Month: November 2020

Getting ready for CAT D-day

You have about 3 days left and some of you might still be awaiting answers  to some questions such as should you listen to what happened in the earlier slots, what should you do if you know you might not get sleep Saturday night etc. Last year I made audio clip (initially shot as a video) that answered all of these queries, queries that deal specifically with the three days leading up to the test and all the pending questions. As promised I am also taking a stress buster session — Anything But CAT — along with my colleagues at 8 PM today. We will host five rooms where we will discuss specific non-CAT topics of interest: Cricket & Tennis, Football and other sports, Harry Potter & Fantasy Books, Music Room, Quizzing. I’ll be handling the Cricket & Tennis room along with Amit Sir and Param sir (and all of our other stalwarts will also be there in each of the other rooms). I am looking forward to evening sessions and interacting with all the …

Are you ready for a real test?

From very early on in our lives we are exposed (or subjected) to this word called TEST. As we enter the higher grades, the role that TESTS play or are supposed to play in our lives steadily increases. If we look back, for most of us, tests have always been part of a trinity, they have always been concomitant with two other things —  fear and prayer. At some point of time all of us, when faced with a test (including yours truly), have felt at the least a sliver of fear running through our bodies prior to a test and even the most unbelieving of us has muttered a tiny, little, prayer under our breaths.

CAT 2020 Miscellany: Early Morning Slot, Insomnia, and other blues

I did my last webinar for the season recently and any of you who still have queries around how to increase your scores in the last few weeks, what scores to target for what percentiles, what to prepare, will find my take on all of them and a few more queries in the recording of the same. But there are a still a few non prep queries that will be swirling around in your head. This post is will cover all of those niggles that do not prevent you taking to the field but are a bother that you can do without. Is there a chance you might have burnt out or are running solely on adrenaline? Those of you who have attended all of my webinars know how much store I set on having optimal mental energy. So for me a lot of issues can be traced back to the quality of our mental energy. Some of you might not realise that you have depleted your energy sources and are running solely on adrenaline …

How to manage your 120 minutes

We have reached the last stretch now. If you are in a track and field race, you have turned the last curve and hit the straight. We have done enough concepts, practice & strategy. We have now crossed an invisible frontier, we have moved from the general to the specific, from what is outside of you to what is inside of you, to that space between your ears. Those who have taken the CAT before will attest that how well you manage your 120 minutes, how well you react to tough set or a section, how well you are able to execute Plan A or switch to Plan B, everything, depends on how well you manage the space between your ears. So let’s take it section by section, let’s look at each of the 40 minutes, let’s look at what you need to do right, what you need to watch out for and most importantly what can go wrong.