CAT 2016: 7 point action plan to get into 90+ percentile zone from 50 percentile in Quant; expert guidance

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MBAUniverse.com News Desk |
August 24, 2016
CAT 2016 preparation expert and IIM Lucknow alumnus Prof Nishit Sinha advises the aspirants to understand first what common mistakes students make while preparing for CAT Quantitative Aptitude
Knowing the concept is important but more important part is to know where you can use a concept and what are the limitations Prof Nishit Sinha

CAT 2016 preparation expert  and IIM Lucknow alumnus Prof Nishit Sinha author of titles on QA, LRDI and VARC, widely published by Pearson, shares the first and foremost advice to aspirants that they should understand what common mistakes students make while preparing for CAT Quantitative Aptitude. The next step is how to get rid of them and move up in scoring higher percentile.

5 mistakes while preparing Quant for CAT; avoid them

-- Believing more in Quantity of questions rather than quality of the questions. If you cannot learn, say, Geometry after solving 100 questions, chances are very less that you will have confidence in Geometry even after solving 1000 questions.

-- Starting with the objective of ‘finishing’ a chapter than deriving the learning out of it.

-- Going through the solutions without attempting the questions

-- “Reading” QA chapters like a Novel. Not carrying pen and paper before opening the book.

-- Practicing the questions —-> Not being able to solve the questions —->Let us go through the solution. Instead, attempt the question again after a day. What happens is - we get in a particular frame of mind while attempting the question, and are unable to think fresh

7 point Action Plan to score high
Now, once you know the mistakes while learning QA, Prof Nishit Sinha advises following action plan to get into 90+ percentile:

Work upon fundamentals
Knowing the concept is important but more important part is to know where you can use a concept and what the limitations are For example - What will be the LCM of 10, 20 and minus 30? Or, Can I call (-2) (minus 2) an even integer? Can I use unitary method in directly proportional relations or inversely proportions relations?

Conceptual clarity
Once you have acquired fundamental knowledge of a concept, next question should be: Do you have conceptual clarity?

For example, if 2 and 3 are the roots of a quadratic equation ax2 + bx + c = 0, what is the value of (a+b+c) ?

Answer is - cannot be determined uniquely.

Silly mistakes
Now, you have your fundamentals clear, and believe that you have conceptual clarity too. But there is another problem and that is of Silly mistakes.  On an average, how many questions do you get wrong because you read 'must' at the place of 'can'? Many a time, we skip the words, and that results in error.

Wrong assumptions
You went ahead with only one set of values to check your answer, without realizing that there could be another possibility. For example, if length of a rectangle is increased by 20%, and breadth is increased by 10%, what is the percentage change in perimeter?

Did you get 15% or 16.66%? 

Answer is - cannot be determined because percentage is not a function of addition or subtraction. Perimeter has a plus sign in it.

Practice is the key
Once you have taken care of the above points, then comes the need of Practice. This one is most significant after the above points. Remember that even Tendulkar used to go for a net practice before every match. Its not that he was not aware of a batting type, but practice keeps you alert.

Choose variety of questions
Practice upon Quality Questions which are NON-REPETITIVE in nature. In my experience of training students for almost 15 years now, many a time I have met students who say that "Sir, I have solved 500 questions in Number System", but still I am not confident. I simply ask them, how many types of questions will be there in those 500 questions? And answer comes as 20, 25 types. NOTE that if this is the case, then you have attempted ONLY 25 questions or may be 50 questions and CERTAINLY not 500 questions.

While practicing, keep in mind that questions should not be repetitive - both in the terms of type of question and level of difficulty.

Coverage of the topics
At the end, do not leave any topic. You still have almost 100 days to go for CAT which is sufficient to go through and learn all the topics. You have time on your side.

CAT 2016 is the mandatory exam for admission to flagship Management programmes at 20 IIMs and other top B-schools like FMS, SPJIMR, IMI, IMT, MDI, NITIE among others. Registration and application process for CAT 2016 is open till September 22. CAT 2016 will be held on December 4, 2016 as computer based exam in 2 sessions in 138 cities across the county. Apart from high over all scores, candidates need to score high in each of the 3 sections to qualify the minimum criteria prescribed by IIMs.

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