Well considering another season of C.A.T. ( Common Admission Test ) is currently underway it may seem too late to read this article. But for people who are yet to give or for others to come I would like to share my experience from my past tryst with C.A.T.
Any exam after schooling that you face becomes more about smart work then hard work. Many people feel that smart work is wrong way of doing the work, it is not so. Smart Work is doing something in more efficient manner without wasting effort in futile resources. For example: If you were asked to push a large and heavy box there are 2 ways to do it. One, push it with all your strength and hope for Hail Mary that you may be strong enough to push it. Second approach could be put some ball bearing kind of mechanism beneath the box and easily push it around. The second approach would be the smart work and would do the trick with efficient use of resources i.e. you physical strength.
In context of C.A.T. I would like say that this exam is not just about attempting large number of questions or being master of every topic in QA/DI. Many people like me are not very gifted in QA/DI. Once you acknowledge this how does one counter if he has already done his utmost best preparation for this section yet it is still not enough to reach that 90%ile mark in this section? The solution to this is attempt only limited number of questions. In current pattern out of 30 QA/DI questions in Section I attempting only 13-15 questions with 100% accuracy can land one in 90-95%ile range in this section.
Now you will wonder and say this is not possible, it actually is. You can easily verify this fact by looking at results from past mocks that you have currently given. With 15/15 correct questions you get 45 marks (assuming +3 and -1 marking scheme), check how much %ile does it roughly convert to in Section I for each past mock and therein you will get your answer. If you still need more proof, I myself followed this method in C.A.T. 2012 and scored a decent %ile in Section I. My C.A.T. 2012 experience is here and I have attached a copy of my scorecard. I didn’t have 100% accuracy in my attempts and I don’t want to dwell on my past and tell how many wrong questions I did, but there were some.
So my parting pointer to all aspirants, work smart for C.A.T. and for future. You aspire to be managers in big companies then start acting like one.
Regards,