CAT Exam Experience

Okay. So writing this article is quite tricky for me. Anyway, I will try to write as clearly as possible about my preparation. I will divide my article into 3 phases:

• The Opening Strategy (First 2 months)
• The Middle Gamelockdown Strategy
• The Endgame Strategy (Last 1 month)

Game

I started my preparation around the end of May. So I got around 5 months to prepare for CAT. To be honest, I was sure not to take any coaching and was determined to take the preparation journey independently. I already bought TIME PDFs, but courtesy of lockdown, everything was in the hostel, and I was stuck at home without any preparation material.

The Opening Strategy

I started by giving a few open sectional tests to familiarize myself with the kind of questions asked, the difficulty level, and which area needed more time than the others. I found that

QA is my strongest area, and I was very confident about it.

LRDI is too much inconsistent.

VARC is the worst. No clue about how to prepare it.

As I started my preparation, I felt that I am wasting too much time searching for content as I did not have any preparation material with me, and I also had other vital commitments at that time. So I did some research and got myself enrolled in Unacademy.

Time management: I prepared for such competitive exams before. Trust me, it becomes easy when you have a schedule to follow. But it is important not to make an absurd schedule or target. So my next step was to follow a weekly schedule. I used to set targets on a weekly basis and at the end of the week, a self-test to benchmark my performance.

It is important to prioritize things. You cannot have more than 24hrs in a day. Hence, you need to compromise some things to give more time to other things. Like, someday you may have to compromise your college studies, some other day you may have to compromise your CAT studies or some day you have to compromise your entertainment.

The Middle-game strategy

So my average day started with solving 2 RCs and about 3–4 PJs or Para summary. I was not following as such anything for VARC. So it was important for me to keep practicing it regularly. I did QA and LRDI on alternate days. On a QA day, I solved about 60–80+ questions, and on LRDI day 6-8 sets apart from the live classes at unacademy.

Practice material:

I solved QA from TIME PDFs (thanks to a friend who used to send me pictures of the entire exercise of the chapter I wanted) and CL class sheets provided by the educator I followed. Apart from these, I solved Past year AIMCATs (of about 2yrs).

For LRDI, only PYQs and past year mocks (AIMCATs and SIMCATs)

For VARC, again PYQs and past year AIMCATs

Mock Test: Mock tests are the most important part of the preparation. I bought AIMCATs. I used the mock tests to devise my strategies for the exam and mark my weak areas. Analyzing the mocks is also equally important. Maintain a record of your performance in mocks.

There were many instances when I did not perform well in mocks. Do not take mocks too seriously and get disheartened if you not score good. Take it as a practice source and use them to plan for the D-Day.

The Endgame Strategy

There are only 1.5 months left for the D-Day. I was well on course with my preparation and was satisfied with it. Suddenly, there was some issue, and I lost my entire momentum. For almost 1 month, I did not study for CAT as well as I expected. Ideally, I should have given more mocks during this time and utilize the time for revision purposes.

Anyway, I was anxious when about 15 days were left. I started attempting mocks almost daily and analyzing them. After a few mocks, I came into my groove. Sadly, I was not able to revise anything.

Epilogue

On the D-Day, I screwed up LRDI big time but VARC rescued me. QA was always my forte. Fortunately, I managed to score a decent percentile.

I appeared for the interviews. I took admission at IIM Ahmedabad PGP 2021–23 batch.