So much of a weight does RC have on the CAT, so many are the difficulties faced by test-takers and so frequent are the queries that I receive about RC, despite the previous post and the Last Mile To CAT sessions, that I thought that it will be best to devote a series of posts to cracking Reading Comprehension. So before we dive in, I suggest that you read the previous post that outlines how to choose which RCs to solve.
One thing that has always bothered me a lot whenever I interact with students, is that they seem to be very reluctant to let go of their playing-the-percentages attitude to tests. Throughout school and college, we tend to study by playing the percentages — giving importance to topics as per the number of questions that appear from that topic in the exam. While this might be a great strategy for school and college exams, as far as aptitude tests go, this strategy is suicidal purely because of the fact that the difficulty level and the number of questions across areas do not follow a fixed pattern.
How is this related to Verbal Ability in the current pattern of the CAT? Read More
With the mountain called the CAT now in sight, most working professionals will be wondering how to mount another challenge to get into the old IIMs.
The biggest obstacle in front working professionals will be juggling a job and prepping for CAT at the same time. Some of you in this situation will have decided to quit your job, hopefully only after having read my post on the same and having understood the implications of quitting.
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The Verbal Ability section of the CAT has always been one of those things that never fails gets my goat. To me it has never made any sense at all! Why do they want MBA aspirants to
This is one of the big reasons why I like and respect the precisely designed Verbal Section of the GMAT and also teach a lot for the same!
But be that as it may, we have a job at hand — to clear the Verbal Cut-off consistently.
In this post, I shall outline a strategy to improve your selection, accuracy and most importantly consistency in the Verbal Section. Read More
In the previous two posts, we took a look at the first two building blocks to increase your score and percentile on CAT Quant — Accuracy & Question Selection. In this post, we will look at the third building block — if the first two blocks provide the impetus towards the higher score, this block is the one from where you take off towards a higher score — Speed. Read More
In the first part of this post we covered the first building block to achieve higher scores and percentiles on CAT QA — accuracy. In this post, we will take up the next one — selection.
QA is the section that gets the maximum attention of test-takers of all stripes and there is always a litany of frustrations and queries that plagues aspirants —
The answer to all of these questions lies in the way you select questions and the way you navigate between them. Read More
Unlike the other two sections, QA is a section that has a direct link to what you have done in school and college. Most of the topics that are tested on the CAT have also been a part of the school curriculum. This I feel is the biggest roadblock in front of test-takers wanting to achieve higher scores on the CAT Quant irrespective of their relationship with Quant, with high Math scores during X and XII exams not having any direct correlation with ability on the CAT QA.
The response to the first SIMCAT was great and it was nice to see so many students jump into the fray from the word go. But the plunge as most of you would know is similar to jumping off a diving board for the first time — the moment of impact, the bewilderment when you are under the water and most importantly the desperate eagerness towards the end to somehow get back to the ground again. (I have never jumped off a diving board but was once caught under the waves on the beach when I was quite little, thankfully my dad managed to rescue me).
Just like you would not bother too much about the score given to your first ever dive do not think too much about the score you got. This is neither an engineering exam nor a blood test. So what is it and how should you evaluate your performance?
We are on the eve of SimCAT 1 and a lot of students (mostly first-time CAT-takers) are apprehensive and understandably so, about taking it. Over the years we have found the self-same reasons that induce this fear, and this post is geared towards addressing them. Read More
When I ask students who have both BM and HR calls from XLRI, what their preference is, or what they would prefer between XL-HR/TISS and IIM-K/MDI, most are very clear the specialization does not matter all that matters is the brand, others start bringing ROI into the picture. Read More
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