7 last-minute Tips and Dos & Donts for CAT that Bestselling Author and CAT Topper Arun Sharma recommend

With just a few days to go, the countdown to CAT 2023 has truly begun! MBAUniverse.com requested Arun Sharma, the Author of Bestselling CAT Prep Books by McGraw Hill and 19 times CAT qualifier (CAT 99.99 percentile), to share his last-minute tips for our readers. Here are Arun Sharma’s dos on don’ts only for MBAUniverse.com readers.

Last week to CAT by Arun Sharma
So, we are into the final phase of our preparation process and hitting the last week of the same. Typically, this is the time to start winding down your preparation – since CAT is not an exam, where last minute studies help.

A few pointers from my side about how to organize yourselves in these last few days before the CAT:

1. Stop solving new questions: It’s highly unlikely that you will do a new question in your practice now, and the same will help you do an extra question in the CAT. Will not happen. Don’t work on a wish and a prayer. Remember, the CAT is a reactive exam – and the chances of you picking up a new reaction now and that reaction coming back to you on the D-Day, is almost zero.
2. Focus on redoing all the questions you have done: This is the most important thing you can do preparation wise over the last fortnight – In Quants, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning. If you have done a fair number of questions over the past months of preparation – this process will help you re-visit each of the logics you have discovered and help you further embed each of the reactions. While solving the CAT, it is these reactions and logics, which would ultimately help you overcome the obstacles in the questions.
3. While redoing the questions, do not necessarily solve each of the questions to get to the answer: Just revisit the logic, flowchart the question and stop there –as far as you are sure that the flowchart will lead you to the answer. Do not waste time going through the calculations, for each question. If you feel you want to practice calculations, do it separately. If you redo 200-250 questions per day, you can cover around 1500+ questions in the last week.
4. Do a few section tests along with the mocks you are planning to do. Section tests help a lot in firming up your strategies and in improving your decision-making. Use them as a tool.
5. Take the pressure off yourself:  Feeling the pressure while taking the exam is always going to be counter-productive. In the exam, you just need to be in a reactive state of mind – react one step at a time to what you see on the screen in front of you. What the Pressure and the emotions brings along with them, have the effect of taking you away from the only thing that is important in the exam – the immediate next step. Emotional baggage of any sort while solving the paper will have the effect of taking you away from what you have trained yourself for.
6. Create an alternate plan of action for the next year, in case you do not get the desired CAT result. Do this before you enter the CAT exam. It will help you a lot in performing to your optimal level.
7. On D-Day, just allow your training and practice to take over. That’s what you have worked for the whole year – why on earth, would you allow anything else to interfere with you during the exam.

So, go on! Show the world what you are capable of! May the Force be with you.

Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on CAT 2023