CAT 2019 Topper Interview: 98.96 percentiler Rishabh Dwivedi Shares His Exam Strategy

Rishabh Dwivedi from Agra scored 98.96 percentile in CAT 2019 exam. Read about his journey of success in the article below.

Rishabh Dwivedi

Rishabh Dwivedi hails from Agra. He has completed his graduation from Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida and is also a huge football fan. Working as a Consultant with Deloitte USI in Hyderabad, Rishabh shares with Shiksha his CAT 2019 preparation strategy and his success mantra. Read the article below to know more. 

Overall CAT percentile: 98.96

VARC percentile: 97.45

DILR percentile: 96.9

Quant percentile: 98.5

Q. Are you satisfied with your CAT result? How much score were you expecting?

A. My CAT preparation and mock scores definitely made me believe that I could score somewhere around 99.5+ on the CAT exam day if I keep my calm. But I could not stick to my strategy in DILR and lost a few marks there. But I am content with the percentile I got, and I am looking forward to converting the calls that I get.

Q. Was this your first CAT attempt?

A. No, this was my second CAT attempt. I have attempted CAT earlier in 2017, but could only manage to score 96.6 percentile as I had my college exams and placements.

Q. When did you start preparing for CAT exam? What was your overall preparation strategy?

A. I started preparing around April in 2019 and made sure that I religiously gave all the mocks I had enrolled for. Since Verbal came very naturally to me, I focused more on DILR and QA, in order to push my score. I revised all the basics for QA and practiced from past year mocks for DILR. The major part of my prep was analyzing the mocks given, look for the potential mistakes and correct them.

Q. Please share with us your section-wise preparation strategy.

A. VARC: For Verbal, I made it a habit to read The Hindu newspaper every day and increase my grasping speed.

DILR: DILR was something where I had to work a lot, first I solved all the basic sets available on different sources online, and then started with CAT level sets from the past year question paper and mock tests.

Quant:  QA was a strong suit for me, so I had to push my score in it. I made sure to cover all the topics so that I do not miss out on any easy questions even if I am not comfortable with that particular topic. I also practiced QA from the iQuanta platform, a lot of questions posted there made me explore different and faster ways of solving. Sometimes, looking at other people's solutions can also teach you a lot of things.

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

A. I only referred to past years' mock questions and online platform iQuanta as they were the most up-to-date content providers when it comes to the actual difficulty of CAT.

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

A. I had joined iQuanta for QA course, it helped me a lot to get my basics cleared and find good questions to practice from. Other than that I had test series of IMS and TIME.

Q. How important is mock test series?

A. I personally believe mocks are the most important part of the prep. They give you a platform to form your strategies for the D-Day and give you a real picture as to where do you stand with your prep. The level of difficulty makes you ready for even the worst of scenarios on D-Day. It's very important to analyze your performance and give time to correct your mistakes.

Q. What was your CAT exam day strategy?

A. My exam day strategy was to avoid going with any preconceived notions about the difficulty level of the exam. Going with a clear head makes it easy to adapt and innovate there. Having a good night's sleep the day before is very important and to stick to your strategy while attempting is important. Trying to maximize my strength areas such as RCs in Verbal, DI sets in LRDI and Arithmetic in QA was my basic strategy.

Q. Any tips for future CAT aspirants?

A. CAT preparation is going to be very similar to running a marathon, it doesn't matter how fast you were, what matters is how consistent you were. There will be times when you'll get complacent with the prep, the best way is to take a 2-3 day break and come back stronger. Don't focus much on low mock scores, even Virat Kohli gets out on duck, and he is the best when it comes to being consistent. Just try and remain truthful to your prep and continue giving mocks and interacting with the right set of peers.

Q. Which are the IIMS/institutes that you are targeting?

A. I am targeting IIM Indore, IIM Kozhikode, MDI, SPJIMR and XLRI.

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