Sail through CAT
|
It's all in how one manages time, takes decisions and deals with pressure. Here are a few pointers on how to go about it.
|
BUCK UP!: Want to enter the portals of IIMs? Then better start preparation for the Common Admission Test. Photo: Murali Kumar K.
The race for the next year top B-school admissions is about to begin. The Common Admissions Test (CAT) November-2005 is the best way to enter the dream institution for many of us - the Indian Institutes of Management.
But before that you need to know how to crack the CAT. It is all about how you manage time, take decisions and deal with pressure, say experts.
Starting early is always better for a demanding examination like CAT. Even undergraduates in their second or third year and planning to enter a B-school can evolve a strategy when he knows what CAT is all about.
Early preparation also gives you time to fine-tune your planning strategy. Students are expected to solve 150-165 questions in 120 minutes - about 45 seconds per question. In these two hours, you have to tackle 10-11 questions on jumbled paragraphs; read six passages of 800-1,300 words each and answer 40 questions based on the passages; understand six-seven sets of data given in tabular or graphical form and calculate growth percentages. The question booklet itself runs into some 40-42 pages.
Managerial aptitude
So, is CAT really that difficult? Remember it is an entrance test for prospective managers. Therefore, CAT is much more than one's language skills or quantitative aptitude. It evaluates one's managerial capabilities such as working under pressure, managing time, making decisions and tackling change. You should spend time in developing and honing a managerial aptitude. Here are a few pointers on how to go about it.
If you want to master CAT, you need to develop this crucial skill. It is really not possible to solve 165 questions in 120 minutes. The time pressure is imposed to see how a student deals with it. So don't crack under pressure (of solving one question in 45 seconds). Instead, keep a realistic target. To receive an interview call, you have to clear the cut-offs in each section. It will be useless to have an excellent overall score if you have neglected one section and done very well in the others.
Be proactive and set time limits for each section (around 45 per cent of questions for the quantitative aptitude and data interpretation section and 50 per cent for English usage and reading comprehension section) and your own accuracy level.
Tackling pressure
Pressure takes the heaviest toll during preparation and not during the two hours of the actual test. Some 30-40 per cent of aspirants who are very serious about taking CAT cannot sustain the pressure during the preparation time. And so, by the time they take their mock examination in October, they have given up.
Maths may have been difficult in school. But with time, a lot of concepts could have become clearer. Besides that, we are not dealing with calculus and vectors but tackling numbers with percentages, profit-loss discount, interest, ratio proportion and time-speed distance.
All you have to do is go back to the textbooks of Class VIII and X and start revising. Similarly, start off with a good vocabulary list rather than spending time bemoaning the fact your English in school wasn't good enough.
Change is constant
Every CAT paper has surprises in store. Keep an open and flexible mindset while taking the CAT. You can't go in with a fixed strategy of doing English section first or allotting specific time for different sections. A few new questions get introduced every year. Tackling them requires quick understanding and sound judgment of whether to attempt them or not.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Education Plus
Karnataka
Chennai
Coimbatore
Hyderabad
Madurai
Tiruchirapalli
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
