1. Studying 'more' isn't key
- For most of you, "more study" is better but with an important caveat.
- Studying more will help provided you are able to concentrate and learn.
- If you find it difficult to concentrate on or understand what you are studying, it is time to take a break.
- Most of you who are not working or do not have any other major demand on your time, can study 6-8 hours a day.
- It is difficult for most people to study with good concentration at a stretch.
- We recommend that you study for about two hours and take a break for 10-15 minutes before you start the next study session.
- Studying different areas in a day helps in better concentration.
- For example, if you plan to study 8 hours a day in chunks of two hours, you may do Quant, RC, DI and LR for two hours each with about 10-15 minutes breaks between every two sessions.
- However, please ensure that you should cover all areas every week.
- Further, weaker areas should be allotted more time.
- The general rule is that the weaker you are in an area, the more time you allocate for the section.
- Ironically, most students allot more time to those areas which they prefer and are therefore stronger!
- Resist this temptation and spend more time on the areas you like relatively less!
- This will help you with the sectional cutoffs, which are present for the IIMs and other good management institutes.
- As the exam gives you lesser time than required to solve the entire paper, time management is the most crucial element that is being checked in the examination.
- Thus, always work with a 'time deadline' when you are tackling or solving questions/exercise/tests so that you are accustomed to the time pressure.
- Keep a watch running to simulate the exam pressure.
- You may not use the alarm when you are learning something, but always use it for taking even the simplest of the tests.
- The standard guideline is that the time you set should be sufficient for tackling around 75 per cent of the questions.
- While taking AIMCATs seriously is extremely important for you to know your relative strengths and weaknesses, it is even more important that you analyse your performance thoroughly and have an action plan to improve upon it.
- Initially, taking around 1-2 mock tests per week with complete analysis and taking action based on the analysis is sufficient.
- By the end, taking around 2-3, full-length tests in a week will be sufficient, followed by analysis. When analyzing, look at what you solved but took too much time, got wrong, what you left but could have been solved easily (i.e., in less time).
- This will give you targets to work on for study.
- Revision of mathematics concepts and important formula can be done in the last one month.
- For now, focus on improving your conceptual clarity.
- Do not memories formula since the CAT is not looking at your ability to memories, but rather the ability to apply concepts.
- Working on lots of questions in practice tests that test your concepts is a much better approach than just working on formula-based questions.
- For DI and LR, do look at all types of questions, so that there are no nasty surprises in the exam.
- If you are familiar with various types of problems in the exam beforehand, you are more likely to do well on the test.
- Your mock tests can serve as an excellent source of a large number of sets which are the level of the examination.
- For English, please note that a bulk of the English section is reading-oriented, whether it is RC or VA questions like Logical Completion of Paragraphs, Logically ordering the Paragraphs, error in usage etc.
- Surely, there are some Vocabulary and Grammar questions, but the effort you put in them is not going to be as fruitful as improving reading skill. So, focus more on reading.
- Try to attempt an RC exercise in a time-bound fashion.
- Without checking the answers first, try to understand the tough words and concepts from a dictionary and a search engine/encyclopedia. Then, redo the exercise and recheck your answers. You will get a lot more right.
- You may continue reading some newspaper articles etc. but now the time is for solving the material provided to you, which will give you reading practice and question practice.
- Do not worry too much about lots of grammar rules, new vocabulary words, etc. Whatever new words you do find in a passage, those you may revise, but do not focus extensively on improving vocabulary now.
- Do not start anything new in the last two weeks before CAT.
- Focus only on strong areas in the last two weeks.
- Gradually reduce your study in the last 3-4 days and relax on the day before you will take CAT.
- Some students fail to do well in mock tests and feel demotivated.
- Be realistic in your assessment of your caliber and set realistic and achievable goals.
- Performance improvement takes place slowly since everyone is studying and is trying to improve Even if you improve on an absolute scale, you may not see much improvement in your relative performance.
- You should therefore set a target of 'achievable improvements' for your next AIMCAT and keep on repeating it.
- One sees enough cases of students who never crossed 90 percentile in the AIMCATs but got 99 percentile or more in the CAT.
- In fact, most students tend to get higher percentile in CAT than they were getting in AIMCATs.
- So, keep your confidence in yourself and believe that "I shall crack the CAT" till the 180 minutes of the CAT are over.
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