CAT 2014 has not yet clarified on many questions like the proposed changes in type and topics expected in CAT 2014 exam. Although there will be more number of questions but what source topics would contribute more is not known. Another big question is what will be the composition of CAT 2014 test paper. Will it have more DI questions or more quant questions in the first section; will it have more questions on Verbal Ability and RC and fewer on LR or the ratio will remain the same as earlier?
Probably it would have been better had the CAT 2014 organizing IIM Indore and testing agency TCS clarified more in the published FAQs on these issues. This is not the number of questions only but what topics will get prominence in CAT 2014 is the query of aspirants. CAT 2014 site has also started irritating the aspirants now, when they open it since even the practice test is also not supposed to be available before mid October, 2014.
Plan different strategy now
CAT 2014 site as well as Dr Rohit Kapoor, IIM Indore faculty and CAT 2014 convener has confirmed that CAT 2014 will have 100 questions as compared to 60 questions in 2 sections in past years. Prof S K Agarwal, Expert and mentor on CAT preparation, suggests the ideal strategy and approach to prepare and crack CAT 2014 with a slight modification in preparation pattern.
In his view, CAT 2014 aspirants now have to shed their dependence on CAT site and so called practice test. The only thing that might be clear, after the CAT 2014 practice test is displayed, is that the aspirants will come to know if there is any change in the type of questions.
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Don’t leave anything to chance
Neither the basics of Verbal Ability nor the Quant topics can be changed. All the questions will have one or other source topics. The only change can be that some ‘not so important’ topics may get more prominence while more important ones might be ignored. Now the ideal approach is to divide your preparation strategy in parts and work on each part meticulously without wasting too much time only on one topic. Prof Agarwal suggests following division in your study pattern across the 2 sections and 4 sub sections and advises to practice on following topics more as they could become the source of increased number of questions.
Fundamentals- Understand the concept of various parts of speech, tenses, long word formation, phrasal verbs. Around 3-4 questions are expected to increase on them
Reading Comprehension- Read and practice more topics on Philosophy, Business, Economics, Analysis of national and international events. 6-7 questions may increase on RC alone. Unless you practice more on RC you may lose a great chunk of marks
Quant- Learn well the remainder theorem, number system, time speed distance, geometry, permutation combination and probability. We can also expect questions from indices surds, logs, progression, averages and profit loss. There are 13-15 more questions expected on Quant in CAT 2014
Data Interpretation-5-8 more information rich bar diagrams, graphs and pie charts can be expected in CAT 2014. Improve your calculation and comparison speed and practice it more to remain consistent with the revised CAT 2014 pattern.
Logical Reasoning- 5 to 7 more questions on prominent topics like seating arrangements; sets, blood relations, direction, assumption, premise –conclusion, team formation are expected in CAT 2014. Questions on all these topics have earlier appeared also, so the aspirants shouldn’t mind practicing them further but with the focus on time management
Time management is must
The strategy of preparation and approach to solve the questions, according to Prof S K Agarwal, Verbal Ability expert on CAT preparation, is more or less same. If you spend too much time to know the concept and then try to practice more questions only in your weak areas, probably you are not doing justice to your time management.
Before investing lot of energy and time to a particular topic, which you find difficult to understand and are not sure of how many questions out of it you will get in CAT 2014, it will be better to further strengthen those areas where chances of improvement are more.
For example you may like to study and practice more on fundamentals like grammar, use of time zones but despite cramming your head, number of topics flummox you and you are not getting the desired output while the invested time and energy could be diverted to other areas of study like vocabulary, jumbled paragraphs, logical reasoning, Reading comprehension which you will understand, once the flow of reading is coherent and the meaning is clear to you. So it will be better to focus on these topics. You may very well go through such topics on fundamentals as you can understand. In nutshell the idea is not to waste time on a particular topic.
Similar approach to crack the test
It’s quite unlikely that out of 100 questions you will not get more options in comparison to earlier CAT takers. Candidates could score a very high percentile to the tune of 95+ when they solved 30-40 questions out of 60. On the same pattern if you are able to crack 60-70 out of 100 questions, a situation which is more likely to happen in CAT 2014, you may get a high sectional as well as overall percentile.
The advisable approach is to maximise your attempts by solving maximum number of questions from both the sections. This facility is unrestricted in CAT 2014 since sectional time constraints have been removed.
Prof S K Agarwal suggests that aspirants should go through all the questions and pick the easy questions first as they will be distributed at random basis. So make sure that you don't leave any easy question. After this go through the moderate ones and at last pick the difficult ones.
Longer study hours
Now you need to study for more hours say not less than 3-4 hours a day. CAT aspirants especially who may not sit and study continuously for long hours, need to develop this habit and should start studying at least for 3 hours in a row. If they find it difficult, they should gradually improve but the target should be 4 hours. If you focus on it, you may end up finally with 3 hours. It will be better to take 2 past CAT papers and solve them without any break and assess yourself.
Be ready for any type Questions
CAT 2014 is expected to have twisted questions apart from regular type of questions. But CAT has been doing this earlier also and has been asking similar questions on more or less same topics as well as throwing surprise elements in one or other year.
There is no logic in expecting a monotonous type of exam like that of Bank officers’ recruitment test or so. Be ready to answer some twisted questions like ‘Find out the first sentence of given paragraph’ instead of ‘Last sentence of Paragraph’; ‘finding out the contextual sentence’ instead of ‘out of context sentence’ in a paragraph; ‘finding the incorrect part out of 5 parts in a sentence’ instead of asking ‘correct the underlined part of the sentence’ or ‘finding the correct/incorrect sentences in a paragraph’
The basics are same and if you know the concept, if you can solve one type of question you can solve the other type too. The need is to know the topic and the process how to solve.
Aspirants, at least for CAT 2014, should prepare for different type of questions on all the old and new topics and should practice as much as possible. Please do not take it for granted that this year in CAT 2014 difficulty level will be low and questions will be on similar pattern.
Already Halfway on CAT 2014 Preparation
You are halfway on your CAT 2014 preparation journey. The need is to modify and refurbish the strategy as advised above. There is no point in getting confused at this point of preparation. So continue with the same preparation pattern with more practice questions and longer study hours.
Since there will be more questions, some more topics will be included in CAT 2014 from within the syllabus. So prepare the forgotten topics also. Go for the last 10-15 years past CAT papers, check what has not appeared for quite some time and prepare the same also.
Related links
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