CAT 11: Let’s get going 100 days to go for CAT 11! Are you prepared to crack it? The notice of CAT entrance exam serves as the last wakeup call for all CAT aspirants. I hope all the serious aspirants would have by now prepared a mustdo list for the last 100 days. Let us dig deeper what should be done in the runup to CAT in order the deliver the best on the Dday.
Introspection on aptitude performance: July & August are the right months for introspecting one’s performance. As one should perform equally good in all the three sections viz. Quantitative ability, Analytical skill & Data structure analysis (DSA) and Verbal Ability, it is important to know where the performance is not up to the mark. You would have taken some practice tests to get a feel of the actual test. A thorough analysis of tests in different areas would lead you to your areas of improvement. This will set the ball rolling for the coming months...
The Road ahead: You can invest next 45 to 50 days in improving the weaker areas. Let us identify as what to expect from different sections of CAT and how to tackle it.
Verbal Ability: CAT has now shifted the focus from verbal based test to more of reading based test. We now see a greater importance of reading than mere rules of grammar and Vocabulary in verbal section. The student who is well read will always be in commanding position. Now the focus should be to read the material which is challenging to you, the content which you do not read normally and which has great usage of language. The objective is to develop strong understanding of language and better comprehension ability. Some key resources would be the editorials of newspapers, books on difficult to grasp topics and reports in business newspapers.
Quantitative Ability: This is an area which is driven by passion; either there are students who go after it or others who skip it altogether. Either of the two extremes is very dangerous. Remember that the questions require basic understanding and plain Logic. For cracking questions on Quantitative ability it is very important to have the conceptual clarity and strong fundamentals. Normally student do not focus on understanding the logic behind the question and keep on solving the tougher questions on an assumption that he will come across only tough questions in CAT. This is not the right strategy. It is necessary to work on questions with varying difficulty level to acquaint oneself with the applications of the basic concepts and fundamentals. Because if the question is tough, it is tough for most of the students and if it is easy it is easy for all, so one cannot afford to miss the easy question. Remember one thing nothing beats practice in quant. You should look at practicing as many questions as possible and at the same time look at the questions and guess the difficulty level in the first read. A dedicated effort to mentally calculate the answers would help you save time.
Analytical Reasoning and Data Structure Analysis: This section has gone through a complete makeover, from pure number crunching sets to organising data and its analysis. As questions on this format are not available in high volumes, one should spend time in each set he/she comes across and try to understand the logic behind the set. Every set would have its own approach pattern and a logic, An effort to crack the set on your own would open up your thought process and hence make your
approach to attempt any new set more structured. You should look at finding different sources of fresh questions to open up. We will get into each and every section in our runup to CAT11 in the coming weeks. Finally, keep the hopes high and keep working!
Source: Endeavorcareers.com CET Coaching and CAT 2011 Preparation