CAT 2015: Dont gamble with options A, B, C, D; may drag your score down

Changed structural and content pattern of CAT 2015 with more sections and individual time constraints doesnt allow you to gamble with your MCQ answer options marking and changing them frequently. The practice will not only create more confusion, shake your confidence level in the testing room but will also pull down your scores due to high rate of negative marking says Prof S K Agarwal verbal ability expert and mentor on CAT 2015 preparation. Make sure to crack the question and mark the correct answer option before moving ahead else come back to question if time permits as more topics are waiting for you to attempt and score.

Avoid marking & remarking of answer options
Dont waste time in marking & remarking. Hit the target in the first attempt or leave the question if you think it is too difficult to attempt. If it is of your domain dont be overconfident and move with clear concept. It happens more for the calculation based or logic based questions in Quant, DI and LR sections.

Take exercises as if real CAT 2015
When you go for practice exercises or Mocks to prepare for CAT 2015, make sure that you behave as if sitting in the real testing lab and attempting CAT 2015 question paper. Number of times it so happens that you mark one of the answer options for review but due to paucity of time you are not able to go back to the particular question and despite knowing the correct answer, some confusion got set in your mind and you started gambling among the 2-3 close answer options.

Temptation kills; time more important
Once you mark C, then you change it to B and later to D and eventually you find out that the first marked answer option C was correct, this confusion and temptation to reconfirm loses the correct thread of thought to arrive at the right answer. On the top of it, the time invested to solve the question also goes waste in already time hungry exam.

The time available per question to solve in CAT 2015 is less than 2 minutes and it is a well known fact that CAT 2015 has increased number of sections from 2 to 3. The questions in CAT 2015 are not going to be of moderate difficulty level. Besides, the shape and type of questions in CAT 2015 may also be different from earlier CAT exams.

You may also expect new type of questions in the changed pattern of CAT 2015 as it happened in CAT 2006 and CAT 2012 when questions like completion of last sentence of paragraph; Picking out the Out of context sentence in a jumbled paragraph were placed before the aspirants. Lot of hue & cry was there among the CAT test takers but they had to attempt them in all sincerity.

CAT 2014 also brought big changes like increasing number of questions from 60 to 100. There was no question on vocabulary usage, finding out the last sentence of paragraph and the entire pattern was overhauled.
The situated called for maximizing the attempts and those who solved fewer questions with accuracy within the overall time frame were the winners in CAT 2014.

Be cautious; no switching among sections
The facility granted in CAT 2014 to toggle between the sections within over all time limit, stands withdrawn in CAT 2015. You have to remain stuck to one section for full 60 minutes. If you continue gambling among the answer options, the confusion will over power you and you may fall prey to one-third negative marking.

Expert advice
Most of the CAT 2015 aspirants are halfway on their preparation journey. They are now a bit confused whether to continue with the same preparation pattern or some changes to it are required. Besides what should be the new preparation strategy is another big query which needs to be addressed.

But there is no point to be scared or be afraid of CAT 2015. CAT has gone for perceptible changes during the last years and these are the CAT aspirants who have always emerged winners every year.
Since there will be MCQs and Non-MCQs, learning the topic concept well to crack the questions could be a good strategy. Some more topics may be included in CAT 2015 as against CAT 2014. So prepare the forgotten topics also. Go for the last 10-15 years past CAT papers, check what has not appeared for quite some time and prepare the same as well.

(i) Mark the answer, if you know it
(ii) Leave the question if you dont know the concept as it will involve more time
(iii) If you are able to solve 20 out of 34 accurately, you may get high percentile.
(iv) No need to attempt the unknown questions, dont even try them.
(v)Better target can be fixed with more available questions. After preparing with an open mind, it will be easier to pick more questions out of 100 questions
(vi) 1.8 minutes per question is sufficient time to solve, if we go strategically. You always prefer to solve those questions in first attempt which you can solve confidently. Number of such questions calling your attention in the first attempt may not be more than 10-12 out of 34 or 32 in each section and you may be able to solve them with an average time of 2 to 3 minutes each. No one solves all the questions, so maximize but dont get panicky.
(vii) If you stick to one difficult question changing the answer options now and then, you may remain far behind in scoring.
(viii) You have the liberty to solve more questions but dont attempt such questions as you are not able to follow. This would avoid penalty of negative marking.

CAT 2015 will happen on November 29, 2015 in 2 sessions. You still roughly have about 2 months. The preparation strategy should now be to attempt mocks and exercises, analyse them, know the errors committed and make sure that they dont recur.