Though CAT experts believe that four to five month of serious preparation can fetch you a good confidence level for CAT, they however insist that practice and consistency with fixed daily-preparation hours or weekly- preparation hours hold key to achieving high CAT percentile.
“Five-to-Six months before the exam would be the best time to start for CAT Prep,” says Rajesh Balasubramanian, CAT Expert & Author of CAT books.
Fix your CAT hours:
The first step towards a serious CAT preparation plan should be to find your current preparedness and the total hours you need to devote to your CAT preparation before your D-day. Accordingly, you need to divide the total number of hours you need for your CAT preparation to the number of days available with you before the CAT 2013 dates that start from October 16, 2013.
Mr Abhishek Gupta, National Product Head, MBA Test-Prep, Career Launcher India suggests that an Aspirant should ideally put 25-30 hours a week for CAT preparation beginning from May-June.
“The section-wise distribution of your available time would depend on your current level of preparation, what all topics the person has already done, whether the person is working or not, and a few other things. However, a serious candidate should definitely give it at least 4 hours daily at this stage,” says Mr Gupta.
Maintain Consistency:
Once you decide on the number of hours that you need to put on daily or weekly basis for your CAT prep, the next challenge will be to be consistent with the already decided study hours.
Experts suggest that CAT aspirants must maintain consistency and avoid getting distracted from their core preparation hours. They believe a high level of interest in CAT prep is key to keep you going.
Another advantage of maintaining consistency is that it gives an MBA Aspirant more time to practice and analyse their preparation level.
“Practicing quizzes and mocks after finishing every topic helps you to keep you on track and assess the level of your preparation as CAT comes closer. You must analyse your mock and assess the weak areas and continuously work on the same by allotting more time to the areas which trouble you during mock,” says another CAT Expert.
Mr Balasubramanian says that consistency in your prep schedule enables you to constantly assess your preparation level and bridge the gaps. “Once you build your basics, the practice will give you the edge and enable you to just scan the equation and give the answer. This will really help boost your confidence,” he says.
Divide your time:
Once the MBA Aspirants gain consistency in their preparation, they should keep a close tab on the time they spend on different sections.
Mr Balasubramanian broadly divides the CAT preparation into three blocks. “First 50% of the time should be spent in building the basics and learning all the concepts, the next 25% in building intensity, doing the grind and covering the gaps, and the final 25% of the time in taking lots of mock exams.”
Stop wastage of time:
Another important area in Time Management is to utilize best your CAT preparation hour and make it as productive as possible. For this, you need to develop a high level of interest in preparation which helps you keep going and sometime stretch beyond your usual CAT preparation timings.
Though a particular section may be more or less interesting to you, but you should not get carried away and devote more time to a particular section. Spending more time on that will harm your overall preparation. According to CAT Expert & Author Rajesh Balasubramanian, “CAT Aspirants need to devote some time regularly to all three subjects - VA, QA and DI. This is the best way to prepare. The preparation won't get monotonous and boring, and you wouldn't ever feel as if you have forgotten some topic since you haven't been in touch lately.”
Some expert suggest that merely learning the theory and lengthy formulae will not help much in solving the question, but solving questions with application of basics in each question helps a lot. For example, you need to be very cautious that CAT quant section does not check your memory power as most of the sums in CAT are not based on direct formulae. You need to read and learn concept of topic and try to keep yourself away from big and lengthy formulae.
Mr Balasubramanian also suggests MBA Aspirants to focus more on basics. “Do not agonize over short-cuts, vedic math, speed multiplication and other such distractions. Re-visit basics frequently and aggressively. Some of the best books to focus on the basics are the under-rated NCERT textbooks for standard VI, VII, VIII and IX. These are wonderful for learning the basics well. Pick up books where the thought-processes are outlined well,” he says.
A little conscious effort towards CAT preparation during your other activities like Newspaper reading, discussion with friends on different topics, Novel reading, news-watching can help you a lot in Verbal Ability section. “It prepares you to handle the Group Discussions with ease (at a later stage) and also make you more comfortable with those "incomprehensible and boring" RC passages,” says a CAT Expert.
Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more prep news and features on CAT 2013
