Countdown to CAT: Section-wise prep plan

Your daily dose of healthy CAT-food:

The following article gives the section-wise preparation plan that one should undertake daily in order to make the most of your CAT preparation time left before the exam. The article concludes with the crux of what you look to achieve from Mock CAT papers that you should be attempting 1-2 times a week at the final prep stage.

Reading Comprehension:

Read 3-4 passages of 400-600 words each spanning topics that are as diverse as possible – the idea is to become as comfortable as possible with things that you are generally not comfortable with. Apart from the editorial page in newspapers and various magazines, you must read sections such as spirituality and philosophy on websites and from web sources. Reading on diverse domains such as philosophy, technology, arts, history and social sciences would be immensely beneficial to CAT and MBA exam aspirants.

Verbal Ability:

Practice an equivalent of one sectional test (20 questions) with focus on reasoning based questions such as theme completion, critical reasoning. Grammar: the correct ways of expressing an idea and use of idioms; Vocabulary: usage based questions. Says Deekshant – “Reading will help a lot here too since this section is now more application based rather than knowledge based, as was the case earlier.” Understanding the Logical connect between words in a sentence, ideas in a paragraph and paragraphs in a passage – this would be as handy for Verbal Ability as for it would be for Reading Comprehension. Apart from the sectional tests and assignments that you get from the institute that you are preparing from, refer to web sources such as www.dictionary.com (which gives you information about usage and meaning of any word along with its pronunciation), www.dailygrammar.com (for basic grammar), and www.bbc.co.uk for overall English section. These are reliable and constantly updated sources for enhancing your command over a language that is “as slippery as an eel”.

Quantitative Ability:

You should look to attempt an equivalent of a sectional test, with 20 math problems, in a day – preferably with a balanced mix from Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry, as the focus on these areas keeps on varying in CAT. Focus not only on solving the problem but more importantly on checking whether your approach is logical and efficient. According to Mohit Khurana, an IIT-Delhi alumnus who is a Quant Expert at MBAGuru: “Think of alternative ways of approaching the problem – this will not only make your approach more robust but will also enable you to associate with, interrelate and internalize various concepts that you have learnt -  This is what CAT today requires you to do.”

The topics you should focus upon:

Circles, triangles and area-volumes in Geometry

Quadratic Equations and Permutations & Combinations in Algebra

Number System, Mixtures and Alligations, Speed-Time-Distance in Arithmetic

You should finally (a) be able to do easy questions from all areas so that you don’t lose out on a source of great advantage and (b) know your strengths well enough to attempt nearly all questions from your stronger areas, while being selective about those from your weaker areas.

Logical Reasoning (LR):

Look to solve an equivalent of 1 LR set i.e. around 5 LR problems a day – from any good book (Puzzles to Puzzle You - Shakuntala Devi, The great book of mind-teasers and puzzles – George Summers, Analytical Reasoning – M.K.Pandey, Amazing Math Puzzles – Adam Hart Davis) or from web sources such as www.rinkworks.com/brainfood (which has puzzles that test your logical, verbal and quantitative reasoning skills!) and www.brainden.com.

The emphasis has to be on identifying the basic structure of various kinds of problems. The better you become at identifying the framework that you can use to crack a problem, the easier the LR section would appear. “This is a section for which you need not prepare, and this is the section for which no amount of preparation would suffice” says Abhishek Sharma, an IIM Indore alumnus who is a mentor at MBAGuru. According to him, the only preparation you can do is to develop a sound approach rather than looking to solve problems and practicing. You can gain much more out of 5 problems a day if you focus on understanding how the problem is framed than you probably would if you solve 25 problems a day.

Data Interpretation (DI):

Comfort with numbers is the key here - 10 Simple calculations a day could serve as a warm-up exercise and also go a long way in helping you gear up to tackle DI in CAT. Write down expressions at random and approximate them mentally and logically. “For example something like 25.37 x 49.28 (= 1250.23) can easily be approximated as 25 x 50 = 1250. “CAT is not testing whether you can replace the calculator or the PC, it only tests a certain comfort level with numbers since as a manager you deal with numbers day in and day out” says Abhishek Sharma from MBAGuru.

Mock CATs:

Apart from the things mentioned above, making best use of CAT-level tests at your institute becomes crucial in the final few weeks prior to CAT. Now is the time for you to begin settling down on the strategy and get past the stage of experimenting too much. The analysis of these tests will also play a crucial role in helping you choose and leave questions in accordance with your strengths and weaknesses. As per Deekshant – “After writing the test and before analyzing it, or going through its solutions, you should first take a separate 1 hour slot to attempt all the questions that you did not attempt during the actual test. This will expose you to good quality questions and also help you unravel hidden strengths and weaknesses. On top of this, it will add a lot to your ability to discern between easy and tough questions in the actual exam.”

These are only representative inputs and may need to be fine-tuned slightly according to individual needs. While these will certainly give one level of improvement to most aspirants, the real potential can only be harnessed through adaptive / personalized guidance by expert mentors.

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