CAT – trends and how to prepare

May 22, 2008 at 5:06 pm · Filed under CAT ·Tagged CAT

CAT is primarily divided into 3 sections:

I. Verbal Reasoning(VR) & Reading comprehension(RC)

II. Quantitative Ability(QA)

III. Logical Reasoning(LR) & Data Interpretation(DI)

First step is to buy a study package of any coaching institute (I used IMS package).

Use this package to:

a) Learn basics of QA and english grammar.

b) Get acquainted with the type and difficulty level of questions that came in past papers. c) Practice and improve accuracy.

d) Give full length tests to gauge your performance and your strengths & weaknesses. Use this information to arrive at a tentative strategy [Different strategies work for different people].

Apart from this, depending on your test results and performance measure, you can use other resources to improve in specific areas.

Trends:

Analyse last 10 year papers and if possible try to see a trend.

As no of questions is decreasing (from 180 to 75) and time extended (from 2 hrs to 2.5 hrs) so I reckon that they want to examine accuracy or in other words they test your concepts and how careful you are. But managing your time is also important, so that you get more time to spend on tougher questions.

With lesser number of questions, the choice of easier questions has gone down. Thereby, increasing the importance of each questions or in other words how you perform with limited options.

In DI & LR section, LR(puzzles) questions have stopped coming as separate questions and reasoning skills are examined through DI itself. DI sets are used to test different abilities for eg – how you handle data. Try to analyse different sets and during practice, think about what was this set supposed to test.

Some Tips:

There will be tricks in the questions, for eg. there will be some questions to check whether you are reading the question properly and observing the small details they want you to neglect.

Practice will help; but it is not about the amount of questions you do for practice but the quality of effort you put in. When you solve a question, don’t be santusht (satisfied) by getting the right answer. Find better ways to solve that question.

When you make a mistake, try to see what went wrong. Find out if it was a conceptual error or a silly mistake. Why you made the mistake? Make a note of it, keep track of how many times you made mistakes because of the same reason. And, minimise these errors.

Always remember: lesser calculations mean lesser chance of doing a silly mistake, thereby increasing your chance of getting to the right answer.

Eliminating wrong choices: CAT has multiple choice type questions. Out of 4, 1 choice will be always correct, so eliminate the other 3 wrong choices; but don’t do blind guesswork, believe in your instincts.

‘TRY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING FOR’

Regards

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