It is that time of the year when most of my students are most nervous with random questions popping out from various crevices of their brains. A few can be answered, a few can’t but the ingredients to succeed remain the same every year.
From very early on in our lives we are exposed (or subjected) to this word called TEST. As we enter the higher grades the importance that TESTS play or are supposed to play in our lives steadily increases. If we look back, for most of us, tests have always been part of a trinity, they have always been concomitant with two other things — fear and prayer. At some point of time all of us when faced with a test (including yours truly) have felt at the least a sliver of fear running through our bodies prior to a test and even most unbelieving of us have muttered a tiny little prayer under our breaths.
We have just finished SimCAT 9 and if the scores & percentile charts are any indication, test-takers are beginning to find their footing. But here is the catch — for every set of people hitting the 100s for the first time, there will be a set hitting 120s, a set hitting 135s and a set hitting 150s as well for the first time. So some of you while feeling happy to see high scores will also be feeling a bit of a bother when you see your percentiles. Well firstly, the happiness is warranted so don’t let the percentiles bog you down. What you need to now do is to see your scores, percentiles and the task ahead in the next 60 days in the right perspective.
This is a question that we get asked frequently, more so this year given last year’s tough DI-LR section. One place where you can get more SimCAT-level questions whose level of difficulty is quantified is in a book called CAT 500. This is a book that we publish every year with new questions across all areas and classifed topic-wise. The USP of this book is that the questions are selected based on actual SimCAT data.
Now that the notification is out and the CAT is out of the bag, a lot of test-takers have begun their preparation in all earnestness. It is a huge relief to know that the pattern is going to remain the same. For test-takers taking the CAT for the first or second time it might not seem like a big deal but for those such as yours truly it is in fact a really big deal. If I am not wrong this is only the second or third time that the CAT pattern has remained absolutely unchanged (the two or three times being since the test went computer-based in 2009). One of the reasons for me taking the CAT every year has been the novelty factor — what’s new this time, what new question types have they come up with, how does the relative difficulty level of this year compare with the previous one etc. Now that test-takers have gone into the serious-prep mode, the big question that I get asked or not asked is — …
Exceptionally good at cricket analysis — this is the phrase that can go into most Indian resumes (football fans though burgeoning are still a minority) and so it is not a surprise that in the aftermath of India’s loss in the WT20 semi-final to the Windies, we have seen a wide range of explanations being offered for the same, the most commonplace ones being the two no-balls and the dew factor. While it is not important to come up with right answer to this question, taking a look at the way we analyze a failure can have a huge impact on our chances for future success. This is where the relevance kicks in for those looking at a CAT retake in 2016.
The CAT Writer 