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My scores have plateaued, how do I push them north

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We have about 40 days left for the CAT and the queries I am getting are reflecting the same. Aspirants have written to me saying that they have learnt selection —  the A-B-C approach and set selection approach for DI-LR and VA-RC and right now they have a different problem — scores have hit a plateau at their respective levels — 75, 90, 100, 120. And most are facing the same dilemma —  I don’t want to increase my speed and go below the current scores and get demotivated, but if I don’t increase my speed my scores will not go up, what do I do.

I have from my end more or less covered everything that needs to be done. The catch now lies in how you are going about executing things. Based on my interaction with students across the years and also my own experiences of preparing for tests I will try and put forth things that you might be doing or are prone to but are not consciously aware of and that prevent you from realising your full potential.

Are you prone to soft dismissals?

As a cricket fan I know that everything an Indian cricketer achieves in Australia is always lettered in gold. Despite the better showings over the last few years, on average, we do not travel that well and Australia has never been a happy hunting ground, in fact for the better part of my cricketing childhood it was watching Indians in Australia was a tragedy unfold in super-slow burn.

Amidst this gloom came the news of a 17-year old (if my memory serves me right) scoring 80-odd runs on an U-19 tour of Australia — Ambati Rayudu. He was touted as the next big hope of Indian cricket and over the decades since he has just been that — a hope that has flickered more than shone.

The experience of watching Rayudu bat can be outlined in a few strokes — the guy always looks busy; always looks the part, looks like be belongs on he international stage; keeps the strike moving at the beginning and relies on 1s and 2s to get going; then as he moves into the 20s and 30s, he starts unfurling a few boundaries that puts a smile on your face and makes you hope that the Hodor-sized hole in our middle order might after all be filled, and then before that smile can settle down, out of the blue, he gets out!

There have been very few times where I have seen a bowler bowl an absolute gem to claim the Rayudu wicket, it is usually Rayudu gifting his wicket away — walking down the track and giving catching practice to long-on; moving too far, too soon, outside off stump that even a bowler with nothing between his ears will know what to do; try to play a scoop drive off a spinner and give a not so easy catch to someone inside the circle.

He is the classic case of a parade of soft dismissals and he is not alone, every player who is considered talented but somehow never ends up making the regular 11 and becoming a star batsman suffers from the same syndrome, they do not seem to suffer from lack of technique or limited technique (say like a Raina, who’s troubles with the short ball are well-known), they have the technique required to survive the rigours of international cricket and get selected for the national side, but they always get dumped after a few years of an on-and-off relationship — their scores are always in the 30s to 40s, there will be the odd 75s, one 100 that will raise everyone’s hopes, and then it is back to business as usual, 30s and 40s — Ajinkya Rahane is also a case in point and the list does not end there (Robin Uthappa, Dinesh Kartik…).

Are you on your way to becoming one of these players?

  • Do your scores also follow the same pattern — average, above-average, good, average, below average, average…— but never — good, good, great, awesome, good, good…?
  • Do you always come back home, analyse the paper and find that between the score you got and the score you could have got, lies a huge chasm?
  • Do you find the paper was not challenging at all, it was just you?

Well, then it goes without saying that like these players discussed above, you are likely to only get a glimpse of a shot at glory — the old IIMs — and you might have to settle for other colleges, while always knowing in your heart that you could have gotten into a school that is known only by one letter.

To fix this problem and avert the fate of the players discussed above we need to go back to these players and look at the reasons why they get out and correlate that with CAT Prep.

The first and most consistent means by which these players manage to get out is by playing the pre-meditated shot. These guys have all the shots in the book and against almost all types of bowling — they can sweep, they can slog sweep, they can dance down the wicket — and hence in their intent to dominate the bowling or to get things going they always play a pre-meditated shot — they have decided before the bowler has bowled. And even if the shot is on, they manage to never make the small adjustments that will ensure that the shot is perfectly executed to meet the unique ball that is bowled to them.

You might also be someone who knows all the patterns — this will apply most to QA — and have solved so many problems that you never feel out of place in the section, you feel it is your strength, but you make the same mistake — you fail to see what is unique about the problem in front of you, you fit the problem to a pattern and start executing the solution without making the desired changes.

How do you know if you are guilty of this?

You re-read a lot of questions after you start solving them, get stuck on mid-way, realise your your mistake after re-reading and then solve it successfully.

Even if this happens on 5 questions and you take 4 minutes each on these five questions it is 10 minutes lost and that is the difference between an average and a good score.

So if you are a candidate for soft dismissals then firstly, stop copy pasting solutions without reading the actual question in front of you, drill this into your head  — I might know maths, I might be good at it, but every problem is unique.

The second most common reason behind these soft dismissals is that they play one shot too many, they take a risk as if it was not a risk at all, they always think the shot is on —

You might be guilty of doing the same thing — misjudgment— every B seems like an A to you — and while it might be an A, you never really solve the hell out of it — you tinker with it and then let it go. There is nothing that warrants solving a B before an A. You know A-B-C but apply it casually.

So drill this into your head — I might know maths, I might be good at it, but I will not try every problem, I will be ruthless in selection.

The third most common reason, that follows the first two — either they have decided to play a pre-meditated shot or they have decided to score a boundary through a risky choice of shot — is that the execution is never perfect — playing away from their body, they will guide a slightly wide, slightly full ball, with a shot that can only be called a cross between the cover drive and the glide to third man (the follow through is not completed, the bat face is angled), straight to the fielder at point or backward point. The worst part is that neither the situation of the match nor their own score would have warranted this. And even if the shot was warranted then they should have followed the tried and tested adage — if you flash, flash hard, the way Sehwag always did.

The biggest issue I feel with all of these players is that they seem more busy than intensely concentrated — all the great players always seem to be both busy (okay, not Rohit) and intensely clued in — Kohli, Abe, Stokes, Dhoni — but the balance is right.

This is can be the bigger reason behind the two mistakes we discussed so far. Somehow the sight of the larger picture and overall intensity are not to the levels required.

Are you squeezing every drop out of your brain cells

One of the things I know about test-taking is that your best scores will take everything out of you, you will not be doing it comfortably. All of us, including me, have two modes of solving, one is solving comfortably knowing that we will do well enough, this is the autopilot mode — you are driving the car at 60 and you can do it without having to concentrate very hard — the second is when you are fully on and are smashing your best times — you are driving the car at 80, you are aware of every turn, every bit of pressure you are applying on the accelerator and the on the brake.

When I solve a Sudoku puzzle in the autopilot mode, I do it comfortably in 5 minutes, I am okay wasting a few seconds here and there, my eyes are not wide open to figuring out the missing numbers, when I am on, I shave off a minute at the least and in the odd case even 2.

So to cut a long story short, you need to up the intensity during the 60 minutes of a section.

By intensity in a test situation, exactly what I meant by in the Sudoku example — I mean ramping up your concentration levels, not missing a single piece of information logically, while reading at the same if not faster pace.

Are you a genuine all-rounder or are you a bits-and-pieces cricketer

If there is one thing I absolutely hate in the way teams are built and led, it is setting. Planning to score heavy and win not on the base of sheer skills across all surfaces and contexts but on the basis of setting — this guy will score a 30-40 and since the pitch will turn might me 2 wickets; that guy can hit a few lusty blows (I never understood that damn phrase) at the end and bowl five overs, and all I need is one of the top two to go big and we can win. This essentially, was the Indian team at 2019 WC — a team that was primed to score a 300 if and only if Rohit or the skipper scored a 100, and was capable of chasing a 250 at best. It is no wonder that setting is only as good as it can be, it works only if all the bits and pieces fall together every single time.

Do you also get your score by setting? You have a fixed quota of marks that you expect from different areas, if the difficulty levels are distributed across the areas and topics in a way that maximises your strengths and hides your weaknesses you do well.

The thing with the setting method is that when things are absolutely certain and in your favour — home conditions and your stadium in IPL — the setting method will be perfect and you will seem to be able to do no wrong. But the moment the conditions change you will be all at sea, and you are left picking up the pieces.

If there is one thing that I swear by it is this — the CAT rewards all-rounders — you have to be able to solve easy and moderate questions across all topics and areas every single time. There cannot be a question type or area that you cannot score of — RC, Summary, JP, Incorrect Sentence Out of Context, DI, LR, MR, Numbers, Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Modern Math.

Will you to say that you have the knowledge and the technique to solve all easy and medium questions across all of these 12 topics and areas as well as to take on Moderate-Tough questions if the paper gets tough? And you do not need stats for this, you know which areas you do not like face, you know which question types put you under the pump.

So try to imagine the worst paper for your setting

  • Only Arts & Social Science RCs
  • Calculation and graphical DI sets
  • 6-7 questions from Geometry

and prepare for it — watch all the relevant Masterclasses and LMTC sessions to ensure that you can score all around the wicket and against all types of attacks. Until a threshold you are as good as your strengths after a point you are as bad as your weaknesses.

Taking your VA-RC scores to the limit

The first question to ask is how many marks are you scoring from the VA question. Can you push it to a consistent 15-plus for every test from now on and how do you get there?

  • Does your intensity and focus to absolutely get the question right stop at RC?
  • Do you get complacent and mark answers in VA knowing that you haven’t locked them in the way you are doing on RC?
  • Are you happy finding a couple of links and quickly marking a combination for Parajumbles?
  • On a summary question, do you always stop to summarise the three things about the paragraph, after reading the paragraph and before proceeding to the options?

You will find that sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t. The intensity with which you approach RC might be missing. So tighten that bit and focus on getting a 15 atleast.

Also have you started trying out different VA-RC test-taking strategies mentioned in the previous post? Why not try out VA first to see if that helps you maximise.

On RC questions, you are getting all the direct/specific questions right but the moment it comes to inferences or indirect questions such as which of the following will add least depth to the author’s argument, you either make a mistake or are okay leaving it since you are getting the other questions right.

If you need to squeeze out more from the RC questions, you have to thread the needle on the tougher application questions. You have reached that stage of the match where you need to make the big shots, you can’t be comfortable taking a single, so ask yourself,

  • Do you pause at the end of the passage to paraphrase the main idea?
  • Do you pause at the end of a question and before going to the options to frame the function that the right answer should perform in other words the shadow answer

If you are not doing these things then you will always be stuck at these scores in VA-RC.

If you are already doing these things and have good accuracy, there is only way up, read faster, do not be scared, all you have to do while reading faster is concentrate deeper. Remember, it will not be comfortable, if you want comfort, make peace with your current scores.

Can you teach your brain new approaches to get hold of a slippery DI-LR sets

Are you the good ol’ LR-first test-taker? Well, if you are then there is only so much you can score not just on the SimCATs but on the actual CAT as well.

From the LMTC — DI-LR, in which I summarised all the 48 sets over the last three years, it should be clear to all of you that there is only so far you can go with LR.

In every single slot over the past three they have given a  pure DI set — graphical reasoning or calculation set — and if you do not have the calculation skills to solve all of 9-10 pure DI sets, asked over the last three years, in under 10 minutes each, then you are not ready to take the on CAT.

I have written a lot about the MR skills needed to crack the DI-LR section so if you are still clueless as to what MR is then God help you because almost half the sets over the last three years have been MR.

In the next 40 days, re-solve all the SimCATs and 6 slots from CAT 2017, CAT 2018, and CAT 2019. Select the right sets at the beginning, spending 10 minutes and then try to knock off 3-5 sets in 50 minutes. Do not bother about the sectional-timing, it is about the developing the skills?

Sit for an hour or more to analyse this:

  • Are you good at making number combinations of totals based on ratios given?
  • Are you able to figure that an equation such as 31x + 2y = 1025 can have only one pair of values that satisfy them and if x and y have to be multiples of 25, then you can start by substituting multiples of 25 for y and quickly find the value of x?
  • Do you realise that if 5 cells have the possibilities P/Q/R, R/T/S, P/Q/T, P/T, and P/T then P and T can be eliminated from the first three?

You will find that you are currently limited to a few approaches. When faced with Mathematical Reasoning sets, your brain does not throw up such suggestions to make number combinations or write equations.

If you spend enough time with the SimCATs and the CAT DI-LR sections that I mentioned earlier then you will develop new mathematical reasoning pathways.

Do you step out of the crease to QA questions?

Then there is a lot of you who like QA and score a comfortable 55-60 in QA. Can you do better in terms of core QA ability, yes, but are you doing it, no. May be right since the beginning of the SimCATs you are scoring in roughly the same range, 22-25 attempts with 18-22 right. Are you happy with QA, yes, but then you also see people with similar ability attempting 30-32 and getting 27-29 questions right and wonder what they are doing.

Increasing intensity on the QA section means that you are solving at a faster pace than you normally solve and that happens in two ways. The first, writing fewer steps, never writing whole equations, to put it simply if people look at the solution to a question on your sheet they should not be able to understand a thing — it should just be a few numbers written here and there.

The second is by using shortcuts such as substituting the answer options and back-solving, approximating and eliminating, using ratios instead of equations to solve Arithmetic.

You will not be able to solve many questions by these methods but you should be able to pull out at least 4 to 6 questions in a short time, this would mean about 15-18 marks in 6 to 8 minutes. It is these questions that will propel your attempts and score.

Isn’t this exactly what England did to India in the World Cup — four of their batsmen, Jason Roy, Bairstow, Root and Stokes, hit six unconventional hits to the fence, primarily reverse sweeps. This not only accelerated their score but also put a lot of pressure on the bowlers.

Now some of you might say — Sir but if Virat Kohli can’t do it, can we? The fact is that if a batsman as staid and traditional as Joe Root can do it then anyone can. Indians did not try not because they couldn’t but because they felt they needn’t. Our high scores were a function of a couple of batsmen going big and not a function of an entire team having the array of unconventional strokes that have become common in the modern game.

Some of you might ask — Sir, but are they not high risk? Some of the shots in T20 cricket such as the upper-cut or the scoop or the ramp shot were shots that were started by an individual player but now they have become commonplace with everyone mastering it. Ben Stokes hit a reverse sweep for six in the recent historic chase during the Ashes, it means that it is no longer a high-risk shot for him, he exactly knows which balls to do it on, just like good solvers know exactly the question on which to use answer options. So start stepping out of the crease and go big.

Another thing that might be stopping you is that there still are one or two areas that you do not like to solve questions from, you might end up spending more time on a tougher question from your favourite area than doing an easy one from an area you do not fancy. Revise the QA section of the SimCATs to go through them to look at easy questions from areas that you do not like.

Around this time last year, a student had called saying the was from IIT-D and was scoring around 99.5, he needed a percentile above 99.7 to get a call from C and he was scoring around 60 in QA. And he said he was doing everything I said above. The only thing left was for him to increase his reading speed, not by much but by 10%, he was reading well within himself since he was scared of losing accuracy, I just asked him to concentrate harder and drive faster. He hid and scored a 99.89.

A lot of times I have seen that students have attended the sessions and read the blog posts but they only apply what they feel like applying, they skim the icing off the lectures and posts and end up leaving the cake. Go through all the posts on the blog, section-wise, and see if there are still things that you have not tried whole-heartedly.

At this stage no one, including me, can help you beyond a point, since no one will know exactly what you do when you are faced with a question — how you do you select, how do you solve — and more importantly no one will know the quality of your execution — how you process the information and the efficiency with which you execute the solution.

So if you find that you attempt 3 sets in DI-LR but always make 3-4 mistakes and then put that mistake under the microscope to figure out why they happen — are they always the most toughest questions of the set that you always solve out of your greed to maximise return on a set you decided to solve?

Once you finish your MBA you will be expected to optimise the performance and maximize the revenue of whatever functions you are handling and exactly like the CAT, the concepts in the books will help only to a certain level, it is your expertise in understanding what is happening in real-time not just with you but with your entire team and the competition that is crucial.

In your CAT prep you have to show the potential of maximising only your performance and you need to figure things out for yourself, no else can do that for you, I can only give broad guidelines that are nothing but common sense —

You should look at taking around 2-3 tests a week. And based on the areas of improvement or maximisation thrown up by the test, you should practice at a topic or area level  — if it is skill/concept/application problem — or sectional level — if it is a selection/time-management problem.

You have reached a particular level, the last jump will mean that it will take more out of you mentally, but there is no way out. You need to get used to performing at your optimal level every time you solve a question or a test.

Optimal does not mean a number in terms of score or getting a question right, it means that if the test is really easy you hit it out of the park, if the set is very easy you knock it off in 6-minutes, if the test is it is tough to still manage to clear the cut-offs, and if a question is tough you realise it before putting pen on paper and side-step it.

And yeah, a Sudoku puzzle every day with the goal to lower your best time.

CAT 2020 Changes: Are you ready for a sprint?

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Beware of what you ask for, it may come true, a saying goes. All of you who felt a 3-hour test was too long and wanted a shorter test have now got what you want but going from the stories about the way test-takers have felt and performed in the latest SimCAT in the new format, most seem to be ruing the change.

Whenever there are major changes happening all around you, what is paramount as that you who are the centre of these changes be still. More importantly you need to be very clear about the things you can know, the things you can never know, and the things there is no point in knowing. Most importantly, you need to be able to calm, strategic (or tactical), and ruthless, to navigate the changes.

The reason behind the changes

It is more than obvious that the reason behind the changes is not any sort of dissatisfaction with the pattern that has remained unchanged more or less the last 5 years but or the need to test newer or different skill sets.

Long before even the notification was out, I thought that they would go back to holding the test over two days with four slots or even a week to account for social distancing requirements but when the convener announced that it will held in one day as it has been over the past few years, it did come as a surprise. I remember thinking to myself that they are either winging it or we are in for a surprise.

Their way of managing has been to increase the number cities to six and the slots to three and it was the latter that caused the reduction in the duration of the test. The CAT has never been a test-taker friendly exam — so those who will end up with an 8:30 slot in the 6th city of their choice (a city they probably have never been to, not to mention travelling in the midst of the pandemic) have no other option but to do as well as those who get their preferred slot in a centre in their hometown — it is a lottery and citizens of a poor, developing country that we are, we are used to accepting our fate, grinning & bearing it, and fighting. I do not think anyone ever paused to think what will be good for the test-takers — take it or leave it seems to be the message.

And yeah, I would not be surprised if they revert to the old format next year.

The impact of the changes — fewer questions

It does without saying that the number of questions will come down proportionately — the Math says it has be 66 or 67. Beyond this everything else is speculation since we do not have any idea of figuring out what is going on in their head.

If I have to take a bet in terms of number of questions, I will take a bet on the higher side since they do not lose anything by giving more questions, it is not a test of completion anyway. If they have been giving 8 sets in 60 minutes of DI-LR for the past so many years, then I do not think 24-26 questions per section and 75 questions in total with 4 marks each is perfectly feasible.

My highest bet would be on 26-24-25 — VA-RC: RC — 16, 4 Passages, 10 VA; DI-LR: 6 Sets, 4 questions each; QA: 25 questions

My logic for the same is CAT unlike the GMAT, which seeks to differentiate in the middle, since it is a benchmarking test, seeks to differentiate at the top since it is an elimination test — they do not want scores bunching up at the top — having more questions will differentiate the 99 from the 99.5 and 99.5 from the 99.95.

We can indulge in endless speculation over all the options that the test-setters have in mind but they would remain just that — speculation. I would rather follow good ol’ Kipling’s dictum — If you can keep your head when all about you are losing their

Also since the change is primarily a logistical one they will try to go about things without changing much else, or to put it differently I do not see a necessity to change anything else — question types or areas tested — so I won’t be worried about Grammar and freak out about it (I will be worried about something if most of the others are good at it barring me, I don’t think 200000 Indians , including the top 1 percentilers, are going to develop expertise in Grammar and become champs at it in the next few weeks, no way) but if freaking out is your forte, go ahead and howl out to the skies.

The impact of the changes — Are you ready for a sprint?

The biggest impact of the change is in the way we have to perceive the duration we have for a section.

When we have 60-minutes for a section, I think most people will experience it and perform into the four parts (the parts in the brackets indicate what happens to those who do not well):

  • Slot 1: 0-15 Minutes: Settle down and get a hang of the paper, solve a few sitters (do not even know how 15 minutes flew by)
  • Slot 2: 15-30: Consolidate and get going (start to get hang of things)
  • Slot 3: 30-45: Consolidate, go past the cut-off (have the cut-off in sight)
  • Slot 4: 45-60: Mop up the left overs, maximise (panic, panic, panic)

I have stated the extremes and I am sure many of people will fall somewhere in the middle.

In the 60-minute format as you see there is enough and more room for you to

  • settle in get comfortable
  • inefficiently go back and forth between sets
  • waste time scratching around RC passages, DI-LR sets, Type Bs in QA, realising they should be left alone and moving on

In 60-minute format the difference between the 80-percentiler on DI-LR who solves 2 sets and the 99.95 percentiler who solves 6 sets is not that the 80-percentiler needs 30 minutes to solve a set but that the 80-percentiler wastes a lot of time unproductively across sets before finally getting hold of two sets.

Basically you can be inefficient, you can choose a wrong set, and still manage to clear the cut-off since everyone else is in the same boat.

In the 40-minute format you do not have the luxury of the first 15 and the last 15 minutes. It is a sprint from start to finish you have to bat for the entire 40 minutes the way Kohli and Dhoni bat and run as a pair (or used to rather), pushing hard each and every time — no time for dot balls at the beginning, no scope for crazy slogging at the end.

More importantly you have no room for error as far choosing sets and questions is concerned — one wrong passage or set, and be ready to welcome CAT 2021.

So set and passage selection is of utmost importance. Investing 5-minutes and selecting decisively is much better than risking 10-minutes. I covered selection procedure in detail in the Last Mile To CAT series that is available on myIMS.

But this does not mean that you need to front load the selection there are different time management strategies that you can apply.

Time Management Strategies

Given that selection becomes so important, the time management strategies should also be revised to maximise your scores in the shorter format.

For QA, the A-B-C approach discussed in the LMTC and in my QA posts, does does not change at all.

For VA-RC and DI-LR, there is more than one approach that you can try out.

All the strategies outlined below assume that you are familiar the Rating Process I discussed in depth in the LMTC Sessions as well the number of questions you need to answer for different percentiles.

VA-RC Time Management Strategy

STRATEGY I – Rating on the go

If you are a slow reader, will take more than 5 minutes to read and rate the passages, and do not want to feel panicked then Rate on the go

You can apply this strategy in three different ways depending on the percentiles you are targeting

Lower percentile targets mean you need to solve fewer RCs, you can afford to leave the worst ones.

STRATEGY IA – Rating on the go — RC-VA-RC

  • Start with RATING RCs
    • If an RC is rated 7 or above solve it then and there
    • If an RC is rated below 7 leave it for the time being
  • Solve all VA questions in 10-12 minutes
  • Return to the RCs rated below 7 and solve them in decreasing order of rating

This will works for all percentile targets, especially those targeting 80-85 percentiles, since you are not going to get stuck on the bad RCs and can score of VA as well.

STRATEGY IB – Rating on the go — VA First

  • Start with VA and solve all questions in under 2 mins per question
  • Proceed to RC and rate each RC
    • If an RC is rated 7 or above solve it then and there
    • If an RC is rated below 7 leave it for the time being
    • Return to the RCs rated below 7 and solve them in decreasing order of rating

This works for all percentile targets, especially for those targeting 90-95, since you have a chance to take a shot even at the painful RC. It is easier to execute since you are handling the two areas VA and RC in chunks.

STRATEGY IC – Rating on the go — RC First

  • Start with RATING RCs
    • If an RC is rated 7 or above solve it then and there
    • If an RC is rated below 7 leave it for the time being
    • Return to the RCs rated below 7 and solve them in decreasing order of rating
  • Solve all VA questions in the end, ensuring that you have around 2 minutes per question

This works best for those who are already scoring above 95 and have a decent reading speed.

STRATEGY II – Rating First

If VA-RC is your strength, you have a pretty good reading speed, you know how to vary it, and are comfortably crossing 99 percentile always, you can do the rating first

You can apply this strategy in three different ways depending on what suits you.

The reason why this works for the 99-plus percentilers is that you are anyway going to solve all questions, this will ensure that you gauge the difficutly of the whole paper in the first five minutes and can plan your section accordingly.

If your find the RCs are all easy or medium, you can go with IIA.

If you find that a few of the RCs are going to be tricky, you can go with IIB

If VA is your strength you can go with IIC

STRATEGY IIA – Rating First — RC First

  • Start with RATING RCs
    • Rate all the RCs and solve them in decreasing order of rating
  • Solve all VA questions in the end

STRATEGY IIB – Rating First — RC-VA-RC

  • Start with RATING RCs
    • Rate all the RCs and solve only the ones rated 7 and above in decreasing order of rating
  • Solve all VA questions
  • Return to the RCs rated below 7 and solve them in decreasing order of rating

STRATEGY IIC – Rating First — VA First

  • Start with RATING RCs
    • Rate all the RCs, assess the level of difficulty, and decide the sequence
  • Solve all VA questions
  • Solve all RCs in decreasing order of rating

DI-LR Time Management Strategy

Strategy I – Rating on the go

  • RATE a set
    • Solve it straight away if it is rated 8 or more,
    • If not leave it for later
    • After you solve all sets 8 rated and above return to solve the remaining sets in descending order of rating

Strategy II — Split Rating

  • RATE Sets 1 to 3
    • Solve all sets rated 8 or more
    • If there are no sets rated 8 or above rate the next 3 sets
  • RATE Sets 4 to 6
    • Solve all sets rated 8 or more
  • SOLVE all remaining sets in descending order of rating
90 Percentile95 Percentile99 Percentile99.5 Percentile99.95 Percentile
SET SELECTION8 mins.8 mins.6 mins.6 mins5 mins
Easy10 mins.10 mins.7 mins6 mins.6 mins.
Easy10 mins.10 mins.7 mins6 mins.6 mins.
Moderate12 mins*12 mins10 mins.10 mins.8 mins.
Moderate/Tough11 mins*12 mins10 mins.
Tough5 mins*
SCORE24-3030-3636-4040-4448-52
* Indicates sets that need not be solved fully to reach the score targets

You need to experiment to find out what works best for you

I often find students very scared of changing their test-taking strategies. As if changing their strategies is going throw everything haywire.

I have a different take, unlike cricket where attacking from the get-go is a high-risk strategy since it means you might lose crucial wickets, here you are not taking any extra risk.

Whether you solve VA at the beginning, middle, or end, should have no bearing on how you do on VA since your technique on VA is what will help you answer a question correctly. Again unlike cricket where opening with a spinner with a new ball is different from bowling when the ball is older.

So in order to find the strategy that for you results in maximising your scores you have to experiment with different strategies.

Do not forget, someone once experimented and sent a young SRT to open in New Zealand.

The highest score in SimCAT 10 was 200, so despite everything the topper maximised in the shorter format as well. Do not be surprised towards the end of the season more people start scoring in excess of 180.

Back in the day when VK, Scrabbler and I were preparing the pattern was 4 sections with 50 questions each in 120 minutes. I remember that in one of the mocks I scored 136 (1 mark, -.25) and thought surely this I will top, only for a friend to score 150-plus.

On average, intelligence does not increase or decrease over generations so I am sure after taking some time to adjust, test-takers at the top will push themselves to go for maximum in every section and toppers’ scores in the 120-minute format will start edging closer to the scores in the 180-minute format (If T20 cricket has taught us anything it is this one thing)

Whatever the format the three pillars do not change

  • one should always have a strategy to choose questions
  • one should have a time-management strategy
  • one should be able to solve with good accuracy

Do not forget, you are taking the test, not vice-versa

How to fill the S.P.Jain profile-based form

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S.P Jain (SPJIMR in full or SP as it is usually referred to) is one of the most underrated business schools in the country. One of the highlights of the S.P.Jain admissions process is that applicants have to choose their specialization at the time of application. While this might be tough for freshers who do not have enough information and self-awareness to choose a specialization, it is a boon for applicants with work experience. Read More

One of the many ways

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A few mornings ago, at the end of holding a particularly strenuous Yoga pose, my brother let out a gasp and his back slumped back onto the mat, but it was one of those days when my mind was sharp and still like the tip of an archer’s arrow, and I went to the ground with an even breath and a straight spine — it was the first time it had happened in a long time. Straight away in my ears, I heard the voice of Shaji shouting at me from one end of a really large room – I only said relax, back straight!

The yelling was from a warm morning in the year 2013 after I had just moved to Chennai after taking up the IMS franchise for the city. I had taken a place very close to the miniature beach in Besant Nagar (or Bessie as the locals call it). On one of the very first evenings there I took a stroll around the beach and came upon this structure or building or rather what I think is the best word for it – space.

As soon as I saw it and took in it for a few seconds, I thought, this has to be it — a year before, while in Mumbai, I had read a few articles about the groundbreaking classical dancer Chandralekha and had also seen a video of a piece choreographed by her and that had made a strong impression on me, and on reading more about her, I had discovered that her studio is in Chennai and when I saw this space I was certain that this was it.

Chandralekha is considered groundbreaking because she re-invented or reinterpreted what Bharatanatyam can mean through the lens of an even older art form, one that is considered a precursor to all the South East Asian martial arts — kalarippayattu. Shaji, a young practitioner and teacher of kalarippayattu, was one of the two people in the piece choreographed by Chandralekha that I had watched, the other was the writer Tishani Doshi.

So, when I saw the place, I made up my mind to go in and find out if they taught the laity, it turned out that they did and before long I was inside.

Spaces 1

Shaji was as old-school a perfectionist as one could get for a teacher. He would spend a long time arranging and re-arranging students in what seemed to be a random asymmetrical order. Looking back I am guessing it was to ensure that he could sight each one of the 30-odd students who turned up at 6 A.M. from places that were as far as two hours away. He rarely uttered a word apart from the instructions for the movement in Malayalam (like it is in the Japanese way there is very little active teaching, you are expected to watch, follow, and execute until you get a hang)

The session opened with a 30-minute, non-stop movement & kicks-based warm up by the end of which my lungs were ready to explode, and it was on one of those initial days when he had said relax at the end of the warm-up that I slumped against the wall, breathing audibly (to myself) — that was when he shouted at me.

After about 15-odd sessions I gave up because I realised that very few of the students who came there were amateurs like me. Many of the students were dancers who did this for strength and flexibility, while others were full-time students of Kalari who stayed there for a better part of the day. I felt that unless I was serious about pursuing it as an art form, which would take more than the 90 minutes of everyday class that I was putting in, I would be disrespecting it and it was obvious that they were not teaching the classes for the money (else they wouldn’t have been charging a meagre 500 per month). And given that I had just invested money to get into a business, there was no way I could give any more than 90 minutes a day, which in itself seemed difficult on most days.

But what I learned from those few sessions was immense. Firstly, commitment to something is not limited to being strong-willed enough to turn up for the mandated session. True commitment means managing one’s energies during the rest of the time in such a way that you are fully switched on during the time you are present (people rarely understand this, we think as long as we are turning up for something regularly despite our super-busy schedules, we are committed). But whenever you are late for something, have only somehow managed to reach on time, it is very clear that your commitment to the same is only that much — 18-carat not 24-carat. If you are fully committed you will always be slightly early, you would have collected your thoughts and are absolutely ready to dive in.

The second learning is completely related to making the commitment happen. I first started reading about, becoming more aware of my breath and practising pranayama, in the year 2007. I had read a few really good books and practised intensely for close to three years. But I never really made it a part of the rest of my workout routines be it weight-training or yoga.

Over the years, I have realised that as far as managing our mental and physical energies is concerned, breath is everything. When I was getting into a series of strenuous poses today, I was constantly aware of my breath, or rather my focus was both on the pose and on my breath, the focus was to ensure that I did not take shallow breaths, which for me personally, during a pose, has always meant exhaling fully rather than inhaling very deeply (unless the pose itself demands otherwise). This ensures that when I have to respond to the instructor’s call to hold a pose for 30 seconds I measure it in breaths — I know that 10 seconds more is just two breaths more and my focus goes back to my breathing. It also ensures that the core is tight since you are emptying your abdomen out fully, this results in the spine being straight and this results in the most important thing — you do not slump and hit the floor at the end.

Each time you slump with a gasp, you expend more energy and more importantly, you release your focus. Each time you go down with an even breath and straight spine, you are ready for the next pose without releasing your focus, you do not give up before the end of the count.

Do you slump at the end of a section or a DI-LR set?

Is your focus as sharp and as still as the tip of Karna’s arrow,  Achilles’ spear for the entire duration of the CAT?

If you have seen the eyes of swimmers when they step out, during the period before they bend down to get on to their marks, you will know that their gaze is always elsewhere, they are not looking at anyone or anything, as if their body and mind are fused into one.

This has to be the case with all sports that require sustained unbroken energy and concentration from start to end, say sprinting, swimming or archery, unlike longer-format sports like say cricket or football where you can afford to take breathers and recoup but even in those sports, teams and players, are most likely to falter after a scoring a century or a goal, a tennis player is most susceptible in the game after he or she breaks serve, because they let the focus drop, let the breath go, let the spine slacken.

Have you seen the video of Maradona’s gaze before the start of the 86 Final (or SF or QF) as he makes the sign of the cross? Did you see how Stokes went about his innings, how he cut everything out and did not celebrate after the century? Have you seen Djokovic go into monk mode? All of these point to the same thing – focus – even breath, tight core, and straight spine, and that is why in all martial arts, they tie a cloth around the waist.

Some of you might have trouble concentrating for the entire duration of the test. Some of you might be able to easily concentrate but are leaking energy during the process. Some of you might be hitting your desired scores. I feel that no matter where you are, developing an awareness of your breath through breathing exercises (which will mean that your spine will have to be straight), and learning to manage your mental & physical energies through that awareness, will always give you a jump in scores and if the paper gets tougher you will have enough fuel left in your tank and a few more gears left in the mind.

I found that while I learnt this years ago, I have not always applied this diligently, I did it for some years at a stretch and for some, I let go, and unfortunately, I let go when my schedule was the most hectic, which was when I needed it most. All of us can work out, do yoga, and eat right when our schedules are light, it is when we manage to do the right things in the middle of a storm that the storm itself becomes manageable.

So my advice going into the last few months of the CAT Prep is that you need to focus on making your energies one-pointed; you need to add breathing exercises to the beginning and the end of your day; you need to get some form of physical exercise to get your lungs pumping at a rate higher than normal, even if it is a brisk walk, at least a couple of times a week; you need to learn to relax by taking in the right things, say reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse; you need to remove a few things as well such as social media apps (including the YouTUBE App), there is nothing happening on them that is more important to your life than getting into an IIM (essentially you need to get rid of all forms of sugary and fried food that you are feeding to your brain).

If you do all of these things and are conscious of the way you expend your breath and your time over the next three months, you will not slump with a gasp, the spine will be straight, and the breath will be even regardless of the depth — you always be ready for the next ball — and like Arjuna you will not see the sky, or the trees, or the bird, but see only blackness,

the blackness

in the centre

of the eye of the bird.

How to crack the DI-LR section of the CAT – I

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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.

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How to select the right DI-LR sets

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After the previous posts, a few of you had commented saying that you are eagerly awaiting the post on the DI-LR section. The earnestness is understandable since most of you who are facing the SimCATs will know that the DI-LR section is one that will make or break your CAT.If it goes well, you will take that confidence into the QA section finish strong. If your performance on the DI-LR section goes south then you will start feeling the fatigue of 120 minutes of testing and will fade away in the last section. The latter was the case with most test-takers last year. Read More