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

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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.

I have covered everything about how to manage your energy, stress and anxiety in this webinar, it would not hurt to refresh whatever I covered.

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.

Afternoon Slot .jpg

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.

How to manage your 120 minutes

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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. Read More

A plan for the last leg

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At this stage, I realise that all of you are suffering from a different set of problems that occur at different score-levels. It is quite tough to come up with posts for the specific score ranges that different people are in and it is absolutely stupid to come up with a do-this-everyday-for-the-next-30 days sort of a thing (if you even think that is possible then you are preparing for the wrong exam). This post is intended to help you devise the best plan for yourself over the next thirty days.

Fix your desired set of colleges, tests, and percentiles

While everyone should and still aim to get into the old IIMs, each of one of you should also have a clear idea as to what the good colleges are for your profile for you apart from the IIMs.

When I say a good college for you, you should measure it in terms of the outcomes that will be commensurate with your profile at this stage.

An MBA primarily amplifies your current profile, this means that it will multiply whatever is your current earning potential by 2-2.5.

If your current potential is 6 or lower multiply it by 2.5 if it is between 6 to 7 multiply it by 2.25, 8 and above multiply it by 2.

If you are a fresher or studying in a good college, top 5 in your state, and have a good academic profile, you should get a job that pays at the least 6 LPA. This means that you need to look at an MBA college that has an average of around 14 LPA.

If you are a fresher or studying in a college, that will give you a salary of 4 LPA, you need to apply to colleges that will give you a salary of at least 10LPA.

The same applies to working professionals as well, irrespective of number of years of work-ex you need to look at your current salary and do a multiplication by 2-2.5.

Those who are in the higher pay scales should do a multiplication by 2 and also note that in the top-tier colleges the average might be 17-18 but the number of jobs with salaries above the average will be good enough to get you the desired jump.

Based on this list of colleges you need you to fix your desired tests and the respective target scores and percentiles.

The desired list and percentiles though cannot be looked at in isolation, the elephant in the room is your current potential on the CAT and other tests. So, you have to choose the colleges both based on your profile and the percentile you are likely to score.

If you have a really high potential on the CAT and other tests as demonstrated in your SimCAT scores, you should aim much higher than your current earning potential. (More than a decade ago, I had a 2.5 lakh job out of campus but I was sure my aptitude on the CAT was good enough to get me a call from IIM-A, which eventually did happen, so I applied only to 2 schools apart from the IIMs) 

Estimate your actual percentile from best Mock percentiles

On the actual CAT, if you perform at the same level as you perform in the Mocks, your percentiles will be much higher.

The simple reason is that the Mocks are taken by the most serious CAT aspirants.

While more than 2,00,000 register for the tests, the Mocks are not taken seriously by more than 25000 students. On test day, out of the registered students around 30000 do not even turn up.

So the fraction that is percentile, x/y, will increase on test day since the denominator and numerator will become 6-digit figures and the rest of the crowd that shows up on test day is not going to do better than those who are preparing (India does not have that much bench strength that people who do not even take mocks can show and perform better than those who are).

What happens to the value of a fraction less than 1 if the numerator and denominator keep increasing — 2/3 < 3/4 <4/5 — it keeps on increasing. The question is how much will it increase by?

By half of the difference between 100 and your current percentile. If your current percentile is 80, it will become 90, if it is 90, then 95 and so on.

If you feel that you can increase your current mock percentiles by 5 more, then estimate your actual percentile after adding 5 to your current percentile.

On the CAT the scores correlate with the percentiles as follows:

95 percentile – 85-90
99 percentile – 100-105
99.5 percentile – 115-120
100 percentile – 140 and above

In short if you cross a score of 100 you are very likely to cross 99 percentile.

Now that you know your target scores, set incremental scores towards reaching them.

You are at 75 and have to reach 105, start with a target of 85-90.

For some of you, this increase might be evenly spread across sections and for others, it might be lop-sided, you have to do the break-up of the sectional increase 

This is not easy to do. For example, if you are scoring 80 and are scoring above 30 in two sections and below 20 in the third, then your first area of focus should be on the one below 20 since the maximum scope of improvement lies here.

A good way to ensure that you prepare optimally is to execute the plan below.

Don’t get spooked by dropping percentiles in the last 5 tests!

CAT Prep is no different from a marathon while quite a few people start it very few people finish it. So, in the last two months, we see a significant drop in the number of people taking the SimCATs with quite a few people giving up altogtehr or post-poning the prep for another year. Thus, after SimCAT 10 the fight is only between the super-serious students who are doing well. 

It is thus but natural that percentiles will drop. Do not let this affect your confidence in any way. If your scores are at the same level or better you you will do well on test day.

A plan for the last 4 weeks

If this is your second attempt and you have cumulatively taken more than 40 Mocks, take only 8 tests in the last 4 weeks, 1 test every three days.

Everyone else should take 15 tests in the next 4 weeks, 1 test every alternate day.

Take-Home SimCATs are actual SimCATs from the last 3 years they are authentic or difficult as the current SimCATs, they feel different because you do not take them under any pressure.

After the tests and during the days between the tests focus solely on one area per week in whatever order is necessary for you, W1— DI-LR, W2—VARC, W3 — QA, W4 — Overall.

Obviously, this cannot apply to everyone. For those who are doing really well on QA and VA-RC and have a problem only with DI-LR, work for two weeks on DI-LR, you have to customise this plan.

What should you be doing during these weeks?

The four levers to higher scores

The four levers that you have to use to propel your scores are — Selection, Accuracy, Concepts, and Speed

No matter what your score the first thing you have to get right is selection.

Why Selection matters?

When you are consciously selecting the right questions to do you are taking the test and the test is not taking you.

All of you want to (or rather should since you are spending 20 lakhs for an MBA education) become a CEO or Founder in the future. What is fundamentally involves is to decide where and how to invest your money.

If 100 people come to you asking you to invest 2 crores each in 100 ideas and you have 200 crops at your disposal, what will you do?

  • will you give everybody 50 or 100 each and then depending on how they do will you give the rest or will you first do a quick evaluation of the soundness of the idea using some strong first principles and then decide to invest?
  • will you give money to ideas that are in industries you like or will you give money to ideas that will definitely generate money (if the goal is to make the most of your 200 crores)

During the CAT, you are investing money. So by not selecting questions and spending some time on each question you are investing money without evaluating ideas.

During each section, you are first supposed to play the role of CEO, deciding whether to do the problem or not, then be the worker solving the problem, and in parallel play the manager who is aware of the clock.

If you select and solve the right 75 questions and leave the remaining 25 by spending less than 20 minutes you will end up with a percentile above 99.

So the first task before anything else is for you to go and watch all the videos on how to select the right questions  in the CHANNELs section of the new myIMS, just go there and watch the LMTC videos in the recorded tab. If you have already watched this or attended LMTC sessions and are successfully implementing the methods then you can skip this part.

Accuracy

If you select and solve the right 50 questions and leave the remaining 20-25 by spending less than 10 minutes you will end up with a percentile above 99.

ATTEMPTS CORRECT SCORE
60 48 132
55 44 121
50 40 110
45 36 99
40 32 84

But this, as you would have realised, is contingent on you solving at least 80% of the questions right.

If I am guessing right, accuracy, is the biggest problem in VA-RC for almost all test takers and that is solely because there is in the way of a technique that test-takers apply.

While a lot of students have told me that the methods I suggested in RC-1 have been useful, they have also told me that they still are getting tougher questions wrong. They have seen RC-2 but they feel the methods are time-consuming. Yes, they will seem time-consuming to those who do not think in English.

But there is no way you can answer the questions correctly by reading passively all through and waking up right at the climax when you are caught between options.

All of the gyaan about eliminating extreme options, skimming and scanning, and their ilk are pure quackery, nothing more than candy to children.

There are no shortcuts to crack VA-RC, set a realistic target and solve questions in the technically correct way, else attempt more and be happy with a 60 per cent accuracy as long as you clear the cut-off, do not expect to boost your overall score through

If you have an issue with accuracy in VA-RC, go to the CHANNEL section on the Masterclasses and watch the RC-1 and RC-2 Masterclasses and the VA Masterclasses.

If you have an issue with accuracy in QA, go to the posts on this page —  https://thecatwriter.com/category/quant-strat/

Concepts

Once you are selecting the right passages, sets, and questions, and solving 4 out of 5 you pick correctly, you need to be able to solve a wide range of questions.

In QA, if you are only attempting questions from a few areas and are still not attempting questions from Logs and Geometry, then do so at your peril, there were 10 do-able questions from the two areas last year.

To quickly master concepts and application, go to the LEARN Tab in the new myIMS and watch all the videos there to get a good grasp of basic concepts and application.

If you are facing troubles in higher-level application in a particular area, then do all the problems from the e-MAXIMISER module.

For the DI-LR week or two weeks, the task is clearly cut out — approximately 200 sets — 17 SimCATs  + 6 Actual CAT Sections (2017, 2018, and 2019 both slots)

If you need to learn to how to solve DI-LR sets better  —https://thecatwriter.com/category/di-lr-strat/

Speed

And yeah, at this stage, honestly, I have no tips to increase reading speed in general except to say that concentrate harder and read faster (if only we could embed the Blinkist app in our brains).

To increase solving speed I have no tips but to ask you to stop writing entire solutions on your paper, you do not need to show homework to your teacher. The test-takers scoring above 135 are not writing equations and cancelling out terms on both sides.

Where should I solve questions from

Irrespective of your level you should know how to solve every question in each of the proctored SimCATs and the e-Maximiser.

You can practice executing strategies between tests by solving Section Tests (apart from Section Tests in the Application Builder, you also can use the Take Homes as Section Tests by using exit section option).

You are really weak in an area and need to practice basics then solve the Concept module.

A quick summary

  • 10-15 Tests every alternate day.
  • 1-2 weeks dedicated to one section depending on where you are.
  • For each section move from selection to accuracy to concepts to speed.

Have a plan for each SimCAT

For every SimCAT you need to have a section-wise target score and a plan to reach that score.

  • VA-RC — I am going to get more marks from VA by solving them before RC and applying the right technique
  • DI-LR — I need to select sets better, I am still choosing one wrong set.
  • QA — I am going to get more marks from Geometry

To do this you should analyse a test well. When you analyse a test, especially the incorrect questions ask yourself — should I have attempted this question or set, did I follow the process of solving correctly (VA-RC), did I not read the misread or miscalculate (QA-DI-LR).

When you analyse a test, look at the skipped questions in QA and figure out the areas you need to strengthen and go to the LEARN Module videos.

I want to do well, I will kill this test — these are not plans they are dreams and feelings.

How to manage your feelings

In short, taking a test is not about feelings.

Getting disheartened when you see a low score, starting to feel pressure, anxiety attacks, all of these are things have nothing to do with solving a question.

The only questions to always ask are — Why did this happen, what did I do wrong, did I select the right set, did I pause after reading the RC question frame a shadow answer and then go to the options?

If you cannot get rid your feelings and get the job done when the task involves you and a piece of text on a machine, then you can forget managing others and leading firms. Honestly, you should consider another profession where someone else will handle the pressure and tell you what to do.

If you want to increase your concentration levels and manage work as well go through these posts:

I usually refrain from giving our set prescriptions like a doctor does, do these things every day because I do not think such things exist for test prep. I can only name problems and solutions, the better you are at diagnosing your problems the better you will be able to tailor a solution.

I feel this is an important part of the test itself —  if you cannot maximise your own performance using all the resources at your disposal, how will you maximise a company’s resources later in life!

Even an MBA will give you all the insights of what successful firms did and some technical knowledge specific to certain areas but when it comes to your first job post your MBA, you cannot cut, copy, paste anything that you learnt at business school, you have to tailor a customised solution using the resources you have.

Cut the flab and the feel-good

I hope you have already deleted all the social media apps on your phone. If you have not then all I can say is that you are not committed to achieving your goal.

I hope you have nothing other than CAT and other tests till the end of the first week of Jan. If you have other plans are then all I can say is that you are not committed to achieving your goal.

And the most important part of the last four weeks — get off all online CAT groups and CAT forums. Do not waste precious time discussing any more prep strategies with peers and finding out how much they have scored and commenting on the great scores someone else is getting.

As far as I know, back when I was preparing to take the test and right now when you guys are preparing to take the test, the goal was the same — squeezing every drop out of oneself and the test.

Everything was IRL then and I never went up to the guy who was topping my city (despite knowing him from college and being in the same test-prep institute) and told him — bhai tu toh phod raha hai.

Even today I would not look at top 10 percentilers attempts and accuracy on specific questions, since my ability is unique — I have solved the question and I have seen the solution. The questions I ask myself are

  • could I have solved this faster, irrespective of others’ data, were there any wasted steps, I myself try to look for shorter methods (should I have substituted answer options), or
  • should I have left this.

I am the batsman, the question is the ball, there are no others since remember during the test I am not chasing, during the test everyone is batting first, everyone is facing the same bowling, every one has to decode how the pitch is playing and score as many runs as possible.

I do not remember even discussing one thing about my prep with my friends who were preparing with me, we hung around after classes for some banter but that was it, I did not think there was any need to discuss anything with my peers since it was just me and the test.

It takes a village to raise a child, the saying goes, I do not think it takes a community to get a score, it takes a lot of brains to figure out where one is going wrong and more importantly why one is going wrong, and a lot of mental stamina and drive to push oneself to just max out.

Only two things should exist in the world for the next 9 weeks (till the XAT is over) — you and your test-prep material — no one else and nothing else.

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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