CAT preparation: From a negative score in mocks to 97.30 in CAT -By Sagar Vazirani from MDI Gurgaon

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I dedicated somewhere around 6 months to CAT preparation. I left my full-time job at KPMG India before starting my preparation and started working in my family business. I took offline coaching from IMS Delhi and it certainly helped me get a good grasp of the basic concepts. For someone like me, who started with a negative percentile in DILR and QA in the first mock, the concept classes were definitely helpful. 

Fact I had already taken CAT twice before my latest attempt, and it took a lot of effort to motivate myself to go through that grind again. As, I said before, this time I had left my job to give myself a good shot at cracking a top 10 B-School, and this also led to added pressure. 

However, as I eased into my preparation schedule, that fear slowly turned into excitement and I started enjoying the whole journey of ups and downs. The process of getting what you want might look impossible but take each day as it comes and does not give up. Irrespective of how things work out, you will be a different person by the end of it. In the end, what matters is the kind of person you choose to become after this topsy-turvy ride.

Your CAT score lies at the heart of your strategy

Since I had taken a few entrance tests before starting my preparation I had a pretty decent understanding of my strengths and weaknesses. I was very clear with my strategy that for me to get even close to my target percentile, I had to get a 98+ in verbal.

As far as my CAT preparation strategy is concerned, I devoted almost equal time to all three sections. Also, I used to prepare with a strategy which I used to call ‘90%+ score’ even on my worst day scenario. That basically translates into the fact I have to make sure I cross the 90th percentile barrier even if I focused only on my strengths.

The first and foremost resources for CAT preparation

Here are the resources that helped me through my entire CAT journey:

• For the basic concepts, I used the BRMs provided by IMS.
• I would highly recommend taking a combination of IMS + TIME Mocks for thorough preparation.
• For Verbal Ability, VARC sectional mocks by Cracku and IMS CAT Maximiser workshops were of great help.
• For DILR, along with IMS CAT Maximiser workshops, the Elites - Grid DILR Playlist proved beneficial.

The game plan for honing the three sections

VARC: I was never really fond of reading fiction books. The only book I have ever read in my life is Chetan Bhagat’s ‘One Night @ the call center’ which would give you a fairly decent idea of that fact. However, since I had the habit of reading newspapers, that somehow helped me skim through the long RC passages. My preparation strategy for VARC was taking as many sectional mocks as I could and analyzing each and every mock thoroughly. 

DILR: A section that makes everyone break into a sweat. It’s easy to get hold of this section, once you realize that you don’t have to score a lot, but a bit more than a lot of others. 

Selection is the key. Practicing DILR questions with the primary aim of honing one’s question-selection skills holds paramount importance! Keeping this in mind, I’d sincerely advise everyone to develop a knack for deciding, within 2-3 minutes, whether to even devote time and effort to a particular caselet or not. 

QA: The only broad topics I had covered in QA were Arithmetic and Modern Maths, so for a person like me, I somehow knew that I would have to maintain a very high accuracy to get close to my target percentile. Again, I will emphasize the fact that this is not even close to the ideal strategy for the quantitative section, however since I knew that the range of questions I could attempt was very limited, all these gave me a chance to devote my time to a specific set of 18-19 questions.

A word of advice

If there is one last piece of advice that I could give to any MBA aspirant out there it would be to stay up-to-date with what is happening around the world. I believe that general knowledge is perhaps the single most necessary thing in life. Following are some of the sources I use for the same:

• Mint newspaper
• The Print-Cut the Clutter series
• Study IQ Current Affairs (YouTube playlist)

Another piece of advice I have for all future aspirants is to take as many entrance exams as possible before CAT. The fact I had taken around 12-13 entrance exams before appearing for CAT, really helped me get through the test day rituals. Following are some of the entrances I took before appearing for CAT:

• NABARD 
• RBI GRADE A
• MAT
• NMAT 
• SBI PO

Verdict: I got calls from MDI, XLRI ( HRM ), IIM Shillong, CAP IIMs, IMT, IMI, IIT Madras, NMIMS and I converted MDI, CAP IIMs, IMT, IMI, IIT, and NMIMS. I will be joining MDI Gurgaon.

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