Topper Jaskaran says mocks helped, Vizag’s Ravi says imp to know faults, Pune’s Sumit says persistence is key

It was his fourth attempt at CAT. “I secured 88 percentile in 2009, 95 in 2010 and 96.4 in 2011,” he adds.

When I took the CAT last year, I had taken a lot of pressure on myself. I used to spend a lot of time reading about the exam and was stressed. This year, I had decided that I will stay away from any CAT talk during the exam. Infact, I stayed away from PaGaLGuY during the entire testing window so that I don’t feel the pressure. I took it really easy and did not let pressure get to me. That was the difference,” the topper says.

He had also enrolled for coaching at Byju classes in Bangalore. Alongwth that, signed up for mock tests of another coaching institute. “Well, in my case, it was the mocks which did it for me. Basically, I had prepared very hard last year. This year, infact, I put in lesser effort. The coaching classes helped me keep in touch with the subjects. But this will vary from person to person,” he admits.

Jaskarans score card

Jaskaran has also taken the Xavier’s Aptitude Test (XAT), Indian Institute of Foreign Trade entrance test (Has got a GD call), September Common Management Admission Test (CMAT) and Symbiosis National Aptitude Test (SNAP). “I am also planning to give Tata Institute of Social Sciences National Entrance Test (TISS NET) and February CMAT,” he added.

And this toppers word of advise to CAT aspirants: “Don’t take CAT too seriously. Sometimes, students tend to make it an obsession. Don’t do that. There is life beyond the exam.”

Sumit Patil

This topper is originally from Pune and currently pursuing his BTech+MTech integrated course in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras. This is his first attempt. He started off with focusing on quant skills. Once he was thorough with that, he focused on speed. Then switched to Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning.

Sumit’s word of advice to CAT takers is that you just need to focus on practice and putting in a conscious effort. “It is very important to learn from your mistakes. Dont give up if you are not getting something or you perform badly in practice tests a couple of times.”

He cited his own example of reading comprehensions which did not come easily to him. He solved a few mocks and previous year papers, sat down and analysed his mistakes and then was good at it.

Sumit has not given any other exam. He wants to target the top 6 IIMs and is hoping to get into the top.

Ravi Tejas full length interview, like we promised earlier:

This topper says that the key in scoring a 100 percentile lies in accepting “your weaknesses during your preparation period itself.”

According to the young achiever, an attempt to answer all sixty questions in the test is never a good strategy. Ravi realised this in his CAT 2011 attempt, where he answered all sixty questions but got a percentile of 98.34. This time he did not attempt four of the sixty questions in the paper and his results showed.

Although Ravi had joined preparation classes at Career Launcher for CAT 2011, he depended totally on the mock preparation tests and online support provided by the coaching institute for CAT 2012. Working as an assistant manager with Tata Motors in Pune did not leave him too much of preparation time.. However, Ravi made sure that he solved at least one mock test every day.

“My day’s preparation was not complete with just solving one mock paper,” Ravi said. After solving the paper, he dedicated upto three hours to compare his thought process while solving individual questions to the formulae provided in the solution of the respective test paper by the coaching institute.

Although Quant is his strong point, Ravi discovered that specific sections like probability and set theory were taking him more time than the other topics. Similarly, in the Verbal section he found out that he always got the tone of the passage wrong. In addition, he found difficulty in solving the questions related to grammatical error correction in the section.

CAT 2012 had three grammatical error questions. “In these type of questions, instead of depending upon the options, I formulate the answers in my head first. Then I compare my thought process to the options.” However, Ravi specified that he would mark an answer for these questions only if his thought process matched perfectly with either one of the options otherwise he would leave the question unmarked.

“Following my strategy, I was able to answer two of the three grammatical error questions but left the third unmarked,” he told PaGaLGuY. The ultimate objective is to answer those questions that you are absolutely sure about. This will help you make the leap to the perfect score, he said.

Originally from Vishakhapatnam, Ravi is an electrical engineer from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. His father is a government servant and his mother is a housewife. He has a younger brother who is currently pursuing engineering from IIT Kharagpur.

A perfect score will ensure calls from almost all the top b-schools in the country for this youngster. However, his aim is to get admission into Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta. In addition to the presence of friends at the institute, Ravi feels that the study strategy at the b-school would suit his thought process the most.