By Gautam Puri, Co-Founder, CL Educate
It is never too late to start preparing, and for an exam like CAT, it is never too early to start too. This piece focuses on the early birds who have decided to pursue MBA and will write the CAT in 2018.
If you are one such early bird then you can follow the strategy mentioned here. Even if you come across this study plan a little late, you can still follow the action plan from that day onwards depending on how prepared you are for the D-day.
Firstly, let me congratulate you for zeroing in on your objective. I have divided the preparation period of 500 days in 5 legs. For each leg I have discussed the objectives below:
500 Days to CAT’18
The main focus in the first leg of the preparation should be to build a strong foundation for the CAT exam. The idea is to learn the basics of every topic of Quant and Verbal. Since you will be appearing for CAT in 2018, you have sufficient time to make your basics strong and full proof. Visit your class 8 to class 10 math concepts and revise them. Spending a month on this would be a good investment of time as it would iron out any knowledge deficiencies that you may have. Along with this, solving a few puzzles regularly would give you a good introduction to the logical reasoning sets that come in CAT.
The next step towards CAT would be deciding the mode of preparation. You need to make a choice – whether to join a classroom program which offers you guided learning in a classroom environment or an online program like the Night Classes that allows you to study anytime – anywhere at the comforts of your home. Both the kinds of programs are equally good and would give your preparation the correct support that it requires.
The aspirants living in cities without a coaching center should be looking at online classes as a serious alternative to the classroom program. Online programs not only allow the convenience but also the luxury of studying from the best faculty pan-India. The CAT Night Classes program is driven and delivered by the CL Founders along with their team of the best faculty pan-India. The online classes are held in the night thereby making it convenient for anyone, even the working aspirants to take classes at the most convenient time and place.
You would also be curious to know which B-schools are you eligible for. To know which IIMs will accept your profile, you would want to have a look at the IIM Profilizer. This tool will give you a picture of the realistic chances of you making to an IIM and will also tell you how much percentile you need to score in CAT to make it.
Whichever program you choose will come with a set of books (or e-books in case of Night Classes). After completing the warm-up revision from class 8 - 10 books, you must start off by learning the basics and having a look at the solved examples. As you go through the concepts of a topic, take enough topic wise tests to solidify your learning. Utilize the power of the Test Gym Lite to practice different levels of questions across different topics of Quantitative Aptitude, Verbal Ability, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning.
Before every class, read the concepts of the topic to be taken in the next class. After each class solve the questions in the class-worksheet and examples in the books. Analyze and redo the dubious questions and advance to the next level. Proceed in a similar manner for each topic ensuring your strong hold on each topic.
350 Days to CAT’18
By now you should have covered the basics of Quant and Verbal and have completed the beginner level tests from the Test Gym Lite and should have reviewed your strengths and weaknesses. Keep on plugging the gaps by working on your weak areas. You must be familiar with the basic concepts so that you are able to solve all the basic questions from all the topics.
It is about time that you must start taking sectional tests. You will find a good number of sectional tests for various exams like CAT and non-CAT exams in Test Gym Classic. Needless to say, after each sectional test perform an in-depth analysis. Taking sectional tests will help you take on a section in a time-bound manner and will help you further categorize your strengths and weaknesses i.e., type of questions that can be solved in the first round, type of questions that need time and the topics that need more practicing. This would be a good test for your time management skills which is a must for all the MBA exams.
Towards the end of this leg of preparation, a solid strategy for each section should be ready for a full length test. This exam taking strategy should be based solely on your strengths and target score. Sure, this may change when you take on mocks and full lengths test later on. At this stage be open to adapting your style of taking a mock.
250 Days to CAT’18
Come April, pick up the CAT Test Series which gives you more than sufficient number of mocks to practice and strategize. Take the first mock of the test series to get to know your current situation with respect to the CAT level of difficulty.
By now you should have moved to level - 2 problems and should be able to solve them in a time bound manner. You could consider spending not more than 2 minutes per question. The aspirants who feel that they need to learn newer and smarter problem solving techniques to solve the seemingly difficult questions can follow the methods displayed by the CAT gurus in CL’s Smart CAT Cracker. Smart CAT Cracker is a program consisting of recorded videos by CL Gurus delivering smartest problem solving methodology.
At this point of time you should be at a stage where you religiously take a mock every weekend along with its in-depth analysis during the week. The ‘Analysis’ zone in you SIS account brings to you the most detailed analysis report that you can have for your mocks. This along with the CAT Score Booster add-on will help you identify your areas of strength and weaknesses. This tool gives a clear picture of whether you played to your strengths or let your weaknesses get the better of you. These should be analyzed closely to help you alter your strategy for the next mock. After every 15 days update your strength finder in the CAT score booster. Updating it will ensure that you get an accurate booster analysis based on your inputs.
120 Days to CAT’18
By now the preparation should be based around taking one or two sectional tests during the week and a mock on the weekends. Simultaneously, you must focus only on your core strengths and avoid venturing into the topics that you are not comfortable with, as there would not be sufficient time for going into the depths of the topic. Make sure your strategy is solid and stick to it. This would be the wrong time to go for new experiments as it will only lead to confusion. Make amends in your strategy only after careful analysis. You could revisit the Smart CAT Cracker videos of those topics. MBA-on-demand is another feature that can be an extremely useful revision tool. At this stage all that matters is how you approach your mocks and what corrective actions you take for the mistakes you committed but should not have been committed based on your CAT Score Booster analysis.
Your performance should have escalated to level where you can get done with a question within 100 seconds. Most likely, NMAT and IIFT will happen before CAT and you must begin taking the NMAT and IIFT mocks during this time. Towards the end of this leg, you must be looking at taking two mocks per week out of which one should be a non-CAT mock.
50 Days to CAT ‘18
This is the consolidation phase. You must have taken sufficient number of mocks by now (at least 25 – 30) to have zeroed on one final strategy for CAT. Similarly, having taken around 5 IIFT and NMAT mocks you must be clear on your strategy for these two exams as well.
During this leg, you must increase your frequency of mocks to at least 3 per week as now the preparation is more about getting acquainted with the test taking. Ideally, all the mocks that you take during this time should be attempted during the hours of your actual CAT slot.
Four days before the D-day you must put an end to the preparation. Watch a movie and relax, you would’ve done more than enough to score a 99+ percentile.