New Delhi: With less than 2 months to go for CAT 2012, the focus of the aspirants should start moving towards how to best utilise the time they have in the exam and thereby get the best score possible.
Students have different approaches in which they try and get the best possible score. CAT is different from most of the examinations that students have written so far in school/college. This article serves to point out the some common pitfalls that students should be on the look out for, during their preparation and during the test.
Having a pre-decided target
Unlike most other exams, B-schools using CAT are not looking for you to score a certain pre-determined score. They look for the percentile rank i.e. students who can score more than most others. If you set a target of a minimum number of marks that you want to score, then you can be under pressure if you fail to reach the same in case of a tougher paper and be complacent in case of an easier paper. Hence, set no target in terms of attempts or score. Attempt as many as questions as you are sure of.
More attempts don't automatically mean more marks
Since the exam has negative marks for wrong answers, the belief that more attempts will invariably get more marks is a dangerous one! Two factors determine the score obtained – number of attempts and accuracy. These two are not independent of each other – focussing solely on one will result in a drop of the other. Therefore, the target of the students should be to improve on both at the same time. And this needs a well thought out plan for preparation and practice – before the exam and during the exam. Blind and wild guessing is clearly a no no.
Excessive focus/dependence on one area
Excessive focus on any area may not work in your favour if your slot doesn't contain as many questions as you expected. You will be left dry, with questions from other areas which you did not put much effort on.
Selective preparation
This is the other extreme of the point we discussed above. Going to the exam, not preparing on some topics because you are not comfortable with them is very risky. You may end up looking at a paper with more than the normal number of questions from the exact topic that you left out from your preparation. If the sections in CAT were not individually timed, you could have left those questions and moved on to other sections. But, with CAT 2012 having timed sections, if you are done with what ever questions you can, with time on your hands and the remaining questions are from those topics which you chose to ignore, you will know that you have paid a heavy price for not looking up.
Getting stuck on one question
Most students lose the battle of CAT when they spend too much time on one or more questions. This typically happens when you are strong in some subjects/chapters and you believe that you should be able solve almost every question from the same. It is a good idea to have an 'exit time' of about 2.5-3 minutes for every question attempted. If you are not close to the answer by this time limit, just leave the question and move on. Some times questions you feel are easy can turn out to be time guzzlers. Keeping a strict watch on time as suggested above will help your cause.
Not scanning the paper
Scanning the paper will help you to know the paper structure and to identify the easier questions. Once you identify easy questions, you should attempt it first while leaving the more difficult ones for later or leaving them altogether. Attempting the questions sequentially without scanning the paper may result in you missing out on the easy questions towards the end.
Attempting all questions from a set
When attempting sets in DI/LR or RC passages, some students attempt all the questions of a particular set/passage, since they believe that all questions will be almost equally difficult or easy. This can backfire if you get stuck on any difficult questions. It is ok if you have to leave a relatively more time-consuming question from an RC / LR / DI set. If you have time on your hands at the end, you can come back to the left out questions.
Giving up after the first section
With the change in CAT's pattern, it is likely that some of you may have less confidence in the first 'Quant' section. If this is true for you, do not judge your performance in this section by your number of attempts. If you attempt fewer questions, it could also be due to your slot having higher difficulty level.
It does not mean that you have done badly in the first section since 'equating' will 'moderate' the scores and take care of this. Further, you may get unnecessarily demoralized thinking that you have done badly in the first section and lose your confidence and motivation to do well in the second section.
Do not give up on the exam till the end. Every question answered correctly will pull your percentile up heavily.
Paying attention to rumours
Since CAT will take place for about a month in multiple slots having different papers, if you go by the number of attempts others have made or the difficulty level of paper and plan your strategy accordingly, you can get into trouble since the paper in your slot could be of a different difficulty level! You should write CAT in your slot with an open mind.
All the best.
[The writer is course director - CAT, Triumphant Institute of Management Education Pvt. Ltd (T.I.M.E.).]
Comments
0 comment