Taking Mocks Is Not The Key To Success In CAT 2021 - Tips By Anuj Gupta, FMS'22

Step 1: Don’t Hurry 

Though this should not be called a step, but, I included it here as many people have the tendency to do away with the analysis part as soon as they can as they don't consider it as the time they contributed towards their study/preparation. So, don’t analyse mocks in a hurry. Give the process the time it requires as it’s one the most crucial part of your preparation. Sit with a pen and paper and make notes of your observations ( It’s on you. I never noted anything while analysing mocks. Used to remember most of the things)

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Step 2: Celebrate The Rights

I am sure there are a lot of aspirants who while analysing ignore the rights and just go through the wrongs. Actually we are hard-wired to focus on our failures and analyse them and completely ignore the wins. But it should form an important part to analyse the victory to see what all you did to be successful so that it can be repeated in future.

Similarly, in case of mocks, choose a section and first glide through the questions which you did right. It will help you in:

• Knowing your strong areas so that you can allocate less time to them in future.
  Divide the questions into two parts:
  First, the ones which you knew and can solve if it comes again in future.                      Second, the ones which you guessed or just happened to be correct. But the chances of it getting correct are meagre in future attempts
• Mocks scores can be sometimes delusional if you don't go for the division of questions in the above two parts. As the real measure of your performance is not the final score but only the score you gained in first types of questions. It also helps in getting a consistent mock score.
• In addition, when you go through the rights you can have an idea whether you got some rights in the areas that were weak previously. It’s a good measure of whether you are improving or not
• Go through them as if you are revising what you did. It helps you digest the approach you adopted while solving various problems. And it makes sure that you will be able to solve them in future mocks also.

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Step 3: Scrutinizing The Wrongs

It’s obvious to say that this step will help in noting down your weak areas. I will go through the few things you should do as you skim through the wrongs:

• Note down the concept/area/chapter from which the question was.
• See if it was from the area in which you are strong. If so, see if the problem was in concept or it was just a calculation or other error. If the answer is a concept, a revision of that is required to fill the gaps.
• Next, see if it’s from the area which you worked on to improve. If so, then you need more work in that area.
• Next is the area in which you are weak and have still not worked on it.

As you progress forward and improve, the questions to analyse in Step 2 will keep on increasing and in Step 3 will keep on going down. And you will be making real progress.

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Step 4: Strategy

Once you are done with questions, analyse your strategy. See if it helped you improve your score or a change is needed in your approach. Many times changing a strategy can do wonders (It did for me in DI / LR). Experiment with different strategies and see what fits you best. Do this experimentation in the initial months rather than leaving it for the later ones.

I hope this step works for you. But this is a basic structure. You can mould it according to you and see what is best for you. 

Here are few other posts which might be useful to you:

1. How To Prepare For CAT 2021 || Anuj Gupta, FMS Delhi'22
2. How To Prepare For CAT'21 || Part 2 || Anuj Gupta, FMS Delhi'22