CAT 2016 D-day on December 4, needs a well devised strategy to crack the exam with high score. This is more important after putting in many months of preparation as all depends on the 3 hours of your testing duration. CAT toppers at FMS Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, SPJIMR Mumbai followed their own but distinct strategy on CAT day and came out with flying colours.
Sharing their success mantra for the CAT day and suggesting the ways and means to crack CAT 2016 with high score, all the CAT toppers are unanimous on one point that you should remain cool and calm throughout the 3 hours of CAT 2016 testing time.
In the next 15 days of your preparation for CAT 2016, you could turn your cherished dream of getting into IIM A, B, C or L into reality, if you begin utilizing judiciously your time and develop shortcuts to solve the different type of 100 questions divided in 3 sections.
CAT 2016 with an overhauled exam pattern is no doubt a great challenge for the IIM aspirants. But the no penalty Non-MCQ type of questions are also a great relief to CAT aspirants.
CAT toppers and IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, FMS, SPJIMR students while sharing their CAT day strategy impress upon the aspirants to understand and follow the key changes in exam pattern while finalising their D-day plan. According to Prof S K Agarwal expert on Verbal Ability and Mentor on CAT 2016 preparation, it is very difficult to choose the most appropriate answer, unless you know well how to solve the question. For next 15 days in CAT 2016 preparation journey, the role of time management combined with speed and accuracy without which you may not be able to solve either the MCQs or Non-MCQs is very important.
Another key point to note for CAT 2016 day is that you will not be allowed to switch from one section to other within over all time limit of 3 hours, till the allotted time of 60 minutes to one section is over, so you need to manage the sectional time alongwith overall test day strategy.
Find new & faster ways: Abhay Agarwal, FMS Delhi
How you should get ready and devise your strategy for CAT day? Sharing the suggested strategy Abhay Agarwal CAT 99.99 percentiler and FMS Delhi student of MBA 2016-18 batch advises “A Candidate needs to analyse his/her performance very deeply as he can find his strengths and weaknesses in that analysis. Identify your weaknesses and never repeat them again. Learn from your mistakes. Find new and faster ways to solve those questions which consumed most of your time. Apart from this, there can be n number of problems specific to each candidate and answer to all those problems lies in that analysis.”
Kill nervousness & Impatience: Saransh Garg, FMS Delhi
Saransh Garg cracked CAT 2015 with 99.98 percentile and has high sectional percentile scores. In DILR section Saransh scored perfect 100 percentile; in Quant-99.84 and in VARC - 90.76. His suggestion for CAT 2016 test day strategy comes with his own experience. Saransh advises “My strategy was to kill any kind of nervousness or impatience involved by giving mocks so that it feels normal on the Judgement Day.”
Sharing his own example on attempting the DILR question sets, he further suggests “There are 8 sets of DILR and you get 60 minutes to solve them. So, I focussed on not spending more than 7-8 minutes on a single set.”
Responding to the query - what strategy he planned for CAT day, Saransh shares “My plan to take CAT was to attempt as many questions as possible (I attempted 92-93) and not getting stuck on a question for more that 2 minutes. While there was a 15-minute wait for the paper to start, I was singing “waving flag” in my head to remain calm and motivated.”
Don’t skim over: Pranjal Agarwal IIM Ahmedabad
Student of PGP 2016-18 batch at IIM Ahmedabad and 100 percentiler in CAT 2015, Pranjal Agarwal advises the CAT 2016 aspirants not to skim over the questions first and then decide which one to attempt. Instead they should follow the sequence.
Sharing his CAT day strategy, Pranjal says “I knew that I would have to attempt all questions anyway, so I started by going in sequential order only. I also decided that even if I wasn’t able to solve all the questions, I would have attempted them all, because there is a +3/-1 policy which results in a break-even score for random attempts. For questions with answer inputs, there is no negative marking.”
Advising the CAT 2016 aspirants for the D-day, the topper suggests “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.”
Manage Time & Accuracy: Ananth Radhakrishnan IIM Bangalore
Ananth Radhakrishnan, IIM Bangalore student of PGP 2016-18 scored 99.85 in CAT 2015. Suggesting that CAT is not a difficult paper, he shares a well planned strategy for CAT day “CAT is not a difficult paper inherently in terms of the topics covered, rather because of the time limit in which you have to complete it coupled with the dire need of accuracy while doing so. Make sure to arrive early to the venue, and get enough sleep and rest the night before. And I really can’t emphasise it enough, there is no need to panic.”
On the question how to approach the exam, Ananth suggests “In terms of how to actually approach the exam, the kind of strategy you use would solely depend on what you are comfortable with. Also, last-minute preparation would be only mocks over the last 2-3 weeks. Do not bother yourself too much with anything on the last night.”
Revise Formulae for CAT day: Nishant Gupta IIM Bangalore
Nishant Gupta who cracked CAT in first attempt with 99.97 percentile is a B.A. in Economics. He is pursuing PGP 2016-18 at IIM Bangalore. His focus was to maximise the attempts after gearing up for the CAT day with all the revision and practice complete.
Sharing the D-day strategy for CAT 2016 aspirants, Nishant suggests “My strategy was to ensure maximum attempts in VA, and aim for accuracy in DILR and VA. I did not do much last minute prep, just looked at previous year CAT papers and revised quant formulae. Formulae are also important as CAT 2015 had formula based questions as well.”
Save time, attempt TITA first: Harshit Goswami, IIM Udaipur
With no choice to move freely between the sections, Harshit Goswami with 98.01 percentile in CAT 2015 and IIM Udaipur student found it proper to attempt non-MCQs first. Harshit also scored high sectional percentile with 99.09 in Quant; 93.54 in VARC and 88.78 in DILR. Sharing the CAT day strategy, he suggests “Since the freedom to navigate through different sections was curbed in CAT-2015, there was nothing much as a choice to begin with. I targeted TITA - Type in the Answer questions first as they did not have any negative marking and were doable in less time and this left enough time for RCs.”
Utilize new changes: Divya Subramoniam, SPJIMR
SPJIMR Mumbai student Divya Subramoniam with 99.36 percentile in CAT 2015 advises the CAT 2016 aspirants to utilize the new changes in CAT for their benefit. According to Divya “The new changes are really beneficial as there is fixed time allotted to each section, and this avoids any chance of spending all our time on one section, and scoring low on the other. Also, even though the Quantitative section has been made simpler, the Data Interpretation and Logical reasoning questions were quite thought-provoking, and required one to be thorough with the quant concepts.”
Divya suggests not to use online calculator as it is not much beneficial without sufficient practice. She advises “The online calculator, however, is not beneficial, unless the aspirant has enough practice. Without practice, it takes up a lot of our precious time during the exam.”
Sharing her own CAT testing room strategy, she suggests “My strategy during the CAT exam was not to concentrate on the timer too much. Too much concentration on the timer can cause panic which results in carelessness. I kept track of the time, but did not let it bother me.
If I did not understand how to approach a question in 25-30 seconds, I made sure not to spend more time on it. Systematically working through the questions one by one, and carefully reading each question, helped me reduce mistakes.”
Develop Shortcuts: improve speed
Shortcut is an approach to solve the question and arrive at the right answer option faster than the conventional method of applying formula and moving on step by step. However conceptual clarity on the topic is very much needed, otherwise you will end up either opting for an incorrect answer option or writing a wrong answer on the computer screen for a Non-MCQ, suggests Prof S K Agarwal mentor on CAT 2016 preparation.
Please remember you need to have a good speed combined with high level of accuracy to arrive at the right answer. In the process you have to coordinate with time factor also. Less than 2 minutes per question to solve in CAT 2016 that too with one-third negative marking means that you have to score higher in comparison to other candidates to get shortlisted by top rated IIMs in 2017. Longer the process to solve a question, fewer will be your attempted questions and lesser will be your score, which may not get you required high sectional percentile.
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