Crack the cat
Posted 09-27-2009 at 12:41 AM by ichkoguy
The Common Admission Test aka CAT is an annual test conducted by the INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT, to gain entry into India's most reputed and premier B-Schools. It is considered one of the trickiest papers not in India but also in the world. It tests a person on every aspect; from reasoning, to data interpretation, form English grammar to vocabulary. Now even if you clear the CAT which in itself is a herculean task, then you are grinned against group discussions and to top it all comes the interview where the final hundred is selected.
CAT is not about slogging for hours and your percentile is not proportional to the amount of hours you slogged for. MBA is all about being smart, innovative, quick, and a little cranky. It is about extracting the best with all you have! It is about mastering and then practicing very hard. It is about how well you use your resources and in a relaxed manner presenting it at the right time.
CAT exam is much diversified, it does not follow a certain pattern and always has a surprise element associated to it. The test is based upon multiple choice formats and usually has negative marking for wrong answers. The test is spread over a variety of topics basically comprising of Arithmetical problem solving, geometry, statistics, data interpretation, logical reasoning, puzzles and English language skills.
Few important topics in terms of scoring are:
Verbal ability remains the graveyard for the majority of CAT takers across the years. It doesn’t matter if you are a verbal ‘God’ or someone who has had a history of trouble with respect to verbal ability, CAT has this tendency to bring every one down to the same level. This is because CAT doesn’t look to test one’s vocabulary, except on very limited occasions and that too on a very small scale. So, the question facing everyone is how do I do well or say even well enough in this landmine of a section.
There are essentially two ways of attempting to crack this section: focus on Reading Comprehension (RC) and perform sufficiently well in , for the lack of a better name, verbal ability (VA) (consisting of paragraph completion, arranging sentences etc ) or vice versa. This division is based on the rather diverse skill sets required when solving these two varieties of questions. For being good at reading comprehension, one needs to develop an ability to quickly scan through a large piece of writing and be able to pick up the key issues while VA requires one to spend a large amount of time scrutinizing each line and its meaning.
This section can be improved quite a lot if one develops a habit of reading regularly.
The editorial column is a must for every serious MBA aspirant, though it's quite boring!
Reading magazines like front-line will help you improve your vocabulary by leaps and bounds.
Quantitative analysis: This section is highly scoring, and demands use of skimming and reading selected material. One important issue with quantitative is to read the question very carefully. This is especially true for questions which you think are very easy. For instance in a simple example where there is a relation between two variable x and y, it might be easiest to calculate the value of x and then looking at the answer sheet you will find a matching value and tick that instead of seeing that the question actually asks for y. The reason why this is said specifically with respect to quant is that when it comes to DI and verbal there is absolutely no other choice than to read the questions properly while in quant the natural reaction is to solve the problem as soon as you think you have enough data to do so.
Data interpretation: This can be a lot more fun for the aspirants with engineering background, as it demands, playing with numbers and crunching of facts. As one may be aware, the Data Interpretation section of the CAT has two parts to it: logical reasoning and data interpretation. The issue with pure DI is that it is quant heavy. It is also in a sense like reading comprehension because it tests your ability to scan through so much data to try and pick up the most important piece of data. Logical reasoning is a totally different ball game altogether. This is because unlike DI where you can get away with getting 3 questions right and 2 wrong in a set of 5 because of the independent nature of the questions, the same cannot happen in LR.
General Awareness: Now comes the section of general awareness. Usually it is most neglected and also the easiest because in this case you either know it or not. This section is to be mastered during preparation by reading articles, news and various chronicles.
The CAT does not follow any pattern, and hence any amount of preparation cannot guarantee you a seat in the coveted IIM's but can sure increase your chances of making into one. What is required is smart work and not only handwork. Have confidence in your abilities, catch a good movie before your paper and do some relaxing exercise during your preparation.
CAT is not about slogging for hours and your percentile is not proportional to the amount of hours you slogged for. MBA is all about being smart, innovative, quick, and a little cranky. It is about extracting the best with all you have! It is about mastering and then practicing very hard. It is about how well you use your resources and in a relaxed manner presenting it at the right time.
CAT exam is much diversified, it does not follow a certain pattern and always has a surprise element associated to it. The test is based upon multiple choice formats and usually has negative marking for wrong answers. The test is spread over a variety of topics basically comprising of Arithmetical problem solving, geometry, statistics, data interpretation, logical reasoning, puzzles and English language skills.
Few important topics in terms of scoring are:
Verbal ability remains the graveyard for the majority of CAT takers across the years. It doesn’t matter if you are a verbal ‘God’ or someone who has had a history of trouble with respect to verbal ability, CAT has this tendency to bring every one down to the same level. This is because CAT doesn’t look to test one’s vocabulary, except on very limited occasions and that too on a very small scale. So, the question facing everyone is how do I do well or say even well enough in this landmine of a section.
There are essentially two ways of attempting to crack this section: focus on Reading Comprehension (RC) and perform sufficiently well in , for the lack of a better name, verbal ability (VA) (consisting of paragraph completion, arranging sentences etc ) or vice versa. This division is based on the rather diverse skill sets required when solving these two varieties of questions. For being good at reading comprehension, one needs to develop an ability to quickly scan through a large piece of writing and be able to pick up the key issues while VA requires one to spend a large amount of time scrutinizing each line and its meaning.
This section can be improved quite a lot if one develops a habit of reading regularly.
The editorial column is a must for every serious MBA aspirant, though it's quite boring!
Reading magazines like front-line will help you improve your vocabulary by leaps and bounds.
Quantitative analysis: This section is highly scoring, and demands use of skimming and reading selected material. One important issue with quantitative is to read the question very carefully. This is especially true for questions which you think are very easy. For instance in a simple example where there is a relation between two variable x and y, it might be easiest to calculate the value of x and then looking at the answer sheet you will find a matching value and tick that instead of seeing that the question actually asks for y. The reason why this is said specifically with respect to quant is that when it comes to DI and verbal there is absolutely no other choice than to read the questions properly while in quant the natural reaction is to solve the problem as soon as you think you have enough data to do so.
Data interpretation: This can be a lot more fun for the aspirants with engineering background, as it demands, playing with numbers and crunching of facts. As one may be aware, the Data Interpretation section of the CAT has two parts to it: logical reasoning and data interpretation. The issue with pure DI is that it is quant heavy. It is also in a sense like reading comprehension because it tests your ability to scan through so much data to try and pick up the most important piece of data. Logical reasoning is a totally different ball game altogether. This is because unlike DI where you can get away with getting 3 questions right and 2 wrong in a set of 5 because of the independent nature of the questions, the same cannot happen in LR.
General Awareness: Now comes the section of general awareness. Usually it is most neglected and also the easiest because in this case you either know it or not. This section is to be mastered during preparation by reading articles, news and various chronicles.
The CAT does not follow any pattern, and hence any amount of preparation cannot guarantee you a seat in the coveted IIM's but can sure increase your chances of making into one. What is required is smart work and not only handwork. Have confidence in your abilities, catch a good movie before your paper and do some relaxing exercise during your preparation.
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