CAT 2016 aspirants can get better motivation from past successful CAT toppers who have gone through the ordeal of rigorous preparation and have hit high sectional and overall percentile which enabled them to choose one of the top 3 IIMs. Managing all the 3 sections and scoring high percentile in each of them is not only your luck but it also involves a well planned preparation strategy keeping a balance among all the 3 sections.
CAT 2016 on the pattern of last year CAT will also have 3 sections and at this juncture the fruitful suggestions from IIM Ahmedabad student and CAT 100 percentiler can pave the way on preparation journey for the forthcoming exam leading to IIMs.
One of the CAT toppers, Pranjal Agarwal with 100 percentile in CAT 2015 who has already made his way into PGP 2016-18 batch at IIM Ahmedabad shares how he prepared and attempted each of the 3 sections in CAT exam last year.
It is not necessary that all should follow what he did while preparing for CAT, but it can guide you well about the missing links which you are not able to join and the mistakes that you should avoid during preparation.
MBAUniverse.com has brought a round of CAT toppers’ success stories for the benefit of CAT 2016 aspirants. In the series we present the suggestions shared by Pranjal Agarwal, CAT 100 percentiler how to ensure good sectional preparation.
It may be noted that Pranjal converted his admission call to all the top 3 IIMs namely IIM Ahmedabad; Bangalore and Calcutta but joined his preferred institute IIM-A.
MBAUniverse.com: RC occupies major chunk in VARC section. What do you suggest to prepare well on it?
Pranjal (CAT topper): The best way to study for the Verbal Ability section, is by reading articles in newspapers and magazines, preferably on the internet. These would help in the Reading Comprehension types of questions.
For opinionated type articles, it’s better to follow some online forums where people write their own articles. Reading articles also help in getting an idea of sentence fluency as well. For grammar, it is preferred to purchase any book with practice questions along with material of any coaching institute.
MBAUniverse.com: Questions on Data Interpretation are found tricky in CAT? How should one prepare to score high in this section?
Pranjal (CAT topper): For Data Interpretation, it is important to practice very much and the same applies to logical reasoning. Data interpretation generally has several types of questions available, and many forms of data that could be given to you, including line charts, pie charts, histograms, tables, etc. Be sure that you first are able to understand exactly what the question is asking you and then try to eliminate as many calculations as you can.
For example, if a question is asking about the growth of sales from 10 years ago to now and the options are something like 56%, 112%, 180%, 204%, then it’s not necessary to get the exact percentage answer. You can estimate to find out whether the sales were 1.5 times, a little more than double, little less than triple or a little more than triple of their previous value. If you can do this effectively, you can save a lot of time that otherwise would be spent in calculations, even if you have a calculator.
MBAUniverse.com: You scored 100 percentile in Quant. CAT 2016 aspirants without strong Quant back ground find it difficult to crack. How they can improve?
Pranjal (CAT topper): For QA, you must practice. First, try to give one of the tests, even without studying at all. Some types of questions will be natural for you and you would be able to solve them easily. Don’t waste time studying for them.
Study those concepts that evade you and then practice questions relating to those only. Then in next mock test, try to improve your score. Again, rinse and repeat. Overall, practice in each section will always help you, but also keep in mind that the actual CAT will have a time constraint, so practice with similar constraints
MBAUniverse.com: DILR is one section now. LR questions consume lot of time. What strategy you would advise to ace this section?
Pranjal (CAT topper): For Logical Reasoning, it is best advised to practice and adopt an elimination strategy in the questions. Do not try to rush to the answer. The purpose is to eliminate all the unfeasible options or combinations/sequences in a given question by using the clues given. Then, it may be possible that you can get a single correct combination/sequence or there might still be ambiguity left, depending on the information given.
The questions that follow would also only expect you to eliminate the other options. There are no shortcuts for this section; you just have to logically eliminate wrong options. The best way to improve here is by practicing to improve your speed.
If you want to score really well, you shouldn’t start by skimming over the questions and then deciding which ones are easy; your preparation should be such that you know you have to attempt all the questions. Just make sure that you have a point where you realize that a set is just taking too long to solve or that you are unable to solve it. Overall, it’s important that you solve at least 80% of the questions in each section. I had only left the 4 questions in DI and attempted all the others in the other sections.
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