The Hindu Business Line : CAT's around the corner!

With just a week to go to the CAT, it is very important for a candidate to remind oneself of the fundamental principles that produce success at the CAT. In this article, I shall evolve a simple strategy for each section. The objective of the strategy is to ensure that one reads all the questions and attempts those questions that are easy and not-too-lengthy.

Divide the time available between Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension. While dividing your time, give enough time to RC so that you may go through at least all-but-one passage. If a paper contains 4 passages with 3500-4000 words of reading and containing around 40-50 per cent of the questions in this section, we suggest that you give it around 25-30 minutes out of the total of 45 you may allot to this section. We normally also suggest that a student first tackles the Verbal Ability based questions, not because they are easy, but because they involve less of an "investment" of time. Within VA, go through different sets in the increasing order of difficulty level — easy types such as "fill-in-the-blanks" or "replace the given phrase" first and tough types like para-jumbling and "restate-the-meaning-of-the-paragraph" later.

While answering VA, do bear in mind that you either recognise the answer in one careful reading or you do not know the answer at all. You are not going to be able to work out the answer (the way you do in quant) based on the information provided, unless of course you are trying to figure out which of two close answer choices is better. So DO NOT PONDER TOO LONG over any particular question. It is just a waste of precious time. Skip the questions you are not able to answer after a reasonable time and move on. It is important to cover the VA within the 15-20 minutes you allot to it.

In the RC part of this section, first glance at all the passages to get an idea of the topic of each passage. In case you find topics with which you are more comfortable, it may help to do them first. In any case, remember that you can give only around 8-10 minutes per passage including reading and answering questions. So do not linger too long over any passage or question.

The Quantitative Ability section usually consists of a large proportion of individual questions with a couple of sets with two to three questions each.

The best way to approach this section is to remind oneself that the objective is simply to read all the questions. This translates to 30 questions (CAT 2005) in 45 minutes.

If there are one-mark and two-mark questions, as suggested in an earlier article, divide the time available according to the number of questions, maybe with a little skew towards the two-mark questions. In a quant section on the CAT 2005 pattern, this would mean around 15 minutes for the 10 one-mark questions and 30m minutes for the 20 two-mark questions.

The toughest part of the quant section, however, is not dividing time in this manner but ensuring that one actually implements the plan. An effective way of doing so is to mentally divide the section into smaller parts with smaller and more achievable goals.

Instead of looking at the quant section as "30 questions in 45 minutes", we need to see it as 5 "sub-sections", each of six questions to be done in nine minutes.

Within each "sub-section", define your goal as reading every question and answering only those questions that you find easy.

Do a mid-course review when you complete the 3rd question to ensure that you are on track and to take corrective action if you are not.

If in 9 minutes, you do not complete the 6th question, move on to the next sub-section. This will ensure that your errors in time utilisation get limited to that sub-section alone.

The Data Interpretation section usually consists of many sets of questions, though there may also be a few individual reasoning questions. In the last few years, there have been a number of puzzles in the DI section.

To crack these and answer any question at all, it is essential that you invest a good amount of time analysing the data set. It may therefore not be possible for you to treat the questions individually and directly apply the principle of reading all the questions.

A good substitute is to read all the sets. Quickly assess each set for the level of effort that would be required to solve it and choose those sets that you can handle in the time available.

It might be better to concentrate on three to four sets that you are able to understand and solve them patiently rather than to run helter-skelter looking for easy questions within all sets.

Be prepared to spend around seven to eight minutes on each set that you decide to answer.

In the remaining sets, however, look at all the questions in the light of the data provided and look for easy pickings. Sometimes, a complicated looking data set may conceal some very easy questions.

Give a reasonable amount of time to individual questions. Some of them are sometimes very easy. In case the paper has five individual questions out of a total of 30, be prepared to give them a good seven to eight minutes.

A last-minute summary

It always helps to have the key points in the form of a short summary. Likewise, let us put down once again, all the key learnings we have had over the four articles on strategy.

Do not worry about how tough the paper is. Difficulty level does not matter. If a paper is tough, it is tough for every one.

Start the paper by calmly glancing through it and forming your time division plan across sections. Since all sections are equally important, divide your time appropriately, maybe even equally. Have a 15-20 minute buffer at the end to make-up for questions you were not able to complete in the first round.

Start with a section in which you are comfortable and will quickly notch up a few marks.

In each section, ensure that you give sufficient time to all the different types of questions. There could be easy questions anywhere. You cannot afford to miss any.

Do not forget the Golden Rule - READ ALL THE QUESTIONS

The bells are tinkling. The CAT will be here in 6 days. To all you aspirants - Here's wishing you all the best in CAT 2006.

(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)