Right strategy if adopted to choose and attempt the question in CAT 2016 can push up your percentile score to new heights. Last year CAT toppers with 99 and 100 percentile and studying in IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Trichy, FMS Delhi, SPJIMR share their CAT day strategy for the benefit of CAT 2016 aspirants who despite having prepared very hard are in a dilemma how to choose a question and how much time they should spend to crack it, to maximize their scores in the exam.
Finalise in 2 minutes: Saransh Garg, FMS Delhi
Saransh Garg, FMS Delhi student of MBA 2016-18 batch and 99.98 percentiler in CAT 2015 shares his strategy “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.”
Leave the set, if tricky: Pranjal IIM Ahmedabad
Pranjal Agarwal, 100 percentiler in CAT 2015 and IIM Ahmedabad student favours to move in order of the questions but advises against spending too much time on one set of questions. Suggesting the CAT 2016 aspirants not to repeat the mistake that he made, Pranjal shares “One mistake that I felt could have been critical was that I had spent too much time on the first set of the DI section. After spending about 15 minutes on it, I then went on to the rest of the section. I would advise others to not make the same mistake and leave a set if they are unable to solve it.”
Identify the questions first: Shikhar Garg IIM Trichy
Shikhar Garg IIM Trichy student of PGP 2016-18 batch and CAT 2015 topper with 98.79 percentile advises the CAT 2016 aspirants“While writing CAT, it is important to identify which questions you have to leave, so skim the questions before blindly attending it. Like for RC, choose a passage which is more of your field. Avoid choosing passages of psychology or literature”
For DILR section Shikhar suggests “First attempt 2 sets of LR so that you are on a safer side then go to DI, if you are lucky, you might jump at an easy set since DI needs more practice so start looking at patterns.”
Explaining the term, ‘Patterns’ Shikhar shares, “It means start making sense of the data just by looking at it. Some numbers are pretty obvious. And, the cases in DI are very real life so if you are arriving at an answer which is practically impossible then you are going wrong.
In his view “The only thing you need in DILR is practice since the catch is speed. The fact about DILR is that if there is no time limit, you can do all the questions. Accordingly speed will come by practice only.”
Target the last question: Shashank Heda IIM Bangalore
Shashank Heda, IIM Bangalore student of PGP 2016-18 batch and CAT 2015 topper with 99.9 percentile suggests the CAT 2016 aspirants following strategy for CAT day “The focus was not to cover each question of the section in the specified order but to reach the last question of the section by the time the duration for the section ended.”
30 seconds enough to choose a question: Divya Subramoniam SPJIMR, Mumbai
Divya Subramoniam who cracked CAT 2015 with 99.36 percentile and is a student of PGDM 2016-18 batch at SPJIMR Mumbai advises the CAT 2016 aspirants how to choose the right question in CAT exam “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.”
Divide the sectional time in 3 parts: Shekhar Kapoor, SPJIMR Mumbai
Shekhar Kapoor SPJIMR Mumbai student of PGDM 2016-18 and CAT 2015 topper with 94.98 percentile and 99.058 percentile in XAT 2016 suggests his strategy for the benefit of CAT 2016 aspirants “I divided the 60 minutes allotted to me in 3 chunks. The first chunk was of 30 minutes where I started with the first question and kept on attempting only those which I felt were sitters. I simultaneously kept on marking the questions which, though a bit lengthy, were easy to solve. At the end of 30 minutes I reached the end of the paper with all the questions to be attempted in the second chunk already marked. Then, I started attempting the marked questions spending not more than 2 minutes per question. This chunk was for 20 minutes. In the last 10 minutes, I tried to attempt at least 3 to 4 questions among the ones I had previously not marked thinking that they were difficult.”
The key tips for the CAT 2016 exam day, shared by Prof S K Agarwal, mentor on CAT 2016 preparation on how to attempt the exam is something that is needed by the CAT 2016 aspirants at this hour. According to him you should be selective on choosing the questions in CAT 2016 to maximize scores and attempts since speed and accuracy are the bye products of this selection in your effort to achieve a high percentile in CAT 2016. There is less scope of getting shortlisted and converting the call despite scoring high overall percentile but there is more scope of getting shortlisted by IIMs if you score a balanced high sectional percentile in all the 3 sections in CAT 2016 new exam pattern.
There will be 100 questions in CAT 2016 divided in 3 sections. The questions on DILR have been taken out of Quant and Verbal sections and now have formed a new section with 32 questions of different type. It also implies that CAT 2016 will require you to score equally good percentile in the 3rd section also.
With the time constraint re-introduced to solve each section individually in CAT 2016, now the scene is that you will have limited choice of selection on CAT day on December 4, and will need to judiciously pick the right question one after the other and will need to avoid wasting time.
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