CAT 2014: Drop the irrelevant elements; know how to start attempting the exam & give your best shot

Updated on November 21, 2014

For their Nov 22 exam, the CAT 2014 test takers are armed with the trend and experience of first day test

The learning lesson from the first day session goes far enough to decide judiciously how to begin the exam while dropping irrelevant elements in the test and score a high percentile

CAT 2014 second day exam will be held on Nov 22, 2014 in 2 sessions morning and afternoon. The morning session tomorrow begins at 9.30AM and afternoon session is to begin at 3 PM. For each allotted session the CAT 2014 test taker is supposed to report at the CAT 2014 examination centre 2 hours before the beginning of the test.

The test takers are geared up and are ready to take the bull by the horns. For their Nov 22 exam, the CAT 2014 test takers are armed with the trend and experience of first day test shared by the test takers, experts and mentors who have analysed the CAT 2014 new exam pattern, examination trend, problems in time management, type of questions, avoidable mistakes during the exam in choosing the right type of question and in using the navigation tools.

The learning lesson from the first day session goes far enough to decide judiciously how to begin the exam while dropping irrelevant elements in the test and score a high percentile. Prof S K Agarwal, verbal ability expert and mentor on CAT preparation shares insight on such issues and guides the prospective CAT 2014 test takers how to begin their attempts in the testing room on November 22, 2014.

Shed your greed

Candidates are going to face 100 questions on different important topics on Nov 22, 2014 in CAT 2014 second day exam. If attempted cautiously, out of 50 questions in each section the test taker can attempt not less than 30-35 questions with high accuracy level. This could fetch a percentile around 95 to 99. 2 important pre-conditions however apply to achieve this goal. The first one is that you must have gone through a good level of preparation and the second one is that you are not greedy nor get tempted to attempt more and more questions with less accuracy.

Get ready for the test

Once you are at your seat in the examination room, you may not be allowed to go outside for next 3 hours. No water is served inside the testing room. Please therefore have a glass of water; go to the wash room and then occupy your seat in the testing room. This will help you to concentrate on your test better. You are supposed to remain calm and focused and should follow each and every instruction and direction that comes to your screen.

Before the 10 minutes of actual beginning of the test, you will be required to login to the CAT 2014 test and a host of instructions will be available on the screen. Please go through them for quite a while, understand it well as they are the guidelines to attempt the exam.

Exam to begin on time

Your exam would begin on time. There were no technical glitches on the first day of CAT 2014 nor they are expected on its second day on Nov 22, 2014. Nevertheless whatever tit-bits might have remained to be removed, IIMs and testing agency TCS must have further filtered and fine tuned the system by now.

Please therefore be prepared to begin right at 9.30AM or 3PM as the case may be, without wasting a single minute.

Plan exam room strategy

In fact this is the most critical problem. With the number of do’s and don’ts available we forget our own self and try to follow the system devised by others. This ultimately moves us away from the best that we could have put in. It will therefore be better to devise your own plan to begin the exam and how to conclude it within the given time frame. Following tips may help you and can be included in your exam room strategy devised for tomorrow

→ Begin with the preferred section. If you are better in Quant begin with it, if more comfortable with Verbal begin with it. No time constraint

→ The most easy, the most preferred should be the beginning strategy to CAT 2014 test on Nov 22, 2014. From both the sections, your beginning shot must cover only those questions which you can solve with 100 percent accuracy.

→ ‘Mark for review’ the difficult and lengthy questions. Such questions may not be attempted till you have attempted all other doable questions. If time permits you may come back to them later.

→ Slightest doubt on an answered question should be marked for review also. Even if you have answered a question but have some doubt about the selected answer option, you may answer the question and also ‘mark it for review’ so that you may review it later. Even if you do not get time to review it later, the answer that you have marked with 90 percent accuracy will be evaluated.

→ Avoid scanning the entire test again and again. The facility to scan the entire CAT 2014 test paper has been provided by the CAT Centre 2014 simply by clicking on ‘Question paper’ button on the bottom right hand corner of the test screen. You will be wasting time, if you are doing so. Focus only on those questions that you are going to solve and then move on to next question.

→ Don’t take a question as a challenge. You sure can accept a challenge and complete it but leave it for your career assignments. In CAT 2014 exam, accepting such a challenge means wasting your time which you could utilize to score more by solving more relevant questions from your preferred domain instead of devoting time on one that too, when every correct answer will award you equal marks.

→ Balance between the sections as sectional cut off still exists in CAT 2014 although sectional time constraint is gone. You need to solve good number of questions from both the sections. You may be very good on Quant or Verbal but it is in your interest to divide the attempts between both the sections.

→ Stop before a few minutes before the completion time to CAT 2014 exam and check the questions marked for review. You have already read and understood them. If you can crack a few of them, your score will go up.

Manage time, speed and accuracy

The time to solve a question in CAT 2014 is less than earlier CAT exams. You may not be able to solve too many questions. So focus on limited number and maximize your attempts in both the sections accordingly. It may not be necessary that you can equally divide the time of 85 minutes in both sections but it will also not be a good decision to spend 75% time on one section and 25% time on other section and lose the race.

Attempting fewer questions with 100% accuracy is better than more questions with 80-90% accuracy.

Expected questions in Verbal Ability and LR

Prof S K Agarwal, Verbal Ability expert and mentor on CAT preparation expects following number and types of questions on different topics in Verbal Ability section in CAT 2014 second day test on Nov 22, 2014

Reading comprehension: 3-4 passages of 700-800 words, not very difficult followed by 4 questions each with close answer options.

Error corrections: 4-5 questions on correction of errors based on Grammar and tenses. The questions would be in the form of a paragraph containing 5 sentences marked A,B,C,D, E. Candidates would be asked to pick out the correct or incorrect sentences out of the paragraph.

Odd man out (Out of context sentence): On the same pattern as appeared in CAT 2012 and 2013 with the questions to pick the ‘out of context’ sentences in a jumbled paragraph, CAT 2014 asked the questions on the first day of CAT exam. Now it is named to pick the ‘off man out’ in the jumbled paragraph. You may expect 3 such questions on Nov 22, 2014.

Jumbled paragraphs- 3 questions to put the randomly placed jumbled sentences in coherent order are supposed to appear in CAT 2014 on Nov 22, 2014.

Short paragraphs- 3 questions on 3 short paragraphs of 50-60 words to pick out the correct option that best describes the summary of the paragraph are expected on Nov 22, 2014.

FIJ Questions- On Nov 16, 2014 on first day of CAT 2014, 2 short paragraphs appeared followed by one question each asking what could be inferred from the paragraph. On Nov 22, it can slightly take a different shape with the inclusion of 4 statements asking to categorize them whether they are Fact, Inference or Judgement statements.

Logical Reasoning- 16 questions would follow the 4 sets of Logical reasoning problems. The expected source topics are team formation, Blood relations, arrangements, statements-assumptions, Direction sense.

Prof S K Agarwal suggests not to cram and overstrain your mind. There are number of short and easy questions in a large pool of 100 questions in CAT 2014 exam. Prefer to attempt them first and leave the seemingly difficult and lengthy questions for later part. Since DI-LR have no separate entity and the questions on both the topics are clubbed to Quant and Verbal Ability sections respectively, the test taker attempting more from Quant or from DI part in the first section and from Verbal or LR part in the second section will bear no difference so far as sectional weightage is concerned. The right strategy should be to choose the right type of questions that you can solve quickly.