CAT 2018 Topper Interview: How Swapnil Suman scored 100 percentile

Q: When did you start preparing for CAT exam? What was your overall prep strategy?

A: I started preparation in May 2017. Initially, I started with Arun Sharma for VARC and DILR and Sarvesh Verma for QA. After one month, I gave a mock to see where I stand and ended up getting 99.75 percentile in the mock. Then, I decided it was futile practicing from the books and hence only practiced from mocks.

In my first attempt, I took 30 mocks of TIME and Career Launcher but didn’t analyze them thoroughly which costed me in the end. This year, I started preparation in August and took mocks of TIME, Career Launcher and IMS. I used to give 3-4 mocks on weekdays during evenings and 1-2 mocks on Sundays. In total, I took 54 mocks. Learning from the previous year, I made sure to analyze each mock and observe what mistakes I was making and tried to learn from each mistake. I believe that turned out to be the game changer this time.

Q: Please share with us your section-wise strategy?

A: VARC has always been my weakest section. To improve my reading speed and verbal skills, I read some novels and a few non fiction books. I also used to read The Hindu newspaper. The video solutions provided by TIME for mocks also helped a lot to improve in this section.

DILR: I always had a strong penchant for puzzles and I treated solving DILR as solving puzzles. This is considered to be the most difficult section in CAT, but if one practices enough number of problems, most questions would seem repetitive and can easily be tackled.

QA: Being an engineer, Quant came naturally to me. While analyzing mocks, whenever I encountered any problem which I couldn’t solve, I would see the solution and if some new concept or formula was used I would note it down in a notebook and I used to revise them frequently.

Q: Which books did you refer to for CAT preparation?

A: As I previously said, I used Arun Sharma and Sarvesh Verma only in the beginning phase of my preparation but left them soon after for good.

Q: Did you join any coaching institute? How does coaching institute help in CAT preparation?

A: I did not join any coaching institute except for mocks. If someone is weak with the basics, coaching can help up to some extent. But at the end of the day, CAT tests speed and aptitude more than knowledge which can only be developed by practicing a lot.

Q: How important is mock test series?

A: Mock test series is indispensable if you are planning to get a percentile above 99.7. The more mocks you give, you’ll get used to performing under time pressure and you can find your weak areas and try to improve them.

I would advise to subscribe to mock test series of at least two out of TIME, Career Launcher and IMS and if possible all three.

Q: What was your CAT exam day strategy?

A: I gave CAT in my home town and being surrounded by my well-wishers, I had a high morale going into the exam center. In VARC, I started with the Reading Comprehension passages and finished all the passages in 50 minutes. Then I moved to the Verbal Ability questions but could attempt only 7 questions in the remaining time. In DILR, I used to solve the questions serially in mocks but I tried a different approach in CAT. I skimmed through all the questions and classified the questions into easy, medium and difficult. Then, I solved the easy sets. After that I moved to medium sets. I found Two sets difficult which I didn’t even attempt solving them. I ended up attempting 25 questions in this section. Then came QA. I had planned that I would do all the easiest questions first and the difficult ones at the end. But after skimming through few questions, I realized no question was easy. Hence, I solved the questions serially and attempted 31 questions in this section.

Q: Any tips for future CAT aspirants?

A: I would just like to tell if one practices sincerely from mocks, then the CAT exam would be a cakewalk.

Q: Which IIMs /Institutes are you targeting?

A: I am targeting IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore and IIM Calcutta and FMS, Delhi.
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