How I scored 99.89%ile in CAT; Ananya Mishra shares tips & tricks

Ananya Mishra

With CAT 2017 likely to be conducted in the month of November/December, it is high time that MBA aspirants start preparing for the exam with utmost dedication. However, only sitting for hours and preparing for the exam does not assure a good percentile. The candidate must ensure that he/she is following the right preparation strategy. Without this, all efforts might go waste. Shiksha spoke to Ananya Mishra, CAT 2016, 99.89%iler about how one should prepare for the exam, and here is what she told us:

Self- study is a must for the preparation. In addition to that, one might opt for coaching if he/she feels the need of an extra support.

This is something which depends entirely on the student. For instance, I started seriously preparing roughly 6 months prior to the examination. 

Regular practice is something which helps a lot. I would suggest aspirants to practice problems from all three sections regularly. Excessive focus on one often leads to negligence of the other sections which does more harm than good.

There is no such restriction on books. Any book which has content similar to what appears in the examination is good enough. However, aspirants must go through past question papers to get a good overview of the question pattern and difficulty level that is expected.

The key is to identify the section that is bringing down the performance of the student. That section will require special attention. Apart from that, each section will have different topics and the candidate will have to find out which of them needs more practice and allot time accordingly.

This is a highly subjective matter. It depends on the skill of the student. It is for the student to decide which questions fall in his/her comfort zone and which do not.

I would suggest aspirants to monitor the time they are taking for solving the problems and successively try to reduce that.

From my personal experience, appearing for mock tests and analysing the results help a lot in finding out the topics which need improvement.

Examinations like XAT and IIFT also get you an admission to decent B-schools, and are definitely worth a try.

Do practice as much as you can. Don’t over exert yourselves. Stay confident.

CAT scores are used for admission to 20 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and various other top B-Schools. Are you eligible for the IIMs? To know more, click on the image beside.

Also Read:

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