CAT formAT

The Common Admission Test (CAT) is the first evaluation in being admitted to the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) and other affiliated colleges. Assuming that the CAT 2009, will be held on a single day (like CAT 08 and earlier), there are roughly 10 months left to prepare well for it.
There are two primary reasons to do well:
1. If a person gets GD calls, the CAT score still is an important parameter on which the final admission is going to be based.
2. If one doesn’t do well, it might unfortunately be the last evaluation – if a person fails to get GD / PI calls from an institute of his choice.
However, I think 10 months are sufficiently long to prepare well for it. In fact, most students I know who did well, didn’t prepare too much more than 8-10 months.

The sections in the CAT paper – Verbal, Quantitative, Logic / Data Interpretation – each are aimed at testing how well a person can apply skills that are extremely important in daily life, first & management, thereafter.

I would roughly divide the 10 months till the CAT, into 2 parts – months upto August and the 15 weeks. This division is not rigid and actual preparation pattern changes slowly from a style to another. This division is especially helpful for the Verbal section. I think that the first part should be devoted not only to CAT exam but also to generally preparing to get into b-schools. The effort during these months which one mightn’t explicitly direct at the CAT exam in fact does help in many subtle ways for the CAT exam as well. The last 15 weeks or so should be aimed at intensively preparing for the CAT exam. Most students who appear for CAT, do so while managing their daily jobs / education etc. as the case may be. Hence, intensive preparation for too long (while managing a hectic schedule) can be tiring and take the fun out of the process.

Hence, it is better to have a different approach to the exam in each of these time frames.

Quant
Most of the students are pretty quick with numbers in 12th standard due to the numerous entrance exams that they appear for. However the 3-5 years of graduation and the job thereafter, are loitered with electronic devices that hamper the speeds of mental calculations. Given the current pattern of CAT, it is very important to get back these speeds and is something many of us overlook. Since many people agree that the questions in Quant section aren’t difficult to solve given ample time, I would suggest that a person uses the months upto August to gaining speed. The time taken to solve the straightforwards (questions on distance-velocity, area-volume and the like) will be drastically reduced; leaving a person time to attempt the tricky ones. This is also a good time to understand the theory behind advanced topics like probability or Permutation/Combinations – especially for students who hadn’t had these topics in their graduation curriculum. However, it is fair to devote less time to Quant leading upto August.

However, in the last dozen of weeks, practice is of utmost importance. Decide on some material and aim to be through with it. This material should cover the complete of topics. At most 10% of the CAT questions might require original approach & exceptional ability. It is often prudent to not attempt these questions. Except for these questions, most questions in a CAT paper will be similar to a question you can find in this material. Hence, it is important that a person attempts all the questions and knows the approach to the questions he couldn’t answer correctly by himself.

How-much-so-ever a person prepares for the exam, I have observed that there are some students who are exceptional in their mathematical ability and the rest of us can’t overcome them. Instead of fidgeting no end over this, I think it is practical to do one’s best and do better in the other sections.

Logical Reasoning / Data Interpretation
This section typically is made up of 5-6 sets of questions. Each set of question is related to a central idea or theme. While the entire section might seem unstructured, the key to solving a problem in fact is identifying the structure to the theme of a question. By structure, I mean, the best framework to represent the data given in a set. This structure might be in the form of tables or trees etc. Once the structure to a question has been identified, the next step is inferring more data from the given (now structured) data.

A lot of puzzles are available which essentially hinge on the ability to find a structure to the problem. In these questions once the structure is identified then the inference is obvious. There is no algorithmic procedure to arrive at a structure of a completely new problem. But solving more of these puzzles certainly helps a person gain an understanding of the structuring involved. The puzzles might be harder than those asked in CAT, but are an excellent learning tool. Thankfully though, many questions in the CAT (like Venn Diagrams, reading table) are already structured.

Once a problem is structured we need to answer questions based on it. In order to improve upon the inferring of new data, I would recommend puzzles like the Sudoku or the Kakuro. These have the information in a highly structured form but inferring difficulty varies a lot. Sorting through the available information and inferring more data quickly is very critical.

Since, there is very little theoretical aspect to this section, one needs to extensively practice various questions so that he may be quick and accurate.

Verbal
The best use of ones time till the months of August is to be made for this section. It is very commonly observed that people who habitually read a lot do well in this section. I think that the first months should be devoted exclusively to reading a lot of articles in English. This has the following advantage:
i. It is critical that a person be able to read the passages provided quickly. Hence he has to be in the habit of reading long articles.
ii. Most of the vocabulary is learnt by the way of usage in sentences.
iii. A person needs to understand not only the given text but also what is likely to be leading up to it and what will follow.
In this regard, I think we should prepare ourselves in the first few months to read extensive opinionated / argumentative articles from good sources. These sources are typically British magazines and like. Not only should you read it fast, but also understand how the writer flows the article and reaches a conclusion. A few people reading the same article independent of each other and thereafter discussing what (& how) the article was trying to convey, helps a lot. The passages in the CAT are typically excerpts of such articles. In these months, it is a bonus if a student can finish a standard set of word lists (used for exams like GRE etc.) Planned and sincere study during this time will take you far in improving your Verbal section score.

In the last 15 weeks or so, a student should diligently solve a lot of questions. In passages, often 2 answers seem very close. The knack of picking one of them comes from answering questions and understanding the explanations given along with answers.

To round off, I think in the coming 6 months read a lot of good argumentative English (Verbal), improve your speed (Quant.) and attempt as many different puzzles (Logic). Starting August, practicing questions will hold the key in each section.