The Below Average Student’s Guide for Cracking the CAT

Crack CAT June 16th, 2008

Here’s a survivor’s guide to cracking the CAT. In this article, I will tell you all you need to know about scoring well in the Mock CAT’s, the big CAT, and all that follows.

Originally I was going to title this “The average student’s guide to cracking the CAT” .Then I realized I wasn’t average. This could hardly be called a guide. And I hadn’t even cracked the CAT. So I modified the title. I was going to rip-off Five Point Someone’ s opening line and modify it to read “I am pretty sure lots of other people could write this better if only they’d get off their asses. They didn’t. I did. So sit up straight, press Ctrl+D and let’s move on.”

Before we go any further, you have to decide what to do and be flexible about it. Lately, with the number of students appearing for CAT going up, the starting period of students preparing for the CAT seems to be getting more and more ridiculous. I’ve seen requests from kids in their first year of Engineering asking for tips/strategies to crack the CAT. So first off, if you are thinking about starting that early, forget it. There’s no point. Honestly speaking, the best time to start preparing for the CAT is in May of the year you are going to take the exam. Seven months is more than sufficient time.

However, there is plenty you can do if you want to start early.

1) If you notice, more often than not, the Verbal section seems to be horror of most students. So, start reading. If you don’t already, there’s no time like now. Get rid of that vernacular paper. Take in The Hindu, on weekdays and the Economic Times on weekends. Read the editorials. Chuck that SportsStar in favour of a good B (Business for the uninitiated) magazine . Read, Read and then Read some more. Did you know that PagalGuy himself read over 2000 books before his 12th. He exhausted his local library doing that. Believe me, it shows. How many of you even have a membership to a library??

2) Improve your academic performance. Now is never too late to start. Academics play an important role to some extent, so it helps.

3) Go out and make a difference. Join a social service community.

4) Do some all round improvement. Get into shape, work out, learn to play a musical instrument, improve your relationship with God/Parents/Family members/Friends……. When things get tough these are the people who’ll be there.

5) Make friends with Google.

6) Practice for Group Discussions and interviews. Improve your communication skills.

Its May and you’ve joined some institute. They’ve given you material and hopefully you’ve opened them and seen them. Now here’s the thing—when I was preparing for the CAT in 2k3, at one of the student meets, one of students asked a faculty member whether the material provided would be enough or whether they should look for more material from other places. The director replied that that particular institute provided 5000 pages of material, and in all his years of teachings, no one had ever gotten through it all. This is true. Most kids have so much material piled up at the end of year its ridiculous. That said, there are a few books I think you should get and go through like Vedic math, Arun Sharma/Guhati, last ten years CAT papers. Vedic mathematics maybe a lot of work on its own but can also be a lot of fun.

Tags: Crack CAT

Pages: 1 2

One Comment to “The Below Average Student’s Guide for Cracking the CAT”

Taniya | July 25th, 2009 at 5:45 pm

Thank you so much for the amazing write up. Considering that I am an above average student who has been out of touch with studies for over 5 years, and have suddenly decided to appear for CAT 2009, and I just have 4 months to prepare. Would it still be possible for me to score a 99 percentile. I really need some counselling and guidance!thanks!