CAT 2016: 'Dedicate 5 holidays to indepth Preparation'; Success tips by CAT expert on VARC Prof S K Agarwal

Add Review

MBAUniverse.com News Desk |
October 8, 2016
CAT 2016 aspirants should use the holidays to build concepts on VARC, improving reading and solving more RC passages, developing shortcuts to crack quant questions and practice on DI & LR questions
If you are seriously preparing for CAT 2016, you should utilize the 5 Dussehra holidays to boost your preparation level and dedicate them to indepth strengthening of fundamentals Prof S K Agarwal, VARC expert

With hardly 50 days remaining to CAT 2016, aspirants have got a windfall of 5 holidays beginning from this weekend. After 2nd Saturday on October 8 followed by Sunday, you have MahaNavami, Dussehra followed by Muharram. According to Prof S K Agarwal, expert on Verbal Ability and mentor on CAT 2016 preparation ‘if you are seriously preparing for CAT 2016, you should utilize the 5 Dussehra holidays to boost your preparation level and dedicate them to indepth strengthening of fundamentals.’

Your preparation during these holidays can turn into a great success story placing you in the slot of CAT toppers with high scores. CAT 2016 aspirants should use the holidays to build concepts on VARC, improving reading and solving more RC passages, developing shortcuts to crack quant questions and practice on DI & LR questions. Plan the schedule and devote the time to improve in each section. If you are a CAT 2016 aspirant, you don’t need to plan any journey till you are through your exam day on December 4.  Next 5 days can prove to be crucial to turn your slow pace of preparation into faster mode.

As you are aware that competition in CAT 2016 is going to be more intense than earlier as the registration count this year has broken past 7 years record since 2010, you need to learn and practice more than earlier. This has also been made possible by 5 days consecutive holidays. Those who can utilise these days would get better result and those who miss to utilize them well may need to burn mid night oil at the eleventh hour.

CAT 2016 registration is over with the registration count of 2.32 lakhs. The number is the clear indicator that 2.32 lakhs CAT 2016 aspirants will be in the field to compete for 20 IIMs and other top B schools. Those who go for better and steady preparation strategy will therefore get an edge. The week in hand is a good time to improve the pace of practice for CAT 2016 to get this edge.

In your buoyant mood of festivities please do not let loose the grip on your CAT 2016 preparation. The preparation must get a shot in arm during the next 5 holidays. In fact a good opportunity in the form of consecutive holidays has arrived before the CAT 2016 aspirants. Prof S K Agarwal, author and expert in Verbal Area suggests how to convert this windfall of consecutive holidays in your favour and give a push to your preparation for CAT 2016.

Strengthen your fundamentals
CAT aspirants usually remain in search of ways and means to strengthen their fundamentals of English Language. But there is always dearth of time and the problem is more acute with the working professionals who are preparing for CAT 2016. The problem is not so difficult as perceived to solve it and get to the core of the issue but it needs time to focus on understanding the concept and correlating it to the specific contextual usage.

This fact is ignored by the teacher and taught both. Even the preparation centres also go by individual problems without making it a part of comprehensive concept. The result is while aspirant solves one question with certain tip he/she gets stuck in case some twisted form of the paragraph/sentence appears before him. It is therefore the need of the hour that aspirants should understand what types of questions they can face, where they lack and what improvement in learning the fundamentals is required.

So before moving to solve different type of questions, CAT 2016 aspirants must learn certain rules on fundamentals which are required to solve different types of questions based on fundamentals of English language. The suggestion from the expert is that you should go for more and more practice of such type of questions.

While many will simply be engaged in shopping, eating and outing during the next 5 holidays,  the sincere ones will utilize them as an opportunity to make their dream of targeting top IIMs come true and will celebrate according to the true spirit of winning on Dussehra.

Plan and begin now
Please remember your focus has to be on scoring high in each section of CAT 2016. This is necessary because despite scoring 99 overall percentile you may not get call from any IIM if you do not score high sectional percentile.

According to Prof S K Agarwal, expert on Verbal Ability and mentor on CAT 2016 preparation, at the outset, you must prepare equally well in each of the 3 sections to secure your position in the 1st stage shortlisting by IIMs.

The next step, in view of the expert, is to ensure that you are well equipped to deal even with your weak areas. The best strategy to get the desired result is to pick your strong and weak areas. Then you must work regularly to further strengthen your strong topics, so that you do not miss any question on them. Simultaneously, you must focus on your weak areas and continue improving on their basics and then go for more and more practice on variety of questions.

Each section equally important
Earlier, CAT aspirants had the tendency to give less attention to sub-parts in the test section as each section had 2 sub-sections. This is not the case anymore.

In earlier CAT exams, Data Interpretation (DI) part was clubbed to Quantitative Aptitude (Quant); and Logical Reasoning (LR) was clubbed to Verbal Ability section respectively. Now both DI and LR parts have been de-clubbed and have formed a separate section.

Accordingly, many candidates did not prepare so well for DI or LR as the problem sets and question sets of DILR consume more time and the questions are tricky. CAT aspirants used to compensate these parts by attempting more questions on Quant and Verbal Ability. But now DILR section has almost same weightage as other sections in CAT have.

There is no scope to skip the questions in this section. You have to prepare well on DILR both  to get high score in CAT 2016.

Your week-end has begun
This weekend is preceded by Dussehra and Muharram both. If you are an engineering graduate, graduate in Physics or Mathematics, you may have strong aptitude to solve questions based on Quantitative Ability. Students of Arts & Literature – as a general presumption- may have better skill in spoken and written Standard English language. If you are a commerce graduate or graduate with statistics, you may have good command on Data Interpretation, Logical reasoning.

No one else but you can find out and focus your preparation on each of them. In 5 days’ time you will find that you have improved a lot and are able to switch to next level.

Seek help, if needed
Looking at the syllabus and past pattern of CAT examinations, there may be weak areas in your strong holds where you will have to study and practice more, and on the other hand there may be a few topics in your weak areas where you are strong enough and may need less revision and practice sessions for them.  Strategically, you must find out the weak areas and segregate them from the strong ones.

If you want to crack CAT-2016 for sure-you have the option of beginning with any section you like and work hard on it to get expertise in the same. Another option is to take some expert guidance –how to proceed. A good preparation centre/mentor will definitely like to find out the root cause of weakness in this case.

Improve Speed & Accuracy
For example, an aspirant, who is an engineering graduate and is a working professional, is both strong and weak at Verbal Ability. With the help of his mentor in Verbal Ability and after analysing some past year model tests, he finds that he is very good in cracking questions based on jumbled paragraphs, but very weak when it comes to sentence error corrections. The aspirant may also be weak to crack questions based on the Reading comprehension passages as he can’t follow the phrasal, idiomatic expressions in the passage and can’t understand the vocabulary of the same as well.

In case the aspirant has weak fundamentals, he may not be able to solve the jumbled paragraphs without certain short-cuts, instincts, elimination method. At the same time despite having the ability to connect the sentences logically, he will be required to begin with the strengthening of his fundamentals-and the path is supposed to be from- Grammar-Times zones understanding-Vocabulary contextual use-correct usage-to rigorous understanding and practice of Reading Comprehension passages.

How relevant is your study material?
Since all the topics are equally important and nothing can be left to chance, the right study material whether it is the self-study or mentor supported study, has to be judiciously picked up. An aspirant whether working or non-working is more tech savy and can study on-line instead of carrying the stuff with him all the time.

The on-line preparation hubs like MBAUniverse.com can be visited 24x7 and the updated questions & answers, word power, quant questions etc. can be visited for free on site.

Growing role of RC: Focus more
Questions based on Reading Comprehension passages have suddenly increased in CAT. It is expected that CAT 2016 will have 70% weightage awarded only to questions on RC passages in VARC section. While you do not know the various topics and their share of questions in Quant, DI, LR, the CAT exam makes it amply clear that there will be no compromise on increasing weightage to RC based questions.

Accordingly the preparation strategy for RC needs your due focus on continuously increasing your reading speed, accuracy, word power to understand what has been said in the passage and how to decode it. Once you do this exercise, you will be able to crack RC based questions with more ease.

It is very important that you should continue your journey with concerted efforts and making sure every topic is covered. It is also time that you begin taking full length Mocks for CAT 2016 and analysing each one of them. During next 5 days, try to take at least 3-4 Mocks if not 5. Analyse them well, note your errors and practice more on similar type of questions. Please note that CAT 2016 needs hardcore in-depth preparation, where nothing can be left to chance.

CAT 2016 is a computer based examination and the success in exam will award you with the opportunity to enter top B-schools like IIMs/FMS/IMI/IMT/MDI/SPJIMR/IITs among others. The great learning experience and fat remuneration that you receive after completion of your MBA is much more than offered by any other programme.

According to Prof S K Agarwal, expert on Verbal Ability, all the CAT 2016 aspirants who are in the serious mode of CAT preparation should prioritize their preparation topics in accordance with their routine and availability of time.

Related Article

CAT 2016: Countdown begins 60 days to go; focus on Accuracy & speed to move from 80 to 90+

CAT 2016: Learn Vedic Mathematics to improve speed; success mantra from 99.7 percentiler Dev Iyer

CAT 2016: Error correction in application form activated; 3 types of changes allowed

CAT 2016: 'Tips & tricks of no help if not practiced'; Success mantra from CAT topper Omar, NITIE student

CAT 2016: The 1 day 2 session exam reduces score normalization problem

IIM Kozhikode PGP 2017 admission criteria announced; awards 75% weightage to CAT 2016 score

CAT 2016: 'Calculator in exam a slow process, practice more'; shares Akshay Kakani, SPJIMR student

CAT 2016: Non - Engineers prime target; IIMs announce changes in PGP 2017 admission policy

Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more preparation tips and updates on CAT 2016