Know CAT strategy of IIM-C grad, 99.93 percentiler
Preparing hard for CAT? Here’s what Anil Narayanan of the Indian Institute of Management – Calcutta (IIM-C) has to say about his CAT preparation that got him 99.93 percentile. Watch out for more such exclusive tips at shiksha.com.
Anil Narayanan’s Profile:
CAT 2010: Score 99.93 percentile
Post-graduation: IIM Calcutta (PGP 2011-2013 batch)
Graduation: NIT Durgapur, Electrical Engineering (2006)
Q. According to you, what is the minimum time frame needed to prepare well for CAT? How long did you prepare for it?
As the topics tested in CAT are restricted to class 10th maths, I feel 3-4 months of preparation would be enough. I had started my preparation in July and usually studied around 2 hours on weekdays and 5-6 hours on weekends. Of course, I had put more study hours in the last month where I concentrated on solving as many mocks as I could.
Q. Is it necessary to join a coaching institute or is self-study good enough? What study plan did you follow for your CAT prep?
If you are giving CAT for the first time then it is a good idea to join a coaching institute. Institutes helps in structuring preparation and also the study materials provided are quite comprehensive. For a repeater, a regular course may not be of much value but joining a national level test series would aid in assessing preparation.
I had joined test series of TIME otherwise it was mostly self-study using resources available online.
Q. How did you divide time for each section? Which sections did you spend more time on?
I was confident about the Quant and DI part but was a bit weak on the verbal section. So I had concentrated more on the verbal section in the initial days of my preparation but towards the last 2 months it was almost equal time for all sections.
Q. How did you work on improving your weak areas for CAT prep?
According to me, solving and analysing mocks is the best way to understand your weak areas and improve them. Most of the students just give mock CATs but do not spend enough time to analyse the mocks. It is a good idea to go through the solutions and analyse what could have been done better.
Q. How much time did you spend on revision?
There was no revision time as such, but the last 1 month I had concentrated only on solving Mock tests. This can be called as a revision period as I understood my strong and weak sections and thereby planned my preparation based on this.
Q. Any useful study material/ reference books you can recommend for CAT prep?
Manhattan GMAT Sentence Correction book helped a lot in the verbal preparation. For Quant, I followed questions and resources posted in totalgadha.com.
Q. What did you do right to crack it?
Concentrating more on mock CAT in the last 1 month was a good strategy. As already mentioned rather than just solving the papers I spent more time on analysing the papers which helped in improving my accuracy and speed. I think the most important factor that would have helped me is my state of mind during the exam. I was doing well in the company where I was working, so had no pressure while giving CAT and this would have had a positive effect on my performance.
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