Cat Prep Tips

I promised someone that I will blog about this issue long time back and finally I was reminded again so here I am, fulfilling my promise. I will start off with my scores and preparation. I prepared seriously for 5 months, joined couple of test series and attempted the material of TIME and CL. I scored 44 in quant, 46 in DI and 28 in verbal with the percentile 97.5(something). It was disappointing but I learned a lot of things about cat preparation which I want to share. First I will go by small things which we generally miss or we don’t focus

The most important thing is time management. You should have a definite strategy for 150 mins. I tried 40-40-40-30 and 45-45-45-15 where first 3 entries is the time given to individual subject and the last entry being the time left for going over to the not attempted questions. This is very important to figure out that which time distribution maximizes your score. And even more important is the determination to change the section when the time is over. I have seen people dwelling over a particular section for 60-80 mins.I will suggest, experiment the distributions for 3-4 test and then decide which one suit you best.

The second most important thing is the order of section. I used to attempt quant first because I was able to attempt decent number of questions in it and it gives me confidence, followed by verbal and then DI because I was good in DI and in last if time gets crunch, I was sure that I can wrap up the things in 30 mins also. Again try various orders for few tests and then fix an order and stick to it.

Now let me go subject wise:

Quant: The best way is to practice more. Practice and read the solution for the questions you didn’t get. It’s very important that you keep noting the good shortcuts and smart formulas in some notebook and mug them properly. This will give you atleast 2 additional questions in final exams.

DI: The smartest way to prepare for DI is to solve 10 years cat paper. There are very limited set of questions in DI. Let’s say 50. If you are through with the 10 years exam papers you will cover like 30-35 types and rest you can learn while you give test and prepare at room. Trust me this is the best way and you will see instantaneous improvement but just keep in mind to read the solution of not attempted/ wrong questions and learn the trick behind them.

English: to be very true I don’t have much of an idea how to improve this. The only thing I knew is you should be able to solve a comprehension in 6 mins and try both the way of solving comprehension i.e. reading passage first and questions later and vice versa. For me reading questions first and passage later was more helpful because in that way I can look for the required answers and keep marking them as I read. I will suggest you this wordlist to mug completely. This is the most comprehensive wordlist I go through. Just 800 words and trust me it covers like 70-80% of the cat words.

About the material: I found the CL material to be best but the TIME provided me with sample test in last moments which were also quite useful. Practice from CL, Practice room test from TIME. There are many things which you should kept in mind while preparing for Cat. Cat is not about hard work, it’s about smart work.