Preperation Strategy : 60 days to CAT .

This post isn’t intended to be for every-one, this has an intended set of users.

i.) Those who think, they haven’t been able to do full justice to their intellectual and would like to do so.
ii.) Those who aren’t too bothered about the TIME/CL/IMS cut-offs rather who are willing to get into an IIM and preferably an A/B/C.
iii.) Those who are adaptable and flexible, what this effectively means is, those who are willing to learn and to change themselves in order to achieve the greater good.


Let’s look into how to prepare for CAT with 60 days to go.
Considering that there are a few days when you don’t feel like studying, or you don’t get time for that, e.g. you have your end-sem exams, its date for a project submission, you have to do an assignment or any other such reason I am assuming that you have just 60 days to ace for the D-day (or days).

Quant:

This is the one section where the only thing that is more important than hard work is smart work. This is the section where learning actually helps, try to revise the concepts of all the topics covered in CAT, as you read a topic try to solve some questions on that (remember its not the quantity but the quality of questions that you solve) Never ever waste your precious time on questions which take more than 4 minutes, remember CAT isn’t a Math’s Olympiad it is CAT.
When this is done, take as many CAT/MOCK-CAT papers you can find and see if there are questions related to that topic, and solve them. Once the questions are solved, take them again and think of yourself in a situation where you haven’t read the topic then try to solve the question by using option rejection, option checking, or value putting.

Data Interpretation:

There are a lot of teachers and institutes which give a lot of emphasis on learning squares, cubes, percentage tables and what not. I am not saying that they aren’t helpful but perhaps they aren’t that important as they are emphasized, in my little experience I’ve realized that one doesn’t save more than a few minutes by using these tricks, and no doubt these few minutes are important in a paper like CAT but is it worth the effort that you put into, and whether you feel confident while using them. If you keep re-checking all calculations which you have done by using these tricks there is no use of learning them in the first place.
DI is one section where two things are really important, first good question selection and second a cool head. And these things come from practice. But then its very unlike Quant, here you don’t have a well defined course / topics. So what is important is to do quality work on DI. Take a set of DI everyday, or if you are lazy enough to not being able to do that take at-least one DI set every few days, the important thing here is : first try to solve the set in a fixed time frame, say that of 10 minutes, if you can solve it in less than that, then be happy and go to sleep, else try to solve it in 30 minutes, if you can’t solve it even in 30 minutes then there are two possibilities, either the set wasn’t worth attempting or there is something which is missing in your reasoning. Just do remember one thing, if you can’t solve a set at a particular time this doesn’t mean you can’t solve it. At times what you need in DI (particularly LR) is a click, so don’t get dis-heartened remember its just practice match the final is on the D-day.
Coming back to point if you can’t solve it, discuss with some-one who you know is good to solve this kind of questions, he/she may be your friend or a teacher else you can ask the question at forums like pg (www.pagalguy.com) for those of you who don’t know what pg is, or else you can ask the question at this blog itself.
This is important because this way you would improve your question selection ability, in case you get a set which is similar to one you have solved you will feel confident and it would be easier to solve it.

Verbal Ability:

I know that I am not a very good person to say how to prepare for Verbal ability, but I can give you some tips on how to score good in it.
Use option elimination; at times it is easier to find out which options can’t be the answer than finding out, which option is the answer.
In reading comprehension, avoid inferential RCs which have questions like, what does the author means, or what is the intention of the author unless you have read the topic well and have gained good insight into it.
In para-jumbles, don’t try to find the complete order, rather try to find two sentences which need to be in certain order, and then use it to reject options.

Introduction

So here is the first post in this blog.

First of let me clarify why I've created this blog in the first place and why one should read it, the second one is a very appropriate question considering that as of now I am just another CAT aspirant, without any exceptional under-graduate record.
But then, as far as CAT is concerned, do you really think it matters??? Or for that matter that you actually need a very high IQ or a lot of hard work to crack it.
The answer is a clear and emphatic no. All it takes to crack CAT (remember I am talking about CAT as of now and not getting into IIMs or other institutes) is common-sense and a basic (high-school) knowledge of mathematics and English, don’t believe me!!! Read this post completely and if you still don’t agree, you can very well call this blog and the author “CRAP” and move on.
When I was in my class 12’th I used to think there is no life beyond the IITs (and may be NDA, this story will be told some other time), but then as I moved on in life I realized that no there actually is life beyond the IITs, and there is a place called IIMs where even the gold-medalists from the IITs covet to enter. In my time (no I am not too old, my time means 2005-2006) IIT-JEE used to be an exam which demanded hard-work, even the best minds used to burn mid-night oil to get into the Mecca of Indian undergraduate studies. And as you all can see, being an out-right lazy fellow that I am, I failed to get into them and am here in KIIT. Add to that, I am a student with pretty ordinary record, in 10’Th (83), 12’Th (82), B.Tech (8.0/10 till now) and I have been unsuccessful in SSB for NDA for outright 4 times.
But then CAT is a different ball game, in other exams such as IIT-JEE you can see and feel your progress as you get further into your preparations, but unless you actually understand what CAT demands its really difficult to make any significant progress, and trust me you won’t need much hard-word or a IQ of 160 to crack it, take my example, by my previous academic record you must have seen that I am an outright ordinary student and still some-how I’ve always managed to get over 99 percentiles in all but one mocks I’ve ever appeared. And if some-one has 10 out of 11 percentiles of over 99.15 including quite a few of 99.9x and just one exception of 98.xx then he gotta know something which might be worthwhile to look into, ISN’T IT ???
Hoping that this would have solved (may be partially) the second question let’s move on to the first question, why am I interested in this???
==> No-one is perfect, and in no field period, it would be a mutual process where we would be learning from each-other, so I am just making a platform where exchange of knowledge will take place.
==> I’ve seen that a lot of my friends, who are more intelligent than me, and who are putting a hell lot of effort more than me and more than what is required (in my humble opinion) getting way less marks and in turn percentiles than what they deserve. People who score 99.xx in 1 mock and then suddenly fall to 8x.xx are really good, but what they lack is the right approach, and you all must have felt that your marks in mocks aren’t actually a true reflection of your ability; I want to see all of them getting their due.
==> In case I don’t make into some IIM, it would be good to have some of my friends into there. :D

So let the journey begin, please pour in your comments and or doubts, if you have, I will definitely try my level best to answer them.