The Hindu Business Line : Tips to bell the CAT

Poonam Aggarwal is a second-year student in IIM Lucknow. She cleared her CAT, securing 99.54 percentile. In this write-up she suggests some tips to crack the CAT. Over to Poonam:

With just about a fortnight to go for CAT, most of you must be through with your basic material and must be working on mock CAT papers.

CAT is basically about three things: preparation, preparation and preparation. I know they say you never know what will happen on D-day. But this piece is not about what to expect on D-day; it’s about how to influence D-day in your favour.

The to-do list

Here’s a list of what you must do:

Identify the strategy that works for you. How long do you want to devote to each section? What order do you want to attempt the sections in? And stick to it in at least five mock CATs; long enough for you to get comfortable with it.

I used to attempt quant first, as that needed the freshest mind, and verbal last, as you can spend a lot of time on it if you want to.

You don’t have to do well in all sections. It is enough if you achieve the cut-off in all sections and do exceptionally well in at least one section. Identify your weakest link; ensure you can clear the cut-off in that one section.

Take a number of mock tests. More importantly, analyse. Unless you analyse every paper, there is absolutely no point in taking one mock test after another. Where did you go wrong? Do you now know how to work out all the problems? Which section did you get the most number of wrong answers? If it is quant, is it a particular area? Can you work on it? If you cannot, you should avoid attempting it. Where is your accuracy rate the highest? Can you take some more risks in that section?

Take at least one of the national mock CAT series. It helps you gauge your preparation against the real competition. The key to doing all of this is to ensure high motivation levels. I used to read a lot of business magazines and the IIM blogs.

It was like keeping an eye on the goal. It kept my focus. You should identify what works for you. It can be anything. A friend used to go up to the roof-tops and scream his throat hoarse.

As for the D-day, it is very important you are at your coolest and confident best. Take the week before CAT off. Relax. Watch movies. Do things that calm you. For the entire week before CAT, I watched one movie after another in my apartment. I think that put me in the right state of mind.

I wrote CAT after a week of inactivity, and for some reason that worked. So, good luck to all the CAT aspirants.

Remember, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings!

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