If you were attempting a degree final exam, then three weeks would be more that sufficient to finish studying the portion twice over and get good marks.
CAT is anything but a degree exam. What you have not done for the last few months cannot be done in the last three weeks.
So, are these 3 weeks of any importance or is it that the die has been cast and you should just wait for the outcome?
Let's take a look. We'll start by asking two questions:
Do you still make a lot of mistakes in the ALL INDIA MOCK CATs that you write?
Are there enough questions in the MOCKs that you could have attempted and didn't and or got them wrong in the exam due to silly errors?
If the answer to any of the above two questions is YES, then there is a lot that can still be achieved in the next three weeks. Let us see what can and should be done to ensure that you get the coveted MBA school seat of your choice.
The buzz word for the next few days should be consolidation and final strategy.
Consolidation
This is the time to consolidate what you have done for the past few weeks and months. At this stage, there would still be lot of areas/topics which you are either not very sure of or have not started yet. Even if that is true, there is no point in trying to study new topics.
As the two questions I asked earlier, you will see that there are still questions that you could have picked up in the exam and got more marks. The fact that this has not happened is enough indication to spend time on those things which you are good at.
Except for areas like Geometry and Mensuration in Quantitative aptitude which you might still have to do if you have not already done so, there is no area which should be done at this late stage of the preparation.
This is also not the time to spend too much time on solving many MOCKs. Stop taking MOCKs, other than one or two per week. One will be there on a Sunday anyway (expecting that you are enrolled with some institute or the other), one more MOCK CAT should be taken mid week.
Let's see what needs to be done for every area.
Quant: From your MOCK CATs, take all questions pertaining to one topic and solve them at a stretch. For example, if you want to solve questions on Quadratic Equations (QE), then mark all the questions of QE that have come in all the MOCKS that you have written and sit for two or three hours and review all these questions and probably solving a few ones where you are not sure of the steps. Do this for almost all topics in the next 15 days. Logic and DI: For the next 15 days solve 7 to 8 Sets per day from the MOCKS that you have already solved.
Reading Comprehension: Every day from today, read give passages as well as answer the questions from the same. Review each of the answers. One of the mistakes that students make is that while reviewing they concentrate only on the questions that went wrong, but it is imperative that you check also the reason why you have got the questions right and understanding them as well as evaluating reasons for getting some other questions wrong will make your reasoning stronger. As has been seen, the paper is becoming more and more reasoning based and hence it makes sense to get the logic for the answers right.
Strategy
There are a number of strategies that you may have been adopting in the mocks till date. Let's review some of these.
To get a call from the IIMs, you need to perform well in each of the three sections that come in CAT. Give enough time for each of the sections so that you reach the cutoff without much ado.
Since there is a chance that one section or the other may not go as well as you expect it to, you need to also have a contingency plan to counter any possible downside in any section.
It is therefore important that you do not divide the entire 150 min for all the three sections. You need to keep some buffer and divide the remaining time for the three sections depending on your strengths and weaknesses.
There are a lot of strategies, and to reiterate a couple of them, here they go.
45 - 45 - 45 - 15 min Strategy
Here you give 45 minutes to each of the sections and keep about 15 min as the buffer time.
40 - 40 - 40 - 30 min Strategy
Here, give only 40 minutes per section and then keep 30 min in buffer. This buffer now can be used for two of the three sections (one for maximising scores and the other for possible salvaging)
Stop experimenting
Now is not the time to experiment anymore. While consolidation is the name of the game for preparation, it is equally true for the exam strategy also. Hence make sure that you get used to a pattern (knowing fully well that you may have to change strategies depending on the actual exam) and as long as the exam is similar to the ones that you have encountered before in the MOCKs, your best chance would be by sticking to the basic strategy in which you have been comfortable.
Wish you all the best!
ARKS Srinivas is the Director of T.I.M.E. Mumbai
