CAT 2017: Prepare devising your own Exam day strategy; suggest CAT toppers

CAT 2017 exam date on November 26, 2017 needs a well devised strategy to crack the exam with high score. This is more important after putting in many months of preparation as all depends on the 3 hours of your testing duration. Past CAT toppers at FMS Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, SPJIMR Mumbai followed their own but distinct strategy on CAT day and came out with flying colours.

Important links:

• CAT 2017 exam preparation tips by IIML student & CAT topper Rachit ‘Don’t worry about wrong answers’
• FMS Delhi CAT topper Somesh, success mantra for CAT 2017 “Give equal importance to all 3 sections”
• CAT 2017 Success mantra from Varsha, IIM Ahmedabad student “Make a concepts book for challenging Questions”

Sharing their success mantra for the CAT day and suggesting the ways and means to crack CAT 2017 with high score, all the CAT toppers are unanimous on one point that you should remain cool and calm throughout the 3 hours of CAT 2017 testing time.

In the next 15 days of your preparation for CAT 2017, you could turn your cherished dream of getting into IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta or Lucknow into reality, if you begin utilizing judiciously your time and develop shortcuts to solve the different type of 100 questions divided into 3 sections.

CAT 2017 with an overhauled exam pattern is no doubt a great challenge for the IIM aspirants. But the no penalty Non-MCQ type of questions are also a great relief to CAT aspirants.

CAT toppers and IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, FMS, SPJIMR students while sharing their CAT day strategy impress upon the aspirants to understand and follow the key changes in exam pattern while finalising their CAT exam date plan.

According to Prof S K Agarwal expert on Verbal Ability and Mentor on CAT 2017 preparation, it is very difficult to choose the most appropriate answer, unless you know well how to solve the question. For next 15 days in CAT 2017 preparation journey, the role of time management combined with speed and accuracy without which you may not be able to solve either the MCQs or Non-MCQs is very important.

Another key point to note for CAT 2017 day is that you will not be allowed to switch from one section to other within over all time limit of 3 hours, till the allotted time of 60 minutes to one section is over, so you need to manage the sectional time alongwith overall test day strategy.  

CAT toppers at FMS Delhi suggest…
How you should get ready and devise your strategy for CAT day? Mukesh Goyal with 100 percentile in CAT 2016 and FMS Delhi student of MBA 2017-19 suggests, “One can try different types of strategies in mocks and accordingly see what kind of strategy suits him/her better. All the mock questions – incorrect, correct and un-attempted should be analysed properly. Through proper analysis, one can know about his/her weak and strong areas and can work accordingly. Attempting the easy and doable questions first and leaving the difficult ones for the last is really important and one can learn about this through mocks. “

Sharing the suggested strategy Abhay CAT 99.99 percentiler and FMS Delhi student of MBA advises “A Candidate needs to analyse his/her performance very deeply as he can find his strengths and weaknesses in that analysis. Identify your weaknesses and never repeat them again. Learn from your mistakes. Find new and faster ways to solve those questions which consumed most of your time. Apart from this, there can be n number of problems specific to each candidate and answer to all those problems lies in that analysis.”

Saransh Garg cracked CAT with 99.98 percentile and has high sectional percentile scores. His suggestion for CAT exam day strategy comes with his own experience. Saransh advises “My strategy was to kill any kind of nervousness or impatience involved by giving mocks so that it feels normal on the Judgement Day.”

He further suggests “There are 8 sets of DILR and you get 60 minutes to solve them. So, I focussed on not spending more than 7-8 minutes on a single set.”

The strategy he planned for CAT day, was “My plan to take CAT was to attempt as many questions as possible (I attempted 92-93) and not getting stuck on a question for more that 2 minutes.”

CAT topper at SPJIMR advises…Utilize new changes
SPJIMR Mumbai student Divya Subramoniam with 99.36 percentile in CAT advises the CAT  aspirants to utilize the new changes in CAT for their benefit. According to Divya “The new changes are really beneficial as there is fixed time allotted to each section, and this avoids any chance of spending all our time on one section, and scoring low on the other. Also, even though the Quantitative section has been made simpler, the Data Interpretation and Logical reasoning questions were quite thought-provoking, and required one to be thorough with the quant concepts.”

Divya suggests not to use online calculator as it is not much beneficial without sufficient practice. She advises “The online calculator, however, is not beneficial, unless the aspirant has enough practice. Without practice, it takes up a lot of our precious time during the exam.”

CAT topper at IIM Bangalore suggests…
Nishant Gupta who cracked CAT in first attempt with 99.97 percentile is a B.A. in Economics. He is pursuing PGP at IIM Bangalore. His focus was to maximise the attempts after gearing up for the CAT day with all the revision and practice complete.

Sharing the D-day strategy for CAT aspirants, Nishant suggests “My strategy was to ensure maximum attempts in VA, and aim for accuracy in DILR and VA. I did not do much last minute prep, just looked at previous year CAT papers and revised quant formulae.”

CAT 100 percentiler at IIM Ahmedabad suggests…
IIM Ahmedabad student of PGP 2017-19, Gyayak Jain scored 100 percentile in CAT  2016. According to him his CAT exam date strategy was, “For CAT day, I tried to be relaxed and a day before the exam, I tried to base my confidence by looking at the mock in which my performance was good. According to my experience, a good night sleep is more fruitful then last minute preparations. Also, an important aspect is time keeping, i.e. to come up on your average time taken for a problem and trying to stick to it on the CAT day.”

Shortcut is an approach to solve the question and arrive at the right answer option faster than the conventional method of applying formula and moving on step by step. However conceptual clarity on the topic is very much needed, otherwise you will end up either opting for an incorrect answer option or writing a wrong answer on the computer screen for a Non-MCQ, suggests Prof S K Agarwal mentor on CAT 2017 preparation.

Please remember you need to have a good speed combined with high level of accuracy to arrive at the right answer. In the process you have to coordinate with time factor also. Less than 2 minutes per question to solve in CAT 2016 that too with one-third negative marking means that you have to score higher in comparison to other candidates to get shortlisted by top rated IIMs in 2018.

Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on CAT 2017 – preparation tips from toppers

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