entire exam, time management is the most crucial element in doing well. Always work with a time deadline when you are tackling/solving questions/exercise/tests so that you are accustomed to the time pressure. Set an alarm to keep you under pressure. You may not use the alarm when you are learning something but always use it for taking a test. The standard guideline is that the time you set, should be sufficient for tackling around 75 per cent of the questions. This simulates actual exam conditions.
It is difficult for most people to study with concentration at a stretch. We recommend that you study for two hours and take a break for 10-15 minutes.
Studying different areas in a day also helps. For example, if you plan to study eight hours a day in buckets of two hours, you may do Quant, RC, DI and LR for two hours each with about 10-15 minutes break between two sessions. However, cover all areas every week.
While taking AIMCATs it important to know relative strengths and weaknesses, it is even more important that you analyse performance thoroughly and have an action plan to improve. Initially taking around one-two mock tests per week with complete analysis and taking action based on the analysis is sufficient. By the end, taking around two-three, full-length tests in a week will be sufficient followed by analysis.
When analysing, look at what you solved but took too much time, look at what you solved but got wrong and look at what you left but could have been solved easily. This will give you targets to work on for study.
Revision of mathematics concepts and important formulae can be done the last one week. For now, focus on improving your conceptual clarity. Do not memorise formulae since the CAT is not looking at your ability to memorise, but rather the ability to apply concepts. Working on lots of questions in practice tests that test your concepts is a much better approach than just working on formulae based questions.
For DI and LR, do look at all types of questions, so that there are no nasty surprises in the exam. If you are familiar with various problems in the exam beforehand, you are likely to do well on the test. Your mock tests can serve as an excellent source of a large number of sets which are the level of the exam.
For English, note that more than two-thirds of the section is reading oriented, whether it is RCs or reading oriented VA questions like Logical Completion of Paragraphs, Logically ordering the Paragraphs etc. Vocabulary and Grammar questions may appear but the effort you put in preparing for them is not going to be as fruitful as improving reading skill. So focus more on tests of RC and VA.
You may continue reading some newspaper articles etc. but now the time is for solving the material provided to you, which will give you reading practice and question practice. Do not worry too much about lots of grammar rules, new vocabulary words etc. Whatever new words you do find in a passage, that you may revise but don’t focus extensively on improving vocabulary now.
Do not start anything new in the last two weeks before CAT. Focus only on strong areas in the last two weeks. Gradually reduce your study in the last three-four days and relax on the day before you will take CAT.
Some students fail to do well in mock tests and feel demotivated. Be realistic in your assessment of your caliber and set realistic and achievable goals. Performance improvement takes place slowly since everyone is studying and is trying to improve. Even if you improve on an absolute scale, you may not see much improvement in your relative performance. You should therefore set a target of ‘achievable improvements’ for your next AIMCAT and keep on repeating it.
There are cases of students who never crossed 90 percentile in the AIMCATs but got 99 percentile or more in the CAT. Most students tend to get higher percentile in CAT than in AIMCATs so be confident.
The writer is Chief Knowledge Expert, TIME, Delhi
