The Below Average Student’s Guide for Cracking the CAT

Crack CAT June 16th, 2008

Discipline yourself. Pace yourself. Draw up a flexible timetable. Contrary to what most people think, a time-table needn’t bind you down. Instead it gives you the time to do what you really want without letting you take your eyes off your goal. For instance, when I started prep, I used to wake up at 4 in the morning, study till 5:40 or so and then get ready for class at 6:30. Class finished by 8 and I had to rush back home to grab my bag, a quick bite and run for the college bus. Now my college was an hour and a half away which I spent in sleeping. My classmate on the other had, spent his time reading the editorials which we would then discuss on the trip back home. My VA skills, if I may say so myself , are rather strong so we’d discuss the topic and I’d help him with grammar and correction of sentences. My friend’s QA was strong so he’d help me out with that

Form a study group. You are competing with over 3 lakh students, so your group will just be a sample of what to expect. Make sure your group members are the serious sort– not the types who run off to watch a movie after every mock. Well ok, they needn’t be that serious too because it’s important to relax and enjoy the whole experience of preparing but its also important not to get carried away. A study group is very handy when it comes to taking sectional tests, mocks, FLT’s et al. Compare your scores with theirs. Find out what questions they attempted in QA that you didn’t and why they attempted them. Find out the approach and if there’s a way of doing them that you didn’t know about. Check those errors in VA. Find out what the easy sets in DI were.

Google has this project for which the tag-line is “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”. Given the competition, every little thing helps. Go ahead, find your Giants.

Majority of you who go for coaching will mostly go 3 times a week, say Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Right now, the mocks haven’t started yet, so that means you have 3-4 study sessions before the next class. STUDY!! Four sessions is a lot!!

Let’s say you were taught numbers on Monday morning. On Monday evening, study what you were taught and solve the problems from the material. Tuesday morning and evening, solve the problems from whichever book you’ve picked up. Wednesday morning, have a dekko at the topic that’s going to be taught (don’t most institute’s give you a schedule of sorts??). Above all, make sure you become really thorough with what you are studying. For e.g. all of us know the area of a triangle. Off the top of your head, can you tell me how many such formulae are there? Learn to analyse. It’ll be very helpful when it comes to D.I.

Whatcha waiting for?? Go crack that CAT

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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!