CAT 2012 Preparation@ Six strategies to ace CAT 2012 in 45 days

Aug. 27, 2012 - PRLog -- The clock is ticking faster than ever. With just 45 days left for CAT 2012 as of today, you have reached a stage where your basic preparation is done and now you have to focus on improvement. This is the stage where you don’t have enough time to start a new topic, but do have adequate time to improve on the areas where you lack confidence and don’t score high. This article presents to you six top strategies which will help you a lot in the preparation for the last 45 days to CAT.

Have a look and plan ahead.

Make mock test a regular feature: Mock tests play the most important role in shaping up your preparation.  Now that there are 45 days left for the exam, mock test should be a regular feature of your preparation strategy. Be it sectional mock of full-length mock, you must take at least one test in the stipulated time period. Sharing the strategy of taking mocks, Abhishek Gupta, academic head (MBA product), Career Launcher, said, “Take one full-length mock test every alternate day and analyze the test carefully. Revise and practice on other days.”

Give equal importance to analysis: You can only understand the importance of taking mock tests when you analyze it properly. For analysis, take help of expert guidance. Through the analysis, take a note of the types of mistakes you are committing. It can be a silly mistake which you have committed due to lack of concentration, or it can be a chronic one, which has happened due to conceptual ambiguity. Once you know the reason, you can work towards not repeating it. But analysis is not only meant for mistakes, but also for questions you answered correctly. You can have ways to answer the question in a faster and follow a more accurate method. “Make sure that you analyze your performance carefully after each test. Take guidance from a senior faculty, ideally someone who has cracked CAT personally,” says Rahul Reddy, director, VistaMind Education.

Practise all kinds of questions: Don’t restrain yourself from attempting different types of questions. You may be weak in a particular area, but with practice you can improve on your preparation level. The more diverse kind of questions you attempt, the more you will be able to attempt different kind of questions. This will improve your accuracy too. “Focus on the basics first and then move on to complex problems. Also, if you solve a few good problems, it is better than solving 100 easy/mediocre questions. So concentrate on quality and not on quantity,” said Deepankur Malhotra, 99.83 percentiler in CAT 2011 and an IIM Bangalore student.  

Don’t stop revision: Taking mock tests doesn’t mean that you will stop your revision. After each analysis, revise the topics. Here is the method of analysis and revision shared by Gupta, “Get yourself a solved copy of the question paper and do a self-analysis. Do a section-wise analysis to identify your strengths and for achieving optimal performance. Identify areas where you have grasp of the concepts but are unable to perform. Identify the mistakes you are making in these areas and correct them. This will boost your score. Do not stop revision.”

Manage your strong & weak areas:  You must know the strategy to manage your weak areas. For that, first you have to identify the areas and then work towards them. You may not be able to master every single area within these 45 days but you must work on the areas according to the importance and weightage given in the CAT exams. “Take a few mocks and identify areas that you are better at. Master these and improve your accuracy through these areas. Also focus on areas that are more important than others, like algebra and number systems,” says Gupta.

Focus on accuracy: Accuracy is the keyword when it comes to cracking the CAT exam. With the negative marking in vogue, you should really focus on accuracy during your preparation so that you don’t lose marks. Suggesting a proper strategy, Reddy said, “Attempting 18 to 26 questions in each section with 70 per cent accuracy will be good enough.” Enough practice, choosing the right questions and solving them with full concentration after employing the right method are the secrets of high accuracy.