Take A Look At → IIM Lucknow Selection Criteria 2022: CAT Score the Leading Selection Parameter
Q) Please Share Your Journey In Achieving The Mentioned Percentile.
In 2020, I had a lot of time due to work from home and was looking to explore different areas of career progression. I also took time to create content online, discover new passions and learn new skills, but MBA was not at the top of my priorities, because I was enjoying my time at Citi, exploring the tech used in Financial services. But still, I thought of giving it a try without much preparation, and as expected, it went terribly. I was gutted and questioned, whether I am even made for MBA or not, and after much retrospection and deliberation, I felt that I underestimated CAT and didn't give it the attention it deserves. I got up in January and joined TIME Vizag to get some mentorship and a path to prepare this year, The first few classes were mostly about MBA and B-schools which gave me a clearer picture of what I want to do and helped me get the clarity I needed. Just when the preparation seemed to be going in full flow, the second wave of Covid hit. There was uncertainty in my family, and I lost a loved one of mine. This was a new low for me, and I didn't know how to get back up from that situation. But I didn't let the clouds of doubt stop me and I pushed through. I realized the most important thing in the preparation is to be consistent, I started giving mock tests right from June, and increased the frequency slowly. Online doubt clearing sessions and the whole setup of TIME were pretty helpful! Though I was working at Citi during this period, I compartmentalized the two aspects and didn't let one affect the productivity of another. Having a supportive manager does help though! Also having a study group with your best friends helps push you forward even when you are low. We used discord to clear our doubts and have online learning sessions together! We all had our losses during this time and having parents who support our studies and having each other did help. The kind of preparation I had this time and the performance in mocks did give me good hope about the performance this year. it is important to understand patterns in our scores and rectify them. Once in a while, we do have a bad day, but the D-day mustn't become a bad day! On the day of the exam, I was upbeat and as I was writing the exam there was some kind of confidence coursing through me. I felt very good after attempting the paper but was still worried if it was overconfidence. Quant was a weak spot for me as I wasn't fast in my calculations, but luckily the accuracy was good. The happiness I got after doing well on the paper was something very satisfying! This wasn't just a year's hard work but the happiness of going down a year back and hitting back hard!
Q) Please Share Your Month-Wise Preparation Insights For Upcoming Aspirants.
I started giving mocks for CAT 2020 in September of that year. I just brushed up some quant basics and didn't give a thought about analyzing my mock performances. I never checked what went right and where it is going wrong! But the next time I wanted to rectify these mistakes. I started from mid-JAN to get clarity and course on the preparation and went down to the basics of each section. I solved basic handouts of time and level one questions in study materials. From June I started giving mocks. I had Time Aimcats and shared the CL test series with a friend. Throughout my preparation, I gave around 60 sectional + full-length mocks and the thing that I did right was to analyze and learn from each of them. The most important month in September in my opinion, is the month where you have to stop learning new concepts and try to strengthen and strategize on what you already know. I experimented with my test strategies in September and by October I was sure of what questions to attempt and what to skip, how to read the paper, and how to keep the concentration up. I feel I had enough time to prepare, it's about setting priorities straight and going for it. Even after working for 10-11 hours a day, I had an interest to do a sectional or learn a new concept. being consistent is very very important.
CAT 2021 Score Vs. Percentile - Check Details Here
Q) Please Share The Section-Wise Strategies Followed By You During Preparation.
Sectionals are very important to building confidence. For example, I was weak in quant, I didn't know how to select questions and what questions to just skip. I used to get tensed if I skip two-three questions. But writing sectionals gives that confidence to try different things and strategize. Verbal - I feel my English is pretty good and I never had much trouble understanding a text, so I had it easy here and consistently scored well. I just started reading more, be it news articles, self-help books, or the RC handouts. This helped me improve my reading speed, I also refreshed my grammar basics for VA just in case. Usually, I had spare time for verbal.DILR - The most important is to select the right set. So I used to read all the sets and grade them according to my understanding. More often than not you won't miss the right sets if you practice a lot. Since my calculations were slow, I used to do LR sets more than DI. but if DI is very easy, I used to attempt. Using a calculator should be the last option.QA- The one I struggle with. I took a lot of sectionals to get confidence in this. My strategies changes a lot, but the one I went with was to go sequentially and attempt based on understanding. This might not work if you have difficult questions at the start, so luck also plays a role in this strategy.
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Q) If You Wish You Can Talk About Any Section In Particular?
Quant was my kryptonite, Verbal was my savior. But I had to work on it to cross the sectional cut-offs. So I concentrated the most on this. I gave almost 60% of my time to prepare for quant over the preparation months. I tried a lot of strategies, Reading all questions and selectingGoing sequentiallyAnswering one from the front and then from the back. But these strategies work if you have a good understanding of all concepts. But what I did is just analyze my mocks and found my strong points. I started attempting questions on these topics. I prepared an excel with the distribution of easy and medium questions in my mocks. That gave me an idea of which topics to be sure of. This helped me a lot!
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Q) Please Talk About The Role Of Mock Tests While Preparing.
Mocks are in my opinion very important to crack CAT. Cat is cracked by people with a good balance of knowledge and test-taking strategy. if we cant work on knowledge that fast, we can make up by using strategy and giving mocks to allow try the strategies. We shouldn't stop at giving mocks, analysing is important too. I took TIME AIMCATs and CL Test series. I gave over 60 mocks and used excel to monitor the questions, topics, Easy question distribution, and my pattern of marks. This helped me keep track of the performance and gave insights about which topics to be strong in! TIME and CL have good UI of their own with analysis that helps keep track. Another important thing is to be mindful of test-takers. If you get 80 percentile in 10000 test-takers you don't have to feel bad or feel good about getting 95 percentile among 200 candidates. Besides don't be shocked about low scores when you are on a roll. It happens and it's human. I just went ahead and analyzed what went wrong and came back stronger. After a few mocks, you will understand which is your strong section from the percentiles. it is important to keep going and not let that section down since it gives a good boost to your morale. Usually, one good section in mocks can help get a good percentile. But do be mindful of the bad section and work on improving it while keeping the good section constant. In the last few weeks, I took 2 proctored mocks and 2 mocks that were written by my friend to analyze. This was important this year because of the uncertainty in the paper pattern. I wanted to cover as many patterns and make strategies for them. And on D-Day, it is important to be cool and not think about the number of questions and patterns and do what you do best, answer them without thinking about others.
CAT 2022 Study Plan For Students And Working Professionals
Q) Is There Anything Else That You'd Like To Add?
One important thing I want to highlight is, that in this race of life, we end up looking for external motivations and comparing ourselves with others. But it is important to strive for personal development rather than try to one-up others. Cat preparation is about comparing the percentiles but it is important for you to compare with yourself. Am I doing better than the last mock, Is this score better than the last one? these are the question you need to answer and not am I better than one or two friends. Had I compared myself with others at the 69 percentile in CAT 2020, I would be gutted, but I wanted to do at least better than 69, and that pushed me to a 99.7!
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Know Your Target Score vs Percentile For CAT 2022 - https://bit.ly/3TaBhZz
How I Cracked CAT And Made It To IIM Ahmedabad In My 2nd Attempt | Ft. Khushboo Rao, 99.73%iler - https://bit.ly/3KeaM1r
How Should You Analyse Mock Tests To Get A 99%ile?| Sample Mock Analysis Excel Sheet | CAT 2022 Prep- https://bit.ly/3ConngB
CAT Notification is released, Now is the time you take your preparation seriously and go the extra mile. To aid CAT aspirants, we have compiled a few sectional tests as a giveaway. Take them now and see how your accuracy turns out!
| Verbal Ability And Reading Comprehension | Data Interpretation And Logical Reasoning | Quantitative Aptitude |
| VARC Sectional Test 1 | DILR Sectional Test 1 | QA Sectional Test 1 |
| VARC Sectional Test 2 | DILR Sectional Test 2 | QA Sectional Test 2 |
| VARC Sectional Test 3 | DILR Sectional Test 3 | QA Sectional Test 3 |
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