CAT 2017: How did this IIM topper crack CAT in 4 months? An eye opener for CAT aspirants

Getting 99 percentile does not necessarily mean that you should study for 16 or 18 hours a day. CAT toppers studying at IIMs prefer the smart way of preparation instead of devoting more time with less output. Candidates with right preparation strategy have been able to crack CAT with 3-4 months of intensive preparation in the revised CAT exam pattern that contains 3 sections and 100 questions.

With his time bound and focused preparation plan in right direction, Amritansh Ahuja, a student of IIM Kozhikode made it a point to crack CAT with high score of 99+ with his 4 months of preparation plan. The way he prepared may not be exactly followed by all the CAT 2017 aspirants, but it could be an eye opener for those candidates who think that it is not possible to crack CAT in such a short period and get disheartened due to which they lose the race even before they begin it.

Amritansh cracked CAT exam with 99.26 percentile. He completed his B.E. in Electronics, Instrumentation and Control from Thapar University and had 17 months of work experience with TCS before joining IIM Kozhikode. His academics were also good enough to score bonus points awarded for academic profile by IIMs. Amritansh scored 86% marks in class 10; 92.4% in class 12 and 78.2% in bachelor’s degree. His CAT percentile was 99.26.

Related links:

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• CAT 2017: 5 changes in Exam Syllabus; ensure your preparation on right CAT exam pattern & topics
• How to choose amongst CAT 2017, XAT 2018, NMAT 2017, SNAP 2017, IIFT 2017
• CAT 2017: Exam pattern to benefit second timers more; may get edge in IIMs shortlist

Amritansh was shortlisted by 14 IIMs and other top B-schools like FMS Delhi, SPJIMR, MDI Gurgaon, IMT Ghaziabad, NITIE among others. He was offered admission by number of these institutes. Out of them he chose to join IIM Kozhikode.

mritansh made it a point to prepare well and crack CAT with a high score so that despite getting shortlisted by number of institutes, he could get the best one of his choice. 

Start taking Mocks in revised CAT pattern
Nothing beats the self preparation but since you need speed and accuracy it is always better to explore and find out the weak areas where you need help. This is where the role of coaching centres comes in. Instead of wasting time, Amritansh found it proper to join TIME and CL test series in revised CAT exam pattern and found that the strategy helped him improve a lot. According to him “There is a strategy in which you should attempt your CAT.”

A lot of Mock tests and their analysis brought consistent improvement in a short time. This has prompted Amritansh to inspire the future CAT aspirants with this preparation strategy. His suggestion to prepare well for CAT 2017 and to prepare in short period of 3-4 months, from the CAT topper is “Do subscribe to at least two different test series. This prepares you on difficult levels that vary with test series and institute.”

Section-wise preparation strategy

Verbal Ability: Follow conventional methods
This CAT topper preferred to prepare the Verbal Ability through conventional methods. Since the Verbal Ability area needs strong fundamentals, grammar and vocabulary base, Amritansh read a lot and gathered his vocabulary.

He studied his coaching material and gone through the vocabulary book "word power made easy" by Norman Lewis to strengthen his vocabulary.

Read the right stuff & sample questions to prepare for Verbal Ability in CAT 2017

Reading Comprehension: Start practicing from now
Reading Comprehension constitutes around 70% part of VARC section in the revised pattern of CAT exam. CAT 2017 exam pattern as announced by IIM Lucknow also follows the same pattern. Accordingly if you want to score high in VARC section in CAT 2017, you need a good command over RC passage solving skills.

The CAT topper made it a point to practice on more and more RC passages. According to Amritansh “3 Months before CAT, I was practicing 2-3 RCs a day and ensured that I was sticking to time limit of 40 mins for 3-4-5 RCs depending on RC length.”

Since there are 60 minutes allotted to solve the complete VARC section with 34 questions in CAT and no one does solve all the RC passages, getting to the level of 4 RC passages solved in 40 minutes can prove to be a good achievement. Rest 20 minutes could be devoted to Verbal Ability part and in case, there is still time, coming back to the left RC passage would be a good idea also.

Data Interpretation: Don’t bank upon on screen calculator
For the last three years, CAT exam has been providing the facility of on-screen calculator to help the test takers in calculations needed for Quant and DI questions. The facility has been extended to save time of the CAT test takers. But, most of the CAT toppers including Amritansh have found this on-screen calculator facility as more time consuming.

Since the on-screen calculator facility is also available in CAT 2017 exam, Amritansh has suggested the CAT 2017 aspirants to improve their own calculation speed especially to solve DI questions instead of depending on the on-screen calculator.

According to Amritansh “I had prepared a chart for numerical preparation. It had tables for first 25 numbers and squares and cubes of first 25 numbers. Our teachers emphasized on this. In fact most of the time during mocks I found calculator to be time consuming. Hence I depended on my own calculations.”

Prepare for Data Interpretation - the rightway

Logical Reasoning: Start practicing all peculiar questions
The best way to prepare for Logical Reasoning (LR) is the more and more practice. If the CAT 2017 aspirants practice more LR problems, analyse the errors and take note not to repeat them, they would be able to have indepth understanding of this section.

Amritansh had a good teacher on LR at his institute and thus his notes helped him there. Besides, the workshops on Logical Reasoning were conducted towards the end which helped him much in this section. Amritansh always took notes of peculiar questions and had always practiced with time limit, which helped the topper to crack CAT within shorter preparation period.

Quantitative Ability
One of the key preparation tips to prepare for Quant in CAT 2017 shared by CAT topper is to take notes of basic formulae and theory. This really helps in picking new topics easily. You need to Practise as many questions as possible and attempt a lot of mocks to increase on speed.

Key topics and preparation tips for Quant
Pranjul Gupta and Vishesh Patni 100 percentilers in CAT recommend self study with need based coaching ‘coaching can help save your time on topics and questions where you are stuck’. Both of them made sure to go for serious self-study apart from joining need based coaching classes. The message is to go for self-study plan. Both advise the CAT aspirants that they should remain unbiased and must aim to crack around 85 questions with accuracy in CAT exam.

CAT 2017 Important dates:

Although there are still 3 months left for CAT 2017 exam day which will be held on November 26, 2017 in two separate sessions, now you need a deep and smart study pattern that will help you to crack CAT 2017. However, before embarking on the self-preparation journey for CAT 2017, you need to know how to begin? What stuff to read? Where to get the preparation material? How to check the preparation level along with other factors.

Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on CAT 2017

See Also:

• CAT 2017 Preparation: How to move from 75 to 95 and get IIM-A, B, C - toppers show the way
• “Online XAT 2018 format to remain the same” - Fr. Antony Uvari, S J. XAT convener and XLRI  faculty
• CAT 2017: 5 changes in Exam Syllabus; ensure your preparation on right CAT exam pattern & topics