CAT 2011: Let's Get Going
153 days to go for CAT 2011! Are you prepared to crack it? The notice of CAT 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 153 days. Let us dig deeper into what should be done in the runup to CAT in order the deliver the best on the Dday. Introspection on aptitude performance: The right months to evaluate and introspect one's performance is in the months of August and September. As one need to perform equally well in all the three sections viz. Quantitative ability, Analytical skill & Data structure analysis (DSA) and Verbal Ability, it is important to know where one's performance is not up to the mark and which section is one's forte. 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 with a scope oft improvement. This will set the ball rolling for the coming weeks... The Road ahead: You can invest next 20 to 25 days in improving the weaker areas. Let us identify as what to expect from different sections of CAT (Cat Preparation) and how to tackle it. Verbal Ability: CAT has now shifted its focus from verbal based test to more of a 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 a 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. More importantly, reading all the material online would be giving the best practice. Quantitative Ability: This is an area which is driven by passion; either students go after it or they 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 students 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 questions. Remember that nothing beats repeated 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 organizing 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.
Source: Catgurus.com Cat Preparation Material & Cat Exam Materials