CAT 2009! What to do?

They say ‘knowledge increases by sharing’ so here I want to share my learning from the exam of CAT or for that matter any other entrance examinations. If my experience could help someone else get success, I would more than happy.
India is the second most populous country of the world so a tough competition is expected for any kind of seat and therefore best seats would be reachable only after surpassing the toughest of competitions. CAT is just one of those tough competitions. It took me four hard years to bell the CAT but they were also the years where I learnt a lot about things around me. I can divide the whole of my learning into 3 key areas and name the combination as ‘3P THEORY’. Let’s get into each of the P now.
First P is for Preparation/Practice: This forms the basis or the foundation over which whole of the battle would be fought. Preparation involves knowing the required stuff. In terms of CAT, knowledge of basic concepts of all the subjects, useful tips and tricks, shortcuts etc. is essential part of preparation. Let us discuss few key things subject wise.
For quant the syllabus is pretty defined so one only needs to devote sufficient time to each topic and practice questions over it regularly. The amount of practice required to get comfort level in any topic depends on the individual person. For some topics it may require more time than others or it may be the case that no matter how much practice is done in a particular topic, comfort level in that is never achieved. Knowledge of one’s comfort level for every topic is a must. For example in my particular case, Probability was not within my range. I practiced it quite a number of times but always used to get confused while solving problems. However recognizing a topic as one’s weak area is not the end of the road. If questions of any topic are divided into three levels of difficulty low, medium and high, then all the low difficulty level questions must be in one’s range even if the topic is among the weak areas. So it can be concluded that a certain minimum proficiency is required in all topics and to be fair it is achievable without much of a trouble. More and more practice is required to achieve more and more comfort. Sometimes for same questions different approaches are used. It is important to know these different approaches as they would not only help understand various concepts but also provide opportunity to save time. In my opinion getting good results of hard work done in quant is visible in minimum amount of time as compared to other subjects. Believe me it’s just a matter of putting in some effort and you will start clearing cutoffs in quant quite comfortably.

Although the other two subjects i.e. English and DI do not have any defined syllabus but the theory of more and more practice is equally applicable on them as well. Considering previous years papers we can get some sort of idea for the type of questions being asked in both the subjects. However there has bee few surprises as well in terms of type of questions e.g. in CAT 2005 there were vocabulary based questions asked in an indirect form, CAT 2006 had FIJs (Fact, Inference & Judgement) and no vocabulary questions but CAT 2007 again had vocab based questions which required to differentiate between two similar looking/sounding words. For a strong preparation one needs to practice all types of questions already known. RCs have been the constant factor though their sizes & forms have changed over the years. If someone is able to get hold of other type of questions of English which may be asked in other exams can also be useful. For example Bank/PO papers have simple looking grammatical questions and fill in the blanks. Practicing such questions perform two important functions. First it bring something new in front of you i.e. a surprise which CAT has always tried to give. Secondly basic concepts can be developed through simple questions which can be applied in CAT level questions. I did practiced few of such Bank/PO English questions and yes it was tough for me to have more than 75% accuracy even in those simple questions.

Few specific suggestions for English which I would like to give are:
1)Vocab: For building up vocab one of the hard way but the most effective way I followed was to maintain a Vocab Diary. In this diary I used to write the new word I have read in newspaper/magazine/flash card and its meaning on left page of diary and then write the sentence using the word on right page (in front of that word). I also used to write more than one sentence containing that word on the right page. One can also add synonym and antonym on the left page below the main word. I agree it is a tiresome way but it is quite effective.
2)RC: Like many engineers, I was not fond of reading books. To be frank I was averse to reading novels/books/newspapers and even after repeated suggestions by teachers could not develop enough enthusiasm towards reading. So for people like me I would suggest practicing RC a lot. I believe practicing 2-3 RC passages a day can overcome the lapses in reading habits to such an extent where RC score would contribute in clearing cut-offs.
3)Grammar: Many people suggest Wren & Martin for improving grammar but that is a thick book with too many rules and even more exceptions to those rules. I suggest ‘Manhattan SC(Sentence Correction) Guide. This book is highly popular among people giving GMAT.
It is not only short & concise but also simple to understand. It can be easily downloaded from Internet.

DI is mostly about analysis of data and use of some quick calculations at the same time. For quick calculations memorising tables, squares, cubes and reciprocal is a must. Although I was not able to memorise all the tables but I mugged up the rest and beyond doubt they helped me in doing faster calculations. Other than practicing the questions of study material or books, solving sudoku or other puzzles help a lot. Different type of puzzles/questions do help broaden analytical capabilities. By practicing more the idea is to increase the range of questions one can deal with and at the same time build expertise in known types of questions so that useful time can be saved in cracking those familiar questions during examination. Most of the preparation for DI will happen through the question sets asked in test series, so get hold of as many question sets as possible.

As they say in cricket, net sessions are important but nothing can better than match practice.
Therefore practicing mock tests is very much required. The reality about CAT is that if the same paper is to be solved without any time constraint an average student would at least solve 90% of questions successfully but within the time constraints it is difficult for a good student to even touch upon 60-65% of questions, forget about solving them correctly.
So each and every effort should be made to get the best out of one self in that stipulated amount of time and hence strategy followed there is extremely vital. Giving more and more mock tests would provide the opportunity to try out different strategies and find the most suitable one. Also one of the major initiatives that worked wonders for me was to maintain a diary where I did analysis of each mock test I used to give. In that analysis I used to write about questions which were conceptually new for me or questions which had more than one way reaching to solution. Also keep track of the mistakes committed in the test and the reason for that mistake. Being aware of the silly/not so silly mistakes committed in tests prevents there occurrence again.

The most acknowledged fact about CAT is its surprise factor, so to counter any surprise on the CAT day, mocks of different patterns are essential. This is a fact agreed by all coaching institute and therefore they always make it a point to give students surprise package in the test series. If possible practicing mocks from different institute is also helpful. Consider this, one may get accustomed to the size, style, fonts of papers from any particular institute and when given a different question paper one’s eyes may not feel very comfortable. This has been my own experience especially if I talk about XAT. The way questions were put in the question paper for XAT 06, 07 and 08 was completely different from the style of other exams. Usually the question numbers are printed in bold letters but in those particular XAT papers question numbers were written in same form as the question. So at times it was getting difficult to locate the beginning of question and possibility of overlooking any question was always there.
All in all practice more & more and wider & wider. One need’s to develop both width as well as depth.


With all the practice and preparation over it is time for 2nd P which Performance.
All preparation and practice done in the first phase would be waste if one is not able to perform at the right place. I think good Performance depends 30-40% on preparation and 60-70% on mental strength. Don’t be surprised by these skewed figures as this is perhaps the greatest lesson to be learnt from CAT. To hold one’s nerve in pressure situation has been the key for good performance in all fields of life. Talking in terms of CAT, the pressure on the C-Day would be huge. You will start getting good wishes from all corners of your world. Friends who may not have talked to you for few months would suddenly realize that they need to wish you luck for all important day by any means be it a phone call or be it a scrap on orkut.
Family members would get more religious and caring in those days. On that CAT day no matter how early you begin your journey to the CAT center you will always find plenty of aspirants already there on the center. Before entering into the center gate you will get good luck handshakes at least 2-3 times. All this is a tremendous build-up for the fantastic occasion called CAT. Situation is such that even the students who topped the test series consistently start feeling the heat. First blood will be drawn when you will get to know the paper pattern. Many loose the battle there itself. Some unexpected pattern or pattern you saw in nightmare the previous night(it is very hard to get sleep a night before CAT, mind is so conscious and raring to go that it defies the much needed sleep) can really disrupt all the preparations.
To remain calm in all this is as good as winning the battle. Therefore do not have any preset in mind or notions about the exam and be ready for strange surprises. The most important thing to remember is that whatever the paper might be, it is the same for all candidates.
All those who are concerned about online CAT 09 being conducted over a 10 day period, be rest assured that IIM’s are eager to get the best candidates out of all applicants so they will not like to differentiate among them by giving easier test to some and difficult test to others. Difficulty level would be same on all days and therefore for all candidates.

For performing well it is highly important to know one’s strength and weaknesses and tackle the test accordingly. Relatively strong or weak sections are first thing to be known. In my case QA & DI were equal and more strong than VA. Remember that these are just relatively strong or weak. In absolute terms it is important to have enough proficiency to clear cut-offs in all sections. Without this much proficiency it will not be wrong to say that IIM’s are distant possibility. Many people suggest to start off the test from your strong section and then move on to the weaker section. I used this methodology in whole of the test series I gave before CAT -07 and it worked fine but on the actual day, in the pressure cooker situation it failed miserably. I started with QA then moved on to DI and finally to VA. But because it was my weaker section and time was running out I lost all control and ruined that section and in turn the CAT. This year i.e. in CAT -08 I followed opposite strategy of doing first the weaker section i.e. VA, then DI and then QA and it worked wonders. After 110 mins of exam I had performed reasonably well in the first two sections but was left with just 35-40 mins for QA( was used to give 50 mins in test series). Since QA was in my comfort zone I sailed through 14 questions of which I got 13 correct. Bravo! Job done. So I think in crunch situation one can fall back on one’s strong area and can manage to get through but exposing weak area in tough condition will only open the floodgates. As all other strategy related things success of this ideology depends on individual to individual. So try it before using it in the finals.

Once working on a section always spend time in questions pertaining to areas of comfort. Never ever try to experiment there. If one has not been able to do questions of any topic during preparation nothing is gonna change in those 150 mins. So stick to your guns.
One of the crucial things for performance is maintaining tempo throughout those 150 min and especially in the last few mins. A lot of candidates put their guard down when nearing the finishing minutes but actually that is precisely the time where a 99 percentiler gets differentiated from a 96 percentiler. As mentioned earlier there is huge competition in this exam; at least 50-100 candidates fall upon a single figure of total marks. So one correct question(which gives 4 marks) in the last 30 seconds can improve rank by 300-400. This is a huge jump. Therefore fighting till the last millisecond irrespective of situation is worth it. Make or break is decided only in those last few minutes.

There are few more trivial things which one must take care of. For example the number of pencils one is carrying into examination hall, it never hurts to carry four sharp pencils for doing calculation etc. and two slightly blunt pencils to fill OMR (although this may not apply to online CAT, but don’t forget all other exams are still paper based tests). It will ensure you save some milliseconds on each question which in the end can give you extra minute or two to attack more questions. Another overlooked issue can be one’s dressing. CAT is definitely not the day to show off your trendy and latest wardrobe so wear what makes you comfortable. There is a special case for candidates giving XAT in Delhi. XAT happens in first week of Jan and past records show that XAT day coincides with the coldest day of winter season for that year. It payoffs to cover oneself up from those chilly winds, after all who would want to miss out on XAT just because of not wearing the warmest sweater he/she had. Do you?

All the above things put together will take care of Performance.

Last but by no means least, the third P is for Patience. This P comes into action when 1st and 2nd P do not get synchronize. CAT is a sort of exam where it does take a bit of time to get good performance after putting in good preparations. Individual grasping power and the role of luck cannot be overlooked. Sometimes no matter how much effort you put, things just don’t go your way. Patience is the key for such situation. Patience is a form of mental strength and so it does effect the performance directly. No matter how much pain you felt in your struggle, all of it will get vanish the day success touches your feet. I have experienced it. The final feeling in heart is simply amazing and that is all which will remain forever. Call it patience or perseverance it does pay-off in the end.

So that is my 3P THEORY. This is not any kind of publicity act or an attempt to show off it is purely and sincerely an effort to help anyone out there fighting out the battle. In the end all I would say if somehow these 3P’s fail to help you remember the fourth P i.e. Pankaj and that’s me. Since my phone number is going to get change soon I will only give here my email-id which is pankaj.chatrath@gmail.com. I have the experience of GMAT as well therefore I know that
Online CAT is not going to make any difference; rules of the game will remain same.


Snapshot of my results:
2005-06: CAT: 90.34%ile IIFT: No JMET: 1520 rank XAT :84%ile FMS :No
2006-07: CAT: 97,74%ile XAT: 89%ile FMS :No
2007-08: CAT: 96.54%ile IIFT: Yes JMET: 92 rank SNAP- SCMHRD NMAT 753 rank XAT: 97.78%ile FMS :No
2008-09: CAT:99.86%ile IIFT: Yes JMET: 84 rank NMAT 792 rank XAT: 99.86%ile FMS :No

Final status: Going to IIM Calcutta