CAT 2010 underway; start CAT 2011 prep now!

This year's CAT is playing out its game and lot of serious MBA aspirants wanting to take CAT in 2011 will be inundated with information on dos, don'ts of the test. This may leave a lot of you, who have a nice 12 months of preparation time, bewildered.

You know 12 months is a lot of time if utilised properly -- should be spent on building the basic skills required to crack an exam of the form of CAT. I believe that a lot of us commit the mistake of prematurely concentrating on the so-called "tips, tricks and strategies" without paying enough attention to the fundamentals.

If you want to go about preparing in a more sensible and steady manner, now is a good time to start. Given below is a section-wise approach to preparation in the first three or four months -- November 2010 to February 2011.

Quantitative ability
Start by revising your basic class X mathematics. Make sure you have a fair idea of how the so-called 'shortcut formulae' mentioned in the umpteen CAT guidebooks, are actually derived. Initially concentrate on the accuracy part. Focus on solving almost every problem you come across even if it takes an inordinate amount of time and effort. This is probably easier for students with an engineering background as they stay in touch with maths throughout their coursework. However, 3 to 4 months of sincere and steady preparation will get you upto the required level.

It is highly inadvisable to start memorising the 'tips' and 'tricks' at this stage as there is no substitute for good concepts. As you progress slowly and steadily in your preparation you will come to realise that almost all CAT problems can be solved quickly with the help of basic principles (irrespective of your knowledge of tricks and shortcuts).

Once you become fairly confident about solving problems, you can start working on the speed factor. Even after you have successfully solved a problem, critically analyse your solution and check if you can make it any shorter by removing redundant steps or if a totally different approach is possible. This is often possible in time and work, speed, probability, permutations and combinations based problems.

Rahul Singh has authored this article exclusively for TestFunda.com. He scored a perfect 100 percentile in CAT 2009. For more articles by CAT toppers and 100 percentilers, free downloadable Past CAT tests and a whole host of learning resources log on to www.TestFunda.com.

Did you crack the CAT recently? What was the experience like? How did you begin your preparation and how did you plan your CAT strategy? Which are the most important study topics? What are the common problem areas that test-takers face and how did you approach them?

Simply e-mail us your CAT tips and advice at getahead@rediff.co.in with the subject 'My CAT tips' and we will publish the best right here!

This is one section where almost every candidate starts preparing from scratch unless he has taken CAT before. I strongly believe that this is the section where consistent hard work pays off the most. The best way to begin is to set aside a fixed number of hours each day (or each week if you don't want to be so rigid in your schedule) to attempt DI problems.

There are a few things you can pay special attention to while working on this section:

Spend ample time on analysing the solutions. In fact I often spent more time reviewing solutions than I did while solving problems. Pay special attention to how the information is represented in a more readable and analysable form through tables etc. This is particularly crucial in solving problems where all the information is just written in the form of a simple, continuous piece of text.

Learn to identify the problems in a set which could have been solved by using just a couple of lines of information from the whole paragraph. This ability proves very critical in tackling a tough DI set or when you are running out of time

Some problems tend to be very calculation intensive. In most cases making rough assumptions and rounding off will provide the correct answer. Herein the knack of simplifying ugly looking fractions, calculating percentages easily, etc comes in handy. I was never too good at calculations so I attempted these problems in the very end, but I have seen some of my friends who bank heavily on these problems and it pays off well. I often tried to round off three-digit numbers to the nearest five or ten and two digit numbers to the nearest multiple of two or four in order to simplify my calculations.

This is usually the section that engineering students struggle most with and it can get awfully tough at times. I often come across students complaining that their vocabulary is not good enough for CAT (which I believe is a very narrow approach). CAT is not about your vocabulary or your grammar per se; in general it tests your reading experience. So a 'start from the basics' approach is absolutely essential if you are not an avid reader to begin with.

The first step is to increase your appetite for reading. Newspapers are an obvious place to start, but if you find them heavy reading then you can start with some light fiction. I know most of my friends picked up reading after their first Harry Potter or Chetan Bhagat. You will find that your speed picks up considerably as you near the end of such books.

As you move on, gradually increase the amount of stuff you read in newspapers every day. The advantage is two-fold: you will soak in not only contemporary issues but also contemporary language. Being well-read on a variety of topics is a huge bonus while attempting RCs in the online CAT. You will soon realise this once you start taking Mock CATs; you can glide through passages faster if it's about something you have already read about, and it's not uncommon to find such passages in your test.

Like in the DI section, analysing solutions to RC passages is a very beneficial exercise. Writing down the new words that you come across every day is very helpful in remembering them. Spending time on memorising word lists and grammar rules would be futile at this stage as the amount of information would become too overwhelming. Hence all the focus should be on developing the reading habit at this stage. If you are already a keen reader, then you can work on
your reading speed and grammar.

To summarise, I would like to state that patience is a key factor here. In the beginning, work patiently building the aforementioned basic skills before attempting to augment them with tips, tricks and strategies. Initially, progress might be slow and unrewarding, but this diligent effort at building the foundation will ensure a good CAT score irrespective of how tough the individual sections are or how different the test format turns out to be from your expectations.