CAT 2007: Scream from the roof-tops if you must!

Poonam Aggarwal who scored in the 99.54 percentile in CAT and is a second year student at IIM Lucknow, shares her CAT advice:

There's less than a month for CAT and that essentially means most of you will be through your Basic material and must be working on mock CAT papers. CAT is really just about three things: preparation, preparation and more preparation.

I know they say you never know what could happen on D-day. But this piece is not about whether you can change what happens on D-day; it's about how to influence that day's events in your favour.

Here's a laundry list of what you must do:

1. Identify the strategy that works for you. How long do you want to devote to each section? What order do you want to attempt sections in? And stick to it in at least 5 mock CATs; long enough for you to get comfortable with it. I used to attempt quant first because that needed the freshest mind and verbal last, because you can spend a lot of time on verbal if you want to then.

2. You don't have to do well in all sections. As long as you clear the cutoff on all sections and do exceptionally well in at least one section, it will work. Identify your weakest link; ensure you can clear the cut-off in that one section.

3. Take a lot of mock CATS. More importantly, analyse. There is absolutely no point taking mock CAT after mock CAT unless you analyse every paper. Where did you go wrong? Do you now know how to work out all the problems? Which section did you get the most wrong answers? If it is quant, is it a particular area? Can you work on it? If you cannot, you should avoid attempting it. Where is your accuracy rate the highest? Can you take some more risks in that section?

4. Take at least one of the national mock CAT series. It helps you gauge your preparation against the real competition.

The key to doing all of this is to ensure high motivation levels. I used to read a lot of business magazines and IIM blogs. It was like keeping an eye on the goal. It kept my focus. You should identify what works for you. It can be anything -- a friend used to go up to the roof-tops and scream his throat hoarse.

Also, about the D-day; I cannot emphasise this enough; it is very important you are at your coolest and most optimum on that day. Take the week before CAT off. Relax. Watch movies. Do things that calm you. For the entire week before CAT, I watched rented movies at my apartment. I think that put me in the right state of mind. I wrote CAT after a week of inactivity, and for some reason that worked. So good luck to all the CAT aspirants. Remember, it ain't over till the fat lady sings!