In the previous two posts we took at a look at the first two building blocks to increase your score and percentile on CAT Quant — Accuracy & Question Selection. In this post we will look at the third building block — if the first two blocks provide the impetus towards the higher score, this block is the one from where you take off towards a higher score — Speed. Read More
In the first part of this post we covered on the first building block to achieve higher scores and percentiles on CAT QA — accuracy. In this post we will take up the next one — selection.
QA is the section that gets the maximum attention of test-takers of all stripes and there is always a litany of frustrations and queries that plagues aspirants —
The answer to all of these questions lies in the way you select questions and the way you navigate between them. Read More
Unlike the other two sections QA is a section that has a direct link to what you have done in school and college. Most of the topics that are asked on the CAT have also been a part of school curriculum. This I feel is the biggest roadblock in front of test-takers wanting to achieve higher scores on the CAT Quant irrespective of their relationship with Quant with high Math scores during X and XII exams not having any direct correlation with ability on the CAT QA.
Last year, I attended the Chennai convocation function for aspirants who cleared the Company Secretary (CS) exam (a relative of mine cleared the exam). The Chief Guest was Padmishri awardee T.N.Manoharan, who is a pre-eminent figure in the Banking and Accounting sector in the country with his book being a must-read for all CA aspirants. He was part of the government-appointed team that cleaned up the Satyam mess and paved the way for the transition to Tech Mahindra. His keynote address was leavened with wisdom and had too many punchlines for me to re-count here but one of the things he said is spot on when it comes to the way we should deal with success and failure. He said… Read More
The response to the first SIMCAT was great and it was nice to see so many students jump into the fray from the word go. But the plunge as most of you would know is similar to jumping off a diving board for the first time — the moment of impact, the bewilderment when you are under the water and most importantly the desperate eagerness towards the end to somehow get back to ground again. (I have never jumped off a diving board but was once caught under the waves on the beach when I was quite little, thankfully my dad managed to rescue me).
Just like you would not bother too much about the score given to your first ever dive do not think too much about the score you got. This is neither an engineering exam nor a blood test. So what is it and how should you evaluate your performance?
The four concerstones of aptitide testing are concepts, application, test-taking strategy and mental toughness.
On a scale of 100, the weightage to each of these depends on the pattern of the test but on average they would be 25%,30%, 30% and 15% respectively.
Concepts, Application and Mental Toughness need no defining but what most test-takers do not understand is the key role by test-taking strategy that has two parts
Question Selection becomes very important on a test where you do not need to answer a question before you move ahead and you can navigate to and fro between questions.
On the GMAT for example you HAVE TO MARK an answer before you go ahead and you cannot return to that question again so there is no question of choosing or leaving a question.
On the CAT and the GRE, you do not have any such compulsion. So your task is to identify and solve the easiest questions or sets first, mark the medium-level questions later and never attempt the really tough questions.
How many of you chose questions wisely in the first SimCAT?
If your answer to any of these questions is YES, it means that this first SimCAT is simply an eye-opener for you with respect to your test-taking strategy.
Can you develop this ability to identify the right question to do immediately, mark the right question for later and leave the tough question by the next SimCAT? The answer obviously is NO. You will develop that skill only after solving quite a few SimCATs. Also, we will dedicate an entire 3-hour session to it later in the season.
The CAT has always been doing flip-flops on the question of where it stands with respect to time-allocation. Over the last decade they have alternated between having sectional time-limits and having no sectional time-limits.
I for one am not in favour of sectional time-limits since it plays crucial part in evaluating a candidate’s ability to strategise — use the resources at his/her disposal (relative skills on various sections) to maximise the outcome — clearing sectional as well as overall cut-offs.
When you have to divide your time properly, choose the right questions and solve them correctly, you have to play three roles those of CEO, Manager and Worker respectively.
With sectional time-limits you end up playing only the latter two roles — Manager and Worker. Most you by now would have realised that for the better part of SimCAT 1 you were doing only one role — Worker.
We do not know what changes this year’s CAT will ring in but if they remove sectional time-limits things will surely get infinitely more interesting (or tough depending on the way you view it).
How many of you let your performance on the second section affect your performance on the third section? I am sure quite a few would have. This is where the fourth stone — mental toughness — comes in.
Of the four cornerstones most of you will be still in the work-in-progress stage on first two — concepts and application. The other two stones you will lay by taking as many SimCATs as possible.
Those of you who haven’t prepared for an entrance test taken by so many people might be tempted to view your SimCAT 1 like you view engineering exam. If not in the mains, then definitely in the supplementary! Once I finish the concepts I will start scoring well. Yes, your scores will go up but so will the scores of others!
So accept the reality that you will take time to develop expertise in all four areas — concepts, applications test-taking and mental toughness.
In all probability you will not see your best scores before September.
I am sure you would have seen that the scores and percentiles of toppers will be in a different range and obviously that will set you wondering if they are from a different planet.
Well, most of them will be test-takers who gave a serious shot last year but could not make it for some reason.
There will also be a handful of people from a different planet such as a student of mine last year who scored a 180 in his first SimCAT after attending classes only for a week and having never prepared or appeared for the CAT before!
But not everyone needs to be like that. Many greats have made modest starts. Some food for thought:
When you are taking a SimCAT you are competing against the most serious aspirants among the approximately 2,00,000 people who register for the CAT, so you really need to be on the top of your game to hit the higher percentile ranges.
Back in the day when I was preparing for the CAT, I spent as many hours if not more hours analyzing a SimCAT as I spent taking it. So the first half was spent taking the test, the second analysing it and only then would I go to the beach to meet friends (that is what I would do every day in the evening in the small beach-town that is Vizag).
What are the things that constitute a great analysis?
Irrespective of what you current level is you should look at
to arrive that the best score you could have got. You need to get that number after every test to know what you are capable of, what was within your reach.
You should look at the questions you solved correctly and see if you could have done them faster.
Use this to a list of the process improvements you can make in the next SimCAT.
Yes, I know you have not yet touched that Geometry book yet but your learning need not be linear. Use every unsolved question to learn concepts from topics you have not yet covered. So if there is a trapezium problem then you can at least learn the formula for area of a trapezium by learning to solve that problem.
People keep asking for tough problems, especially tough DI and LR sets. The SimCATs will always have the best sets. So spend enough time trying to solve them on your own before looking at the solution.
If you consistently do these things over the next few months after each and every SimCAT, be it a take-home one or a proctored one you will start seeing results.
If you stick to only solving the books and not doing this part of the job then you are really not preparing for the CAT but for a college exam.
As I have mentioned many a times before, cracking the CAT is a skill and it will take time to develop. But the reason I keep repeating this is that one needs to view the whole process with the right mindset.
So think of the first SimCAT as the first time you took a car out after learning how to drive a car in the driving school — one will be overwhelmed by enormity of the task and the pressure of driving in real-time traffic. But by repeatedly taking out the car all by oneself, one learns, one will bang the car, make a dent in it, but one will get better for sure.
All you have to do is take as many SimCATs as possible, spend enough time analysing the tests you take and stay patient, the results will show.
Incase some of you haven’t enrolled for the SimCATs – you can do so here.
All the best for the next SimCAT!
We are on the eve of SimCAT 1 and a lot of students (mostly first-time CAT-takers) are apprehensive, understandably so, about taking it. Over the years we have found the self-same reasons that induce this fear, and this post is geared towards addressing them. Read More
When I took my first CAT paper, an actual CAT from the paper-based days, I felt I could easily crack the test. One of the big reasons for this was my outsized ability on the Verbal Ability section. By the time I wrote my first CAT Mock I had been reading three magazines a week for more than 6 years, had a vocabulary wide enough to crack the GRE without preparing for it and a question solving speed of about 1 minute per question. Even on last year’s CAT I needed only 30 minutes to finish the Verbal section. On the GMAT the time is marginally higher — 54 minutes for 41 questions to score the maximum on the Verbal Section. Read More
Over the past few years of mentoring there are always students who keep in touch even after they graduate from b-school. Some to express gratitude once they get their final placement, some to sort out their post MBA dilemmas and others just to have a nice chat about everything under the sun :-).
Likewise this year a student of mine who graduated this March, wrote to me saying that he felt investing in an MBA was the best thing he did and over the course of a few mails I asked him to do a guest post about his MBA experience.
Given that a lot of aspirants who made it to b-schools will be debating the pros and cons, thinking about the cost involved whether it is worth it, the better schools you missed out on and stuff, this post is timely.
Two years back I remember this student also being in the same dilemma. He was wondering whether it was really worth leaving his job at Ford to do an MBA. I felt he should since over the longer-term you need an MBA not just to be given the big roles but also to do justice to them.
This is his take on his MBA experience. Please note that this purely one student’s take based on his personal experience. Read More
In less than a couple of months the first SimCAT of the season will start and so it is time that those who are serious about their prep should do so with a set of concrete goals. In this post we will look at how you should be using your study material, what milestones you should set yourself for each of the upcoming months and most importantly how to approach your practice. Read More
The results of quite a few top b-schools are out and even now I get a lot of queries about that revolve around specialisations — which specialisations should I choose, I do not have any idea what my area of interest and so and so forth.
This is not surprising since in India our strategy is simple — first crack the test, then see what is the best college your percentiles can get you and then finally start thinking about specialisations! The funny part is that we do not seem to learn from our mistakes since this is the same policy we followed for our graduation as well and now want to do an MBA so that we can undo the mistakes of our graduation but without having changed our standard operating procedure!
