How to score 100 percentile in CAT -By Somansh Chordia from IIT Bombay
Meet Somansh Chordia, a graduate from IIT Bombay and one of the top 10 CAT 2019 toppers who made it to the 100 percentiler club. He scored a percentile of 99.93 in VARC, 99.88 in LRDI, and 99.98 in QA. Let’s unfurl his winning strategy on how to score 100 percentile in CAT this year.
CAT 2019 was a battle of 2.44 lakh applicants roughly for 4000 seats of IIMs. And in this battle of hard work and intelligence, only a handful of 10 candidates successfully registered their names in the list of overall 100 percentilers in CAT 2019. So, an eminent part of joining an IIM or other premiere B-School is to be among the top rankers of the CAT entrance exam, and for that good preparation is the key. Let’s keep our racing thoughts and confusion aside, and make the best out of the remaining 6 months to bell the CAT with smart preparation.
If you want to score 100 percentile in CAT just like Somansh did, then keep these tips in mind while preparing for the exam:
- First things first, always make sure you're motivated and on your toes to run the extra mile to achieve your dream. Figure out why you want to do an MBA and let it drive you to score 100 percentile in CAT.
- Have a thorough understanding of the exam pattern and its syllabus detailing all the 3 sections.
- Analyze your strengths and weaknesses by practising sectionals. Maintain a balance of practising your stronger and weaker sections and observe the pattern of repeated mistakes.
- As time progress, increase your capacity of giving mocks and solving previous year CAT papers.
- Mere attempting mocks is not enough, analyzing it thereafter will give you the real benefits.
- While analyzing mocks focus on devising the pattern that enables you to score maximum in 3 hours. It can be:
1. Solving questions chronologically
2. Attempting the easier ones first
- To unwind your stress, pick up a light read. This will also prepare you for VARC by increasing your reading speed, bringing up new vocabulary, and making you familiar with different genres.
Section-wise tips to practice questions
Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension
- Develop a defined perspective for attempting passage questions which can be achieved by practicing RCs daily
- Use the trick of elimination. Generally, there are 2 options that can be eliminated easily. So, for figuring the correct option of the remaining two, solve ‘n’ number of questions on the same topic to crack the pattern and easily select the right option.
- While attempting questions, one can
- First, read the passage and then attempt questions
- Read all the questions first, memorize what is asked and then read the passage
- Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph of the passage to get an idea of what each passage talks about and then attempt questions.
Quantitative Aptitude
- Even if the questions in the quant section majorly cover the basics of 8th and 10th standard, go through the fundamentals once again.
- For topics like Simple Interest, Compound Interest, Arithmetic Progression hop onto learning the formulas.
- Instead of only focusing on Geometry and Mensuration as suggested by most of the mentors, practice other sections equally because, in CAT 2019, majority of questions involved simple equations.
- Give sectionals, and observe which questions you need to practice more in order to save time. Keep a regular tab on your progress and shift your focus on practising another weak area.
- On average, most students find time as a constraint in solving the questions. Setting up a weekly target can help you scale up the number of attempts
Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation
- No topic should be left untouched while preparing for LRDI as most sets consist of a combination of topics
- Through mocks and sectionals, evaluate whether you are more comfortable with graphs and charts or solving puzzles based on conditions. Accordingly, attempt those sets first.
- Previous year question papers, sectionals, mocks and topic-wise tests are enough to prepare this section.
A few Don'ts:
- Do NOT assume mock percentiles as your CAT percentile. They are just a means of reflecting your strategy.
- Do NOT compare your mock score with your peers, set benchmarks based on your own performance.
- Do NOT panic, if your performance deteriorates in some mocks or even in your final mock before CAT.
“CAT is an easy exam, it is the competition that makes it tough. Practice is the key to success” - Somansh
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