CAT-2020 Preparation : Strategy & Guidance from Experts

To Start with, let us begin with the most salient and prime question that students ask! What is the right time? is this a right time to prepare or we are already late? Except for a committed and staunch few, barely any student is in any full-bloom preparation for CAT. That is bitter but then the truth! CAT and other Miscellaneous Management Exams , this November(XAT, NMAT, SNAP, IIFT, TISSNET etc) are going to be leered at by all these anguished aspiring students either in their pre-final year or who have graduated, students who had already written CAT in 2019 but were not able to make it to their visioned institute, the ones with work-experience but who find their job lethargic and static (or would be stagnating) and are looking for growth or change in fields. Therefore, if anything, this is the right time to start preparing and hence undoubtedly there is more than enough time to prepare and mark a percentile good enough to get into the best B-schools in the country. How many hours per day one needs to prepare for CAT? Honestly, there is no accurate solution for this question. But whereas, the appropriate amount of time required and poured in the preparation of the exam should be increased slowly and unhurriedly, from around 10 to 12 hours per week in the initial months of the preparation to about 25 to 30 hours towards the end of it say around and in October & November. The number of hours per week can range from 10 hours to 20 hours per week for the next few months and which is completely dependent and based on the state of zeal of every individual. Although, If one has prepared and written the CAT exam formerly, then about 8 to 10 hours per week may be abundant. However, for the ones who are starting the preparations for CAT now, they stand in the need of 16 to 20 hours per week to be all set for the exam. But,it is imperative and peremptory for one to realize and interpret the exam and what marks/percentiles are entailed to plunge into an IIM or other institutes. The CAT pattern has remained same for the last four years (CAT 2016, CAT 2017, CAT 2018 and CAT2019). The CAT 2019 paper, held on 24th November 2019, had Three sections. The exact pattern of the paper is reproduced below. Section I: Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) No of Qs: 34 Marks in Section: 102 Time Limit: 60 Section II Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DILR) No of Qs: 32 Marks in Section: 96 Time Limit: 60 Section III Quantitative Ability (QA) No of Qs: 34 Marks in Section: 102 Time Limit: 60 The student can attempt only one section at a time in the above given order. A section once finished by the student, there is no provision to go back to the finished section again. The sequence of the section is fixed and is as in the above given order. Each section contains and includes of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) as well as non-Multiple Choice Questions (non-MCQs).There also exists a negative marking scheme i.e (-1) for wrong answers for MCQ questions. Whereas, For Non-MCQ questions, there are No negative marks Understanding Percentile You might have heard it from people that someone got a 100 percentile or a 99 or an 80 percentile! What does exactly a percentile mean? A percentile is calculated as the Percentage of people below your mark in a particular exam. For example, if in an exam, the number of students writing the same exam is 100, and one gets a FIRST Rank( it is NOT the full marks obtained but only the first rank with whatever marks compared to the rest of the students),then there would be 99 students below this student. 99 students out of 100 (meaning 99% of students) are below the student and hence the student will get 99%ile in that exam. In the same exam, if someone gets a 10th Rank, then the percentile would be 90%ile (as 90% of the students would have a got a mark lower than this student). Many students at 90%ile would be able to get into the top 40 ranked institutes in the country. It has been observed and can be seen over the years that, more than 100,000 students write CAT every year without a speck of preparation. The real competition probably is among the top 50,000 and given that there are close to 10,000 seats in the top 40 management institutes in the country, the competition is just 1 in 5! There is no other exam in the world or in our country that has a better admission ratio! It is a coveted dream of many a student to get into IIMs. But whereas, most of these students do not even attempt CAT or prepare for the same seriously, only because they are hardly aware of what it takes to get them this seat in an IIM. The percentile required to get a seat in the top 3 IIMs for an Open Category (student with no reservation) student is around 99.5 percentile. Similarly,the percentile required for an open category student to get into the next top 10 IIMs, would be around and about 96 percentile whereas an OBC candidate, an SC or an ST candidate will require lesser percentile to make it to the top IIMs. Adding a gender diversity and academic diversity to the same, the percentile required reduces even further. It is pertinent to note that CAT is also used as the written exam for almost all top management institutes in the country including FMS Delhi, SP Jain Mumbai, MDI Gurgaon, NITIE Mumbai, all IITs and a host others! The only reason many students do not take up CAT is because they do not even know how easy it is to get into an IIM (given of course that one prepares consistently)! By getting about 155 marks out of 300 marks (that is 52% of the marks) in the CAT exam, one can get a percentile close to 99!By getting a percentile of around 96 (126 score), one can easily get a call from the New IIMs (for a General Category Student). And to get 96 percentile, one has to score just about 126 marks out of 300! (42% of the exam!) Mission IIM The highway to IIM is through CAT (except of course if one is an NRI for whom GMAT is the requirement!) A viable and practicable plan is a must and required for preparing for any entrance exam! This article can give the broad silhouette of what one has to do to make it to the desired IIMs March to August To gain a thorough familiarity in the areas, topics, concepts and type of questions that the CAT exam has should be the objective in these months.In these months, the complete focus should be in going through all the topics in all areas of CAT viz., QA, DILR and VARC. For the first round of preparation in all areas of the exam these initial months should be utilized for learning the basic concepts, application of the same and taking periodic tests on the same. Through the simple method of CAT 1) Concepts : Learn all the basic concepts and formulae for each topic 2) Application : Solve exercises to apply the concepts/formulae learnt 3) Tests : Taking topic-wise tests to asses ones speed and strategy. In addition to the above, one has to start taking the Mock CATs. Ideally not more than One per two weeks is sufficient for the months of June and July and from August, one is expected to take One Mock per week. September & October These two months are the most crucial in the preparation of the exam. These are the months where one is expected to work on the Strategies required for the exam, utilize this time for a Second revision and to continue taking Full Length Mock CATs. In addition to all the aforesaid, this is the time for one to also experiment on various strategies of taking the exam. The crucial and important 60 days of September and October have to be utilize in the most productive way. One should not only do a Second Revision of all concepts but also monitor the progress in each specific topic or area of the exam. Full length Mocks are to be used to sharpen ones strategy and arrive at a strategy that gives optimum benefits. Please note that there is no one good strategy and relying on each persons strengths or weaknesses, the strategy should ideally change. November The last 25 days of the month of the battle before CAT would be the final stroke on the exam! Here one is supposed to take up selective revision, take additional sectional tests and settle on the final exam strategy. After every Mock, a thorough analysis of each of the sections, returning to the crux of the problem areas, working towards doing away with these problematic areas and most essentially building up the Mental Ability to crack this exam would be the chief necessities in November!