Best Way To Prepare For CAT While Juggling Placements And College Exams- By Roshan Kumar, 99.8 percentile CAT 2019

Hope is a thing with feathers- it stays and motivates you to do better in your life. Such is the story of Roshan Kumar, a B.tech student who met with a gruesome accident when he had his placements and college exams all lined up. This pushed Roshan to work religiously on CAT exam preparation and he cleared it on his first attempt. This was his backup plan though, and he did not join any B-school even after getting calls from multiple IIMs. Roshan chose to gain some work experience before pursing an MBA. Interesting right? Let's take a look at his jounrey.  

It was January 2019 and I was in my 5th semester of B.tech. This was the time when I was recovering from a major accident that I had six months back. I had lost touch with my studies in general and specifically coding. I was really skeptical about whether I will be able to ace through the placement process to my dream tech companies and this made me decide to get started on CAT exam preparation. As a backup option. 

Time Management- CAT Exam Preparation, Campus Placements & College Exams

So basically, I had to manage three things simultaneously, i.e., my preparation for college placements, college exams, and CAT exam preparations. Thus, time constraint was always an issue for me.

I began by taking my first mock test without any preparations in advance which gave me a real understanding of where I stood, what CAT was all about, and what kind of questions are generally asked. It gave me a clear picture that my Quant and LRDI sections were good enough but VARC was below average. I realized that the best way to prepare for CAT would be to manage my time according to my strengths and weaknesses and execute them well.

Best Way To Prepare For CAT- A Strategy For Every Section

My VARC section was not strong enough so I kept on reading articles from websites like AeonEssays and editorials of The Hindu. I never ran away from my weaknesses, rather I faced them and worked even harder to improve them by taking many sectional tests. I consistently did this for over five months which helped me improve my pace and interpret the articles easily.

For LRDI, I kept on solving different sets on each possible topic. After attempting many sectional mocks of LRDI, the final strategy I came up with was that I had to target just 4 or 5 sets out of 8. Let's suppose if you select 4 sets out of 8, you will get 15 minutes to solve each set and this time is actually enough to solve any given set. Moreover, if you are able to correctly attempt all questions of the 4 or 5 sets that you've targeted, it shall surely fetch you a 99+ percentile in this section. 

Quant was my strongest section and the strategy that I developed over time was that I will do the entire section in 3 rounds. In the first round, I will answer all those questions which are comparatively easy and less time-consuming. In this round, I was able to solve 10- 15 questions. In the 2nd round, I planned to solve the questions that did not take much time. In this round, I was able to solve 8-10 questions. And if I had still more time left with me, then I planned to go ahead with the other questions as well.

Change Of Plans- Success Necessitates Sacrifice

June arrived and I had an abrupt and shattering thought, “What if I'm not able to clear CAT? What is my backup plan then?” And so at that time, I decided to shift focus mainly on my placements. But to build on my CAT exam preparation and maintain my pace, I used to take full-length mock tests.

Fortunately, I got placed in mid-August and from then on, I stopped preparing for the management entrance. I no longer wanted to pursue an MBA at the very moment as a fresher and thought to join it after a few years of gaining some work experience.

It was the morning of 24th November and my father told me, "Since you've already filled the form for CAT, why don't you just give the exam?" I agreed to this and wrote the paper. Finally, the results were out in January 2020 and I was amazed to see my scorecard. I secured a 99.8 percentile. And later on, I got calls from 14 IIMs.

Nothing Comes Easy- You Just Have To Push Yourself

So here is what I can conclude from my overall journey - CAT exam preparation mainly requires 5-6 months if you work on it wholeheartedly. The best way to prepare for CAT is to take as many mocks as possible and analyze them meticulously. And yes, there comes a time when you lack motivation but that's the very moment when you've to give yourself an extra push because nothing in this world comes easy.

To read more about CAT preparation, click on the links below -

• Keep exploring till you find your way”, Ashu’s inspiring journey from Engineering to MBA to McKinsey & Company
• This is how a non-engineer scored 97+ percentile in Quant without any coaching -By Ria Chaudhary from GIM Goa
• The ultimate CAT preparation guide: How to maximise your score? -By Hemanth Reddy Varakantham, 99.13 percentile, IIM Ahmedabad - Part I
• Scoring 98.81 percentile in midst of a buzzing work schedule -By Prachet Prakash from IIM Lucknow