The first and the most important leg of MBA entrance preparation is preparing for the qualifying round i.e. the aptitude test.Let me share my journey through this phase as an engineering final year student.
All set to attempt CAT 2016, I started coaching center hunting in June 2015 in Delhi. I finally decided to go for an year long prep course at Career Launcher. The next one year was spent in preparing gradually for CAT and other entrance exams along with regular engineering curriculum and placements at college. The following is a list of key takeaways from my side on the same:
- The curriculum for Quants is conceptually very similar to what we have studied till class 10, the differentiating factor being the need for handy shortcuts and techniques to save time in the exam. Make sure to maintain a separate notebook of such shortcuts for ready referral, but do not get too bogged down by these shortcuts to lose track of the concepts.
- BE REGULAR. The preparation can be a smooth sail with regularity. Make sure to devote a fixed amount of time (1-2 hours on weekdays and 4-5 hours on weekends was my routine, customize as per your requirements) everyday.
- Have a methodological approach- its more about smart work than hard work. Have a weekly plan of the number of hours to be given to each subject and topic, and keep it flexible enough to incorporate changes. Make sure to not just have this plan on paper but also in practice.
- PRACTICE, PRACTICE and PRACTICE. If you join a coaching center, practice all the questions from the relevant modules in a timely fashion. Make sure to get all your doubts cleared. Don't procrastinate to avoid drowning in a mountain of doubts later.
- A lot of people face trouble in VA/RC because of not having reading habits. Since reading habit is not something that can be formed over a period of few months, both these sections can be mastered by practice. In RC, it is imperative to pay more attention to reading the passage carefully rather than rushing to solve the questions. Most of the questions need you to have an overall feel and sense of the passage rather than just the facts, so make sure to read the passage thoroughly (even twice) before rushing to the questions.
- In RC, make use of the options and select by elimination. Eliminate options which have too wide or narrow a scope, or which have incorrect context or details. This will bring you closer to the correct option.
- In VA, in my opinion, most of the answers are found by gut instinct and not by mugging up new words or rules of grammar. The correct way to approach VA, in my opinion, is to practice a lot of questions so that these rules are fortified strong in your instincts. In case of vocabulary, try to guess the meaning of words through the sentence it is being used in and the context. However, if you are unable to do so, it is better to leave the question and not risk getting negatives.
- For LR, getting the approach correct is crucial. There is a set of standard question types and the standard approaches to them which makes solving them easier and saves time. Practicing these standard types and approaches increases expertise and helps save time.
- For DI, calculation is the key. Do not get bogged down by the huge amount of data, rather try to look for easy and direct questions. For caselets you are able to crack, all the 4/5 questions will come very naturally, but even for the ones you are unable to crack, make sure not to miss out on the direct questions.
- Managing time during LRDI is very important. It is very easy to get too attached to a question and waste away all the time in it, but do not fall in this trap. Keep a track of time and give yourself 5 mins tops to see if you are making any headway in it. If not, move on.
- The importance of practicing mock papers and past year papers cannot be stressed enough, but even more important is the analysis of your performance in them. Keep the number of mocks attempted per week to a maximum of 2, and spend atleast 1.5x time you spend in attempting the mock on analyzing it. Try to look for the easy questions you missed, and the difficult questions you ended up wasting time on. Analyse your strengths and weaknesses, and leverage your strengths in the next mock you give.
The game of belling the CAT is more about self awareness and smart preparation and less about wits and IQ. I will be sharing detailed preparation strategy for each subject in the upcoming posts.
Please comment with any queries or suggestions you may have that I might be able to address. Happy prepping! :)
