How Do 99+ Percentilers Prepare For CAT | Part 3 - Data Interpretation And Logical Reasoning

LR-DI has been the nemesis of a vast majority of aspirants for the last three years. The fact that they made a separate section for LR-DI and imposed a time limit of an hour to solve 8 gruelling sets led to a scary prospect.

For 2 years I personally saw this section break the confidence and morale of most of the aspirants during the test. I was on the receiving end in 2014, when it completely dented my will and left me demoralised.

A year later I scored 99.3%tile in DI-LR, Let’s see how you should prepare for this section.

Material for preparation

• Coaching institutes material
• Past year CAT papers.
• Current and past mocks

“Your story may not have such a happy beginning but that does not make you who you are, it is the rest of it- who you choose to be”

A very simple strategy:

Step 1: Learn the basics

First, learn the basic concepts. Because later it will all be about how good you are at applying them. Refer to TIME/CL/IMS material and solve their basic foundation level questions that will cover all the topics.

Step 2:
Practice

“I believe there’s an inner power that makes winners or losers. And the winners are the ones who really listen to the truth of their hearts.”

Spend a lot of time in understanding the “systematic approach” of solving. Most of the LR-DI questions can be solved very easily if you just list down all the relevant information in a tabular manner. Master this skill by solving more and more questions in a time-constrained environment.

Try to use intelligent guesses to start solving the questions where assumptions are needed and gain a basic level understanding of all the different pattern of questions asked.

Also the art of leaving questions which are unsolvable cannot be stressed enough, it is a skill which you will acquire after a humongous amount of practice.

Step 3: Take Timed Tests

First, measure your DI-LR level of preparation by solving previous years CAT papers, if you are able to solve them then go on to solve sectional and full mock tests of TIME/CL/IMS or any other good coaching institute.

Some Pointers:

• Pay close attention to keywords such as (all, some, none, at most, etc) and solve the questions accordingly.
• Learn how to spot easy sets, don’t just start solving any set, but quickly read all the sets first and then make a call by judging which set is more structured, has lesser variables and lesser conditions such that it can be put into a structured table or any other format easily.
• Know when to let go of a set, never let your ego rule you. Too much ego will kill your talent.
• Take lots of sectional tests
• Memorise the fraction values from 1/2 to 1/12
• Become comfortable with the online calculator
• Most Important: Never lose your heart while solving this section, if the paper is tough it will be tough for everyone

Midnight Ruminations

“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.

But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! ” – Rocky Balboa

You can read the story of how I cleared CAT here.

To read the part 1 of this series on Quantitative Ability, please click here.

To read the part 2 of this series of Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension, please click here.