All posts tagged: CAT Practice

Why your actual abilities might not be as good as you think they are

The purpose of this site has been to examine the problems that students keep bringing back to me over the years, and as the important ones get addressed I keep getting other questions that depending on how one looks at it are either simple or hide more than they reveal to the casual observer. One such conundrum is this one, a paraphrase of a problem that I have answered in many comments: I do not know what happens to me during the test — I do pathetically, sometimes I am even ashamed to mention how much I score — but when I sit after the test, I find that I can answer all questions easily. How do I deal with this nervousness, how do I tackle this? You are looking in the wrong mirror — your post-test performance does not really count The biggest thing test-takers discount is that they are solving the whole paper for the second time! When you read it for a second time You completely and conveniently ignore the fact that …

How to prepare for a CAT retake – Part II

In the previous post, we discussed the mindset with which one should approach a CAT retake; in this post, we shall look at a few more aspects with respect to a successful CAT retake. Since each one of you readers will have a different back story with respect to your first attempt, and there will also be some non-IMS students among you as well, the focus of this post will be a bit wider.

How to prepare for a CAT retake – Part I

Most of the institutes have given out their calls (or at least most of you know your chances), and many of you might be planning to retake the CAT. For some of you, it might be a case of almost getting there but missing out because of one poor section or just missing out on the overall percentile. For others, the CAT-day might have been a bad day at the office, and you knew straight away that nothing much was going to happen. On my first attempt, I fell into the latter group — I knew I was out of my depth when I saw the Quant paper; there was no way I was going to clear the cut-offs. This was despite consistently doing very well in the Sims leading up to the test. I decided to take another shot since I was very clear that it was not out of my league. This post, in three parts, is for all those re-takers who are NOT hoping to get lucky next time around but want to ensure …

Bell the CAT — The Book

The CAT Writer blog is now a book — Bell the CAT: Your Bell the CAT: Your Friend, Philosopher and Guide for CAT Preparation! For close to a decade, aspirants have been reading this blog every year for guidance beyond just Quant, Verbal, and DI-LR. How different is it from the blog? It has a few extra articles at the beginning and the end to make it more rounded. But the main advantage of the book is that the content is organised in the order it is supposed to be read so that your CAT and MBA campaign is set up to succeed and that you can easily find the content you want to go over. The Table of Contents below will give you all the details. We will be giving away three signed copies through a small quiz. https://tinyurl.com/Bell-the-CAT-Quiz We will choose the best answers to the same and communicate the same to the winners.