17/05/2023
My formula for cracking Aptitude tests for higher education and company placements.
A mail written to friends and 20 years ago
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As for the CAT, there is no genius involved. It's a
matter of having one good day. The more chilled you
are abt the exam the better.
I think accuracy is most important. Noone really knows
how the negative marking works but accuracy is the
most important factor.
As for the simcat scores, do not realy worry abtt them. Everyone i know at iim's never cleared the simcat
cutoffs! The cutoffs are just meant to motivate you to
study more. One would be fortunate even to clear the
cutoff of a single section in a simcat.
I would suggest that for all the sections identify
areas where you are really strong. Like say
probability in maths, or the numbr series. Similarly
in di and verbal.
In the exam, one cannot afford to go thru all sections
and then choose a question to attempt. So just choose
the type of w questions which you are good at and
attempt them first.
Going for a random guess might be risky, but if you are
able to eliminate 1/2 options then it might work out.
Also remeber the method of substituting the choices
in the actual sum. That sometimes may save a lot of
time.
As for the simcats, the shortcuts that they give are
really good. Also find out different methods for
solving the same problem.
As for secctional preparation goes, I concentrated
more on the quant part , getting the formulas right,
studying some shortcuts and getting my accuracy high.
For the DI part , it was more of practice and trying
to estimate values correctly rather than trying to
calculate them. Like visually estimating the graphs .
For the Verbal part, I did not prep much as it is
more of reference to context somethng whch we have
been doing right from our school days.
Some of the simcat problems are often repeated in cats
and it saves a huge amount of time.
The cat requires a lot of practice basically to learn
and effectively use new approachhes and techniques to
solve a problem. Coaching class notes are more than enough for
that. There are some shortcuts that they have listed
which help a lot. For eg the fifth power of any
single digit no has the same numbe in the unit's
place. These help a lot during the CAT .
I kept 40-40-40 mins for each section and tried to
keep my accuracy as high as possible. Usually the
accuracy dips in verbal as the options are very
similar. So I tried attemting a little more in verbal.
Also, try identifying your weakness and strenghts ,
like i usually avoided long questions which took more
time to read and went for short questions which
required a little more calculation.
It is better to apply for all the top rung
institutes at least. So, in case one
as a bad day one can make up in the other exams.
I know it's pretty tough when exams clash with cat.
Experienced that last time.
I would say say cover the ug degree portion in advance so
that you have free time during the days before cat
exam. Also try and keep some time for cat practice
daily.
Regards
Ashish
