I did my last webinar for the season recently but there will still be 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
Ask yourself the following questions?
Do you feel fresh and mentally alert throughout the duration of the test?
Do you tend to flag after DI-LR?
Do you feel as fresh as you felt months ago when you began the prep?
Do you need to pump yourself up and motivate yourself to gather enough energy to take a test?
From the answers to the questions above you will know the state of your mental energy right now. Ideally, you should be feeling alert and light from the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep.
There are about 10 days left to the test and it is not too late to shift your focus from practising crazily to building up energy reserves to handle D-day, which as you know will demand more energy than a mock taken in the comfort (or discomfort) of your room.
Another obliquely related post that I think you should read (or re-read) if you haven’t is this one.
Between these two I think you will find what you need to get into the right state and manage your energies.
I got the worst slot — the super early morning slot!
For some the early morning slot might be a blessing in disguise since that is the time when you usually prepare, for night-owls it can be their worst nightmare come true.
Either way, you need to start tuning your biological rhythms to ensure that you reach the exam centre by 7 A.M and by 8:30 A.M you are absolutely fresh and raring to go.
If I were you I would do the following for until D-day:
Having had a light dinner by 8 PM
Ensure that I turn in by 10 PM
Wake up at 5 AM and get fresh by 6 AM (all you need to leave for the exam centre is to wear your clothes)
Do a small round of breathing exercises and meditation for a total of around 10-15 minutes
Read a chapter of any spiritual book or text that helps you go into the right frame of mind (5 minutes)
Have a breakfast involving one or more — bananas, soaked almonds, oats, eggs (if your centre is in a different city then soaked almonds and bananas are the easiest option)
Get ready to leave (during the run-up to the test, start your preparation)
Obviously this has to be modified by you to account of the travel time to the exam centre.
I do not know if 12:30 is a good slot or a bad slot!
If I have to choose a slot among three to take the test, I would choose 12:30, it is a bit later than the time at which I am at my optimal, 11:00 to 14:00, but I would not complain the way I would with 8:30, which is way too early for me, and 4:30, which would mean getting out in the afternoon (something I hate :-))
The thing with the 12:30 slot is that like the early morning slot you have to slightly alter your biological rhythms, your body is programmed to feel hungry between 1 and 2, over the next ten days you need to reprogram it.
The following would be my plan until D-day
Wake up at whatever my usual time is but not later than 8 AM and get fresh in an hour (all you need to leave for the exam centre is to wear your clothes)
Do a small round of breathing exercises and meditation for a total of around 10-15 minutes
Read a chapter of any spiritual book or text that helps you go into the right frame of mind (5 minutes)
Have something super-light at whatever your breakfast time is (maximum before 9) to trick your body into believing that everything is the same — I would suggest two bananas and some soaked almonds
Start your prep or log in to work
Have a proper breakfast just before the time you would need to leave for the test centre on D-day to reach there by 11 A.M — oats, eggs, upma, whatever floats your boat but nothing too heavy
Resume your prep or work
Those with the 4:30 slot need to do nothing different! Just go about things the way you normally do since it is neither a feeding or a digestion slot for the body!
It goes without saying that everyone should try to take SimCATs in the time-slot of the actual test.
Insomnia induced by test-day nerves
I am sure there are those of you who know that you will not be able to sleep the night before the CAT. The sheer nervousness, you are sure, will have you tossing and turning all night.
Even in this case, the best option is to pull an all-nighter two nights before the CAT and not sleep during the day that follows so that the night before the CAT, fatigue will overcome nervousness and your body will crash to sleep. Do not leave this for the end, try it once or twice before.
Managing your diet in the lead-up to the test
I was surprised to get a query around the kind of diet one should have but then I also remember talking to my colleagues about physical fitness for test-taking, so in a way, the question is very relevant.
I will try to answer the question from whatever little reading I have done and whatever experiments that I have done with respect to diet and I will try to keep it really simple. This is something that everyone can take up irrespective of the slot.
Food can help you feel two ways, one — extremely happy, satisfied, heavy, and ready to hit the sack, which is what happens when you have food that you and maybe most people really like such as biriyanis, and desserts (you get the drift). This state of body and mind after this is perfect for watching something silly while lying down and going off to sleep. As someone who really likes food and can really eat a lot, I have done a lot of this in the past and treat myself to this feeling of satiation twice a month (usually immediately or the day after a webinar :-))
The other thing that I have also done is have phases where food made me feel another way — nourished and light, exactly the way one feels after eating some fruit.
Given that all of you want to crack the third or fourth toughest test in the world (JEE, UPSC, Gaokao) I suppose you know which one of the two options you are supposed to choose.
So just eat a certain amount of fresh foods (fruits and nuts) and food that is not fried, overtly spicy, and oily (the non-vegetarians, please savour the meat and eat smaller portions), basically home-cooked food in moderation (delete the food apps on your phone)
Also, stop eating when you are just about three-fourths full do not crave for the feeling of heaviness. I have found that even milk makes me feel heavy or rather makes me aware of my gut and I hence cut it out of my system, you should try it as well.
And yeah, no snacks, at all, nothing out of a plastic packet, they don’t just make you feel heavy but bloated and make you crave strong flavours.
Ensure that you include some amount of light exercise every day
One thing that is least talked about is the importance of exercise for mental activities such as test-taking and I cannot vouch for this more. Whenever I sit at my desk for a long time, after a point I feel stale as if my brain is not working, all I need then is a good short walk and get the blood flowing through the body again. Movement is what gets oxygen into our system and makes us feel fresh.
It has been proven that sitting for long periods of time has many harmful effects and I know professionals who have desks that can be adjusted for height so that they can stand and work. You do not need to get one now but you need to counter the effects of sitting for a long time at your desk to prepare long with college or work.
All you need to do is a light exercise at an intensity that only at the end of 30 minutes will make your breath reach your mouth, and perspire slightly. You should not be panting, and your t-shirt should not be drenched. I would suggest a walk or a jog early in the morning or late at night or Yoga or (light) weight training for those who are already doing it.
As I have said before I cannot think of a better thing than adding a few breathing practices to your day.
Some of you might be thinking, is all of this really necessary?
Well, yes and no.
If you are my friend who is a 12-time 100-percentile or one of his students who had a 100 the year before last and scored just a mark or two fewer than him, you do not need any of this. These guys are at a level way beyond the test and the test doesn’t need them to stretch. If these guys have to compete on a different exam with many more people at their level I am sure they would also benefit from being in prime physical shape. But everyone else, including yours truly, can get better by being really fit.
Magnus Carlsen, the current world chess champion and the player with the highest ELO rating ever, does a lot of exercise work as well, he works out every single day, basically a lot of aerobic training. He says it crucial to be able to sit and think for hours at a stretch, so yeah, if Carlsen does, you and I should as well.
A few years back, I attended the Chennai convocation function for aspirants who cleared the Company Secretary (CS) exam (a relative of mine had cleared the exam). The Chief Guest was Padmashri-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 recount 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…
In the previous post, we took up 6 of the 8 sets from the DI-LR section CAT 2017 Slot 2 and took a call on which ones solve and also looked at the best way of solving the same. In this post, we will look at the remaining two sets and also what is making the DI-LR sections on recent CATs unique. Read More
Just like I keep getting queries on how to increase RC accuracy, despite the Masterclasses and the Last Mile To CAT sessions, I keep getting queries around the DI-LR section as well.
In this series of series of posts I’ll dive really deep down into actual CAT DI-LR sets and see if I can come up with some kernel of truth beyond just the solving of the set that can help aspirants approach the solving of the sets better.
The purpose of this site has been to examine the problems that students keep bringing back to me over the years, and as the important ones get addressed I keep getting other questions that depending on how one looks at it are either simple or hide more than they reveal to the casual observer.
One such conundrum is this one, a paraphrase of a problem that I have answered in many comments:
I do not know what happens to me during the test — I do pathetically, sometimes I am even ashamed to mention how much I score — but when I sit after the test, I find that I can answer all questions easily.
How do I deal with this nervousness, how do I tackle this?
You are looking in the wrong mirror — your post-test performance does not really count
The biggest thing test-takers discount is that they are solving the whole paper for the second time!
You have already spent 40 or 60 minutes with the 25 to 35 problems.
You have already tried half of the problems for atleast 2 to 3 minutes each
You attempted all the rest of the questions at least for 1 to 2 minutes.
You have understood all the superficial aspects of the question
You have already tried the obvious methods
When you read it for a second time
your brain registers what it missed or took for granted the during the exam
your do not draw the same table or represent the information in a DI-LR set the same way that you did during the exam
you actually understand the anchor condition because in the exam you did not give it enough thought
you thus start correctly solving the questions you spent 2 or 3 minutes on during the exam
you gain confidence and then correctly solve the questions you spent 1 or 2 minutes on during the exam
you conclude that your problem is nervousness
You completely and conveniently ignore the fact that in reality you spent, on average, 4-5 minutes on every question, or in other words you took twice the time to solve the same section.
You took two stabs at the question.
You are adding the score of first and second innings into a single score!
Estimating your capabilities by post-test performance creates a vicious cycle
In your head your actual capability on a section is 35-40 marks because of the way you ace it post-test whereas your actual scores are in the 15-20 range.
After every successful post-test solving you approach the next test with the same mindset — I am awesome at this section, this time I am going to score 35-40.
What happens when you go in with this thinking?
To score a 35-40 you have to attempt around 16-18 questions and get 13-15 right or attempt 4 sets or all RCs
This means that you going to attempt almost 2 out of 3 questions
More importantly, this means that you have just about 2 minutes per question
You feel under the pump right from the beginning
A few questions go wrong in the beginning and the downward spiral starts
You desperately try to keep your head above the water for the rest of the section — everything but your head is still
You come back home, pick yourself up, resolve the section, and feel good
You think my level is 35-40, next time I will nail it
The cycle, unfortunately vicious not virtuous, continues
And another thing also happens because of these misplaced targets
All the question-selection strategies and solving techniques that IMS mentors, including me, keep going on and on about in Masterclasses, Last Mile to CAT and other videos are thrown out of the window
You think that all of these strategies & techniques are not practical in actual test conditions
You relegate the processes to the background and go back to being you and doing you.
Accept your true ability and set realistic goals
I am not saying that you can never score 40! You sure can, but not right now! Right now, your ability is somewhere in the middle — not 15-20 or 35-40 but 25-30.
This might be tough to accept —
you think you are good at VA-RC since you read a lot
you think you are good at QA since you like Math a lot and have done well in the past
But the fact is that this exam and the question types and the format have nothing to do with your capabilities in general.
It has everything to do with performing in the format of the test. The only true indicator of ability is your performance on the test. You are a good test cricketer does not mean you will be an ace at T20 and vice-versa! You play exceptionally well in India does not mean you will play exceptionally well in England!
So, this is what you should do.
Set your ego aside completely, put the test above you.
Set a target of your current average score plus 10. If you are currently scoring around 15, do not aim for more than 25.
Solve only as many sets/questions that you need to solve to reach this score.
If you are used to aiming for 3 sets, it is okay to aim for only 2 of the easiest and get them right.
What this does is that
the pressure of the timer disappears
you have enough time to execute the selection correctly
you have enough time to execute the processes correctly
you are more likely to achieve your target
Once you achieve a 25 for 2-3 tests, add another 10 marks, let your score stabilise at 35 and then add another 10.
Some papers might be damned difficult but if you are selecting right then you will clear the cut-off and get a good percentile despite a lower-than-target-score since your targets were realistic to start with.
Your problem is nervousness only if…
Nervousness is a valid problem only if you are scoring exceptionally well in the TakeHomes and tanking only in the Proctored SimCATs
Your performance in sectionals is not a valid indicator of your ability since you are not comparing apples with apples. The comparison is valid only in VA-RC since it is the first section and you have as much energy in the SimCAT as in the sectional. When you take a QA sectional in a SimCAT, you are doing so after your brain has done 80 minutes of hard core thinking!
So, if you fall into this category — great TakeHome scores but drastically reduced scores in Proctored Sims — then, yes, nervousness is a problem. I will be doing a session about the same later in the season.
But in the meantime you will not do badly to set reduced expectations, that in itself will decrease the pressure.
There is enough and more time from now until the end of November.
Enough time for you to set the right targets and slowly work your way to higher scores, provided you do not slave mindlessly but work strategically
identify the your problems with test-taking correctly
set the right targets, and
sit down to prepare, be it practice or testing, every single time with a clear goal — I need to select better, or I need to execute processes better, I need to cut down on errors due to misreading and miscalculation.
The goal is not to score a hundred in your innings but to score a good fifty, during which
In the previous two posts, RC-1 and RC-2, we discussed 3 RCs from CAT 2017 Slot – 2 and executed a specific strategy — paragraph to questions — to solve CAT RCs that will increase your accuracy.
In this final post of this series, we will solve the two remaining passages and fine-tune the methods discussed so far.
In the previous post, we discussed a strategy to approach RCs and solved an actual passage from CAT 2017 Slot 2. In this post, we will take up a few more passages from the same slot and execute the strategy.
So much weight does RC have on the CAT, so many are the difficulties faced by test-takers and so frequent are the queries that I receive about RC, that I thought that it will be best to devote a series of posts to cracking Reading Comprehension.
The CAT Writer 