Preparing for CAT with Serial CAT 100-Percentiler

Munira Lokhandwala, CAT 2008 100-Percentiler

Hi Everybody,

I am sure that even before you start reading this article, many of you would have already made assumptions about my natural abilities based on my background and my consistent performances in CAT over the years. That is why I would like to tell you a little more about my background. All of us would remember the seventh standard scholarship exam that tested the math, verbal and visual skills of students. In that test I scored 36 out of 100 in Math, 64 in Verbal and 50 in visual reasoning. (Nowhere near to what a typical scholar would have got!!) So you definitely cannot say that I was born with the aptitude of cracking all such examinations.

So the obvious million dollar question: How does someone who is not born with the required aptitude skills go ahead and crack the CAT? Not just once to get into IIMs, but every time with confidence!

Most competent CAT aspirants do realize that the difference in knowledge between them and one of the guys who has made it to the IIMs is not high enough to warrant a massive difference in CAT scores. (Here, by “knowledge” we mean "CAT related knowledge".) Still most aspirants become skeptical about their own abilities during their CAT preparation and start looking at other exams or other institutes. When I was preparing for my CAT, I didn’t even consider taking the other entrance exams for various institutes. Was this misplaced arrogance? Let’s see.

For my CAT 1996, even I had started my preparations in February. Whew! I was in the same boat as most of you are. I was in the second year of my Bachelor’s studies. So I started in Feb, took a break in April for exams, in May for some holidaying and started again in June and continued till the end. Excluding these breaks, I was preparing for the CAT 2-3 hours a day, 6 days of the week, every week. This article is all about this long preparatory period before the CAT right from when you decide to take it to a nice slightly chilly Sunday morning when you are checking your pencils, eraser and admit card. And the result is in front of you: calls from all 4 IIM’s (IIM I and IIM K had just started that year and I hadn’t applied to either).

1. Plan backwards

You will never know exactly when your CAT preparation started, but you will always know when it will end. Did I hear 15^th November? No, it will end on the 13^th of November. The CAT is an exam where presence of mind is essential; studying till the last minute or till the last day leads to an exhausted mind. So it is a good idea to stop preparing on the Friday evening before the CAT. So currently your deadline is 13^th November. The last few months will be spent primarily on taking comprehensive tests. Let’s try and work that out.

Right now is a good time to decide how many comprehensive tests you will take. The main objective behind taking comprehensive tests is to get your test taking strategy in place as you measure your own strengths across different sections. The secondary objective is the relative performance measurement.

I think 30 tests are fairly sufficient as there is no point taking a test everyday or worse still take 2 tests per day. Working with 30 tests will easily take between 70-80 days. This is because if you take a test with feedback on day 1 you will revise and take some section tests on day 2; you may also need 1-2 days break. So assuming 75 days for comprehensive tests takes your deadline to the end of August.

Before you formulate your test taking strategy, you need to measure your performance in individual sections. That is where section tests come into play. So in the last fifteen days of August you should take around 2 section tests at least from each area and spend some time going through the analysis and feedback for the tests. This will be the first time usually when you really start solving with the second hand making a loud noise every second. So get used to the idea before you venture into the comprehensive test territory.

So finally we have come to our first major deadline 15^th August i.e. Independence day. By this date, you would ideally finish learning new concepts. From 15^th August you will be primarily looking at applying what you have learnt and if you have learnt it well, then believe me you will enjoy the process.

2. In-depth Scheduling

With 15^th August as the deadline you should make a list of what is the kind of theory you want to complete till that time. I have made a rudimentary representative list here to work from:

• Reading

• Word List

• Study Material for the following areas

1. Verbal Ability questions

2. Reading Comprehension questions

3. Analytical Reasoning

4. Data Interpretation

5. Math

Your maximum time should be spent doing two major activities: reading and Math.

3. Daily schedule

Make a daily schedule which incorporates all your routines and breaks. If you watch movies a lot then it would be silly to make a schedule which does not consider 3 hours a week on the week-end spent in catching the latest release. Also try to shuffle the subjects so that you do not get bored with one subject. A good time table for 2 days can look like this:

• Day 1:

1. 0.5 hour reading

2. 0.5 hour word list

3. 2 hours math

• Day 2

1. 0.5 reading

2. 0.5 word list

3. 1 hour analytical reasoning / data interpretation

4. 1 hour reading comprehension exercises / verbal ability

4. Reading

For those who read as a hobby, this will not be a major problem. For others, it is essential that you take out anything between 0.5 hour to 1 hour for reading, daily. For the uninitiated reader, you can start by reading fiction but there is no use if you spend 3 months reading one big book; instead pick up any collection of short stories by assorted authors and start reading those. You will get used to various styles and different settings and of course different content. After reading fiction for 1-1.5 months you can graduate to non-fiction. So next time you log onto testfunda start a parallel window where you google on various CAT topics and read articles on them. The advantages are two-fold, firstly you will get used to CAT like passages and secondly you will start gaining some knowledge on these topics so next time you have an RC on the same topic you will not feel completely lost. For these reading sessions never focus on time only; focus on understanding as well, if you read enough your time will automatically decrease.

Reading will not only help you in the verbal section, but also increase your comprehension in the other sections. It is the single most important factor that will help you crack the CAT.

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5. Word List

There are very few questions that directly require knowledge of words. But knowing a lot of good words and improving your vocabulary will never harm but always help you in your CAT preparations. So pick up a good word list and start doing the word list every day or if your vocabulary is already good then every alternate day. Even if you do an alphabet a week you will take around 6 months to complete the word list. Having a good vocabulary also ensures fluency in GDPI. This is the part where students are lazy, but after the CAT if you feel that just knowing one word would have got an extra mark in no time then that should really hurt.

6. Math

Math based on strengths and weakness should be done either every alternate day or every day. Go through the theory, solved examples and then tackle exercises. If you cannot solve a problem do not rush to the explanatory answers, give it some time, think, get your mind to oil those rusted math gears and levers.

• Try solving problems in the head, minimize pen on paper. To achieve this, one should be able to simplify a complex problem situation and should know tables well to do calculations faster.

• Make a note of important relationships in a topic.

• Make a note of innovative approaches.

• Remember writing a lot is very unhealthy for the CAT, but after you solve it in your head, writing the explanation will clear doubts and reinforce learning. So please make good notes.

7. Puzzle Solving

With the increased focus on logical reasoning based Data Interpretation, one should practice solving puzzles from books like George Summers. Puzzle practice helps in developing a logical base and in thinking in diverse directions.

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How to Improve at Verbal Ability

 Shantanu.Gangal, CAT 2008 100-Percentiler

Many students feel that the performance in Quant & Logic sections of the CAT written exam hit a ceiling at some point or the other. Thankfully, the Verbal section of the paper always has a scope of further improvement.

In this article we shall broadly try and understand what purpose the Verbal Section serves and how should we try and score well in it.
Since communication is a very important tool in all spheres of management, this section tests a person’s skill at the English Language. That the CAT paper increased the number of questions in this section, points to the importance that the examiners attach to testing us on Verbal Ability. By this, the schools want to gauge how well a person,
i.    Comprehends the given data (passage / sentence) and understands
        1.    the meaning of each of the words used,
        2.    the explicit message conveyed,
        3.    the implicit undertones of the passage or sentence,
        4.    the correctness of grammar (punctuation, usage etc.) and
        5.    the direction / conclusion that is being hinted at.
ii.    How well he manages to respond to the question posed by applying similar analysis of each of the 4 / 5 options presented, before picking his answer.

Thus in order to do well in this section, we need to demonstrate competence on the above metrics. It is easy to see that each question type asked in the CAT paper is trying to test us on one or more of the above. Since the reading comprehension section of the CAT employs almost all these skills in parallel it poses the most hazard to a student.

It is also known that students who are voracious readers do well in this section. This is now clear since they have honed their above skills for years. Hence, in order to excel in Verbal one should start well in time.

Read a lot:
The most important part of Verbal preparation is the reading up. [In fact, not only does it help in the Verbal section of CAT but also in General Awareness section of other MBA entrances.] This effort can’t be intensive in nature, since we need to assimilate what we read. Thus the reading has to be consistently spread out across a few months or more.

Why to read:
It is much easier to understand any language by knowing the way its words are used, its sentences framed and ideas conveyed than by opening an English guide. Also, noticing how a word is used will cement the correct meaning and usage of the word / phrase than learning it by rote.
The structure of the paper is such that a lot of time is required to read a passage. Irrespective of the style of answering followed (reading before answering or vice versa) the speed at which you read the passage is critical. Someone who can read an average length passage (400 words) in 3 mins. has a definite edge over someone who takes 4 mins. The best way to improve reading speed is by reading articles in progressively lesser time.

What to read:
Since, management schools want us to become good business leaders they dish out stuff that an MBA graduate is most likely to read. However, due to exam constraints the passages in the exam are often excerpts of a bigger and wider article. These articles typically deal with economic, social, political etc. issues and the impact of these issues on the intended reader.
I think however it is much better to start off and read articles longer (abt. 5000 words) than the ones that appear in the exam (abt. 400 words). A complete article has a proper structure unlike those in the exam. However, it is important to figure out how excellent English is written.
Also, while reading in English we should make a conscious effort to start thinking in English as well, since this can be a handicap for many of us who come from vernacular schools.
I personally found that articles in reputed magazines / newspapers like The Economist or the New York Times are written well.

How to read:
Upon reading an article it is important to discuss it with friends who have read it. You should make sure that all the implicit opinions / arguments are talked about and not missed. Often at the face of it the article seems straightforward but we fail to locate the point the author is trying to make. Correctly filtering the facts from the author’s opinions help get an insight into the article.
Similarly, it is important to get a feel as to how arguments are built by good writers and what is an expected line of thought, following a seen passage. This again comes with discussing the passage with friends who have read it.

Learn Vocabulary:
While learning words organically (through essays and articles) is an excellent long term option, with the view of preparing for the CAT exam – it makes sense to parallely learn the less common words. Many students praise the virtues of books like Word power made easy for improving vocabulary. These books help students derive the meaning of a word from its word roots and other techniques. However in case of extreme crunch, its best to pick up a standard word list provided by books that prepare students for GRE, TOEFL etc. and attempt learning them by rote. As the CAT draws closer these lists are a good tool to recall what one has learnt. Whenever a new word is learnt, try using it in a sentence for better retention.

Practice:
The verbal section too calls for a lot of practice, which should be duly done in the last few months. The scores in the Reading Comprehension section get tremendously boosted by practice followed by analysis of the questions attempted incorrectly. The associated explanation to an answer is very important since it shows what the examiner thought was the correct answer, why and how it was different from what we thought. While answering subsequent RCs, we should be mindful not to repeat earlier mistakes.
For questions in the vocabulary section it is important to also know why the incorrect answers were incorrect. In case, the options to a question throws up a new word make it a point to check the word up in a thesaurus.

In summary, scoring in Verbal Section can be elevated by sincere efforts towards improving the language followed by extensive practice. It is very difficult to score well unless a person has good command over English as a language. Similarly, it is very easy to make many mistakes in case a person is over reliant on his English skills without the requisite practice.
Every person should try and modify his approach to suit him best, while remembering the above skills at the back of his mind.

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