The Hindu Business Line : Test taking strategy

Cracking the CAT in such a scenario is obviously not just about learning all the relevant concepts, working out enough problems to strengthen one's understanding and taking enough tests. It's all about tackling the unpredictability of the CAT.

For the last few years, candidates appearing for the CAT have had a common complaint - "The paper was very tough". What the person actually means is that "I was not able to attempt many questions in the CAT paper". This "toughening-up" of the CAT has been observed in all the sections — English, Quantitative Ability and Reasoning. The number of questions/marks that even successful candidates attempted, has fallen from around 110-120 in the late 90s to around 65-70 for the last three years. To make things tougher, the CAT test booklet give only limited instructions. It says that while a student may apportion the total time available in any manner, he/she is expected to perform equally well in all the sections. What makes matters even worse for an aspirant is that the IIMs spring a surprise every year in terms of the test pattern and the nature of questions.

When a CAT paper gets tough suddenly, many candidates will find themselves solving far fewer problems than they have been used to. This can upset performance in many ways: 1) Devoting too much time to a few questions/a section (getting stuck) and having very little time to handle other questions/sections; 2) Becoming nervous and making more errors by attempting the wrong questions and rushing too fast through the easy ones. How does one avoid the pitfalls inherent in a tough paper?

The secret of handling a tough CAT lies in understanding the selection process adopted by the IIMs. The explanation that follows is based on our 14 years of experience in successfully training students for the CAT.

Selection at the CAT is fundamentally based on a process of relative assessment. The aim of the IIMs is to select the best candidates out of those who appear for the test. At the same time, they also look for a certain minimum level of competence in each area of testing. These twin goals are achieved through the simple concept of percentile. Percentile is just another way of representing rank. Your percentile indicates the percentage of the candidates you have got a better rank than. For instance, in a test written by 1 lakh candidates, the candidate ranked 100 has surpassed 99900 candidates and therefore gets a percentile of 99.9 (= (99,900/1,00,000)*100)

When the CAT papers are evaluated, each candidate is given a percentile in each section as well as on the aggregate. Each IIM then independently decides the minimum level of competence in each section of the paper in terms of percentile. Out of all the candidates who achieve the cut-off percentile in all the sections, each IIM would (once again independently) shortlist the best performers based on the aggregate percentile. We have observed that different IIMs have different percentile cut-offs and a candidate gets as many calls as the cut-offs cleared.

What the IIMs mean when they say "perform equally well" is, therefore, not to get the same "good score", but to get an acceptable percentile in each section. A very important learning from this analysis is that one can now put to rest the big demon that is Difficulty Level.

Working on the understanding of the selection process, one can clearly see that the Difficulty Level of the paper has no bearing on the performance of any candidate. If you, after a thorough preparation, find yourself unable to attempt a number of questions, remember that all other candidates would also be in a similar position. If a paper is tough it is tough for everyone. If it is easy, it is easy for everyone. So, do not panic or rejoice too early.

Cracking the CAT in such a scenario is obviously not just about learning all the relevant concepts, working out enough problems to strengthen ones understanding and taking enough tests to see where one stands vis-à-vis competition. It is absolutely essential to have a comprehensive and robust strategy to tackle the inherent difficulty as well as the unpredictability of the CAT.

Strategy plays a critical role in a candidate's CAT performance. The importance of strategy comes out clearly when one realises that the CAT is a highly time-constrained exam. The rank obtained is still going to be determined by the number of questions one manages to attempt. And since every question attempted will consume a finite amount of time, the number of questions one answers in the CAT clearly depends on how well one manages the time available. For the same level of knowledge and problem solving practice, a good strategy can boost a candidate's performance by up to 20-25 per cent.

Over the next few articles, we shall explore different aspects of Test Taking Strategy, which you can incorporate in your mock tests and adapt to our individual requirements.

(The writer, an alumnus of IIT-Madras and IIM-A, 1998 batch, is Director, Chennai Centre, T.I.M.E., an education and student training/counselling organisation. He may be contacted at chennai@time4education.com)

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