We present to you key excerpts from the video 'Test Taking Strategy for CAT 2011’:
-- Manage your Performance: Performance during the exam will come out of right behavior. You cannot completely manage your performance, but you can certainly manage well your exam taking behavior inside the exam hall.
-- Key Elements of Exam Taking Behaviour: You will get 70 minutes for each of the two sections in CAT 2011 paper. Before you start solving the first question, you need to measure how many questions you will be able to attempt. For this you need to look at the questions.
-- Don’t keep your target rigid: Your target of number of attempts should not be cast and stone. The difficulty of questions in CAT paper keeps varying in each section, and hence your target should also keep varying.
-- Be a smart solver: The person who makes it is a smart solver. He is the person who is able to do a perfect job with the above specific skills. He knows where he is heading towards.
-- Attempt rate: 4 minutes per attempt is a good plan i.e. 18 attempts in 70 minutes. I say 18 attempts because that is a safe bet, you will manage to make the cut off. If the paper is easy to you then change the value of 18 and attempt more.
-- Don’t hold on to a particular question: The exam time is not for showing how able you are, your performance will count. Don’t hang to a particular question with the aim to answer all the questions in the paper. This will create imbalance in your test taking plan by eating up your precious time.
Verbal Ability & Logical Reasoning
-- Do not focus at this stage on improving your English: “These last days are not for improving your quality of English. It takes six months to one year to make a good quality improvement in your English. But still there are many other things which you can work upon.”
-- VA is an area where there is nothing to solve. “You have to focus on thinking inside your mind to answer the questions.”
-- Find out the sources of error: “In an aptitude test like CAT, there are two parts to what you score – Ability & Performance.
-- Focus on what can be improved: “After every mock test focus on trying to find out How I can improve. Take good quality mock tests and know the traps and then only you can avoid them during the actual test day.”
-- Logical Reasoning: “For logical reasoning my only advice is you should know how to use the information/data in the right order.”
QA & DI
1. Changes in CAT exam structure: “You need to reach and expand your potential in these 30 days. The structure of CAT has witnessed big changes in the past few years.
But with the computer based CAT 2009, things have changed. The skew has reduced, and now you need to prepare equally for all blocks of QA.”
(BLOCK 1: (a) Number Systems, (b) Progressions ; BLOCK 2: (a) Averages (b) Alligations ; BLOCK 3: (a) Percentages (b) Profit & Loss (c) Ratio & Proportion (d) Time & Work (e) Interest (f) Time, Speed & Distance ; BLOCK 4: (a) Geometry (b) Mensuration (c) Coordinate Geometry; BLOCK 5: (a) Functions (b) Inequalities (c) Quadratic Equations (d) Logarithms; BLOCK 6: (a) Permutations & Combinations (b) Probability)
2. Focus on balanced preparation: “Your preparation should be well balanced. You should have command over every chapter, and by this I mean that you should know the answer to the first hundred questions for each chapter. This is an absolute must. You should ensure this aspect for every chapter in the next 20 days.”
3. Define key areas: “Define for yourself at least 3 blocks in which you are more confident. Take a self audit of the areas where you have gone deeper.
4. Focus on Revision: “In these last 30 days revise every question. Revise does not mean attempting to answer all the questions again.
5. Take mocks: “Take lot of good quality mock tests, which are sectionally well balanced.”
6. “For DI, I will advise you the same plan. Don’t go for new sets of questions right now. Add value to your strong areas.”
Watch the Videos
http://www.mbauniverse.com/mba-exam-preparation/CAT_2011_Video.php
