(Photo: Liz West)
Arts and commerce students – or those from non-engineering academic backgrounds are often in a fix about how to prepare for CAT. I talk of certain strategies that can be useful for such applicants.
Non-engineering students often find that quantitative ability is their bête noire. This is because after high school they have not been in touch with mathematics and the subjects that they study rarely involve calculations, numbers or equations. This results in fear and anxiety. I have met countless arts students who feel their quant is not good and have already resigned to a perceived inability to get more than 10 questions right in the section.
Half the battle is lost when you lose your confidence. Do observe that engineers haven’t been preparing for CAT all their lives, they have just been doing more calculations and solving equations that are largely unrelated to CAT prep and essential to their course curriculum. CAT is a test of your focus and your grit more than anything else. Don’t forget that everyone studied mathematics till at least class 10th and this knowledge is sufficient to form a good base to start with. What is needed, is a little extra brushing up of concepts. Start with your NCERT books, start with the basics from the refresher books that you used to refer to in school. Thereafter, start practicing questions from school books before moving to the sectional tests that deal specifically with the CAT exam.
Simultaneously, start memorising squares, cubes, square roots, cube roots and multiplication tables of the first few numbers. Start practicing approximating the decimal values of fractions – what you lack in calculation speed, you can make up for by memorising some predictable numbers and smart approximation. This would help you a lot with the data interpretation questions and questions involving percentages, profit and loss, ratio and proportion, etc.
The other problem that is often encountered is with the logical reasoning questions. There are different types of problem sets here – family trees, 4-way matches, games and tournaments, etc. Most of these questions can be solved using specific techniques. For example, for family tree questions you need to draw out charts with specific symbols and arrows to denote relationships and people. This is what worked for me – I formed step by step strategies for each and every question type. Then I started practicing these questions using the techniques that I had learnt – sort of an ‘open notes exam’. This helped me score better in my mock tests as well as in the final exam. Additionally get yourself acquainted well with the set theory – it does come in handy.
More often than not, non-engineering students also find it tough to solve the data sufficiency questions. Remember, you don’t have to solve the question; you just have to decide whether the given information is enough to solve it. Generally, statements 1 and 2 will contradict, so evaluate the easier options, eliminate and make a smart guess. Elimination works much better in such questions.
Deepak Nanwani is the co-founder of One52.com, an online adaptive solution for GMAT, MBA and UG exams. An alumnus of IIT Guwahati and IIM Bangalore, he is a master strategist for all competitive exams.