Hlo sir. Please suggest me how to crack CAT......

The first thing you need to do is assess your strengths and weaknesses. Take a sample mock with zero prep. Attempt it properly, then see your final score. See which sections are you good in and which sections are the weaker links. Now normally anyone in their right mind would ask you to start working on the weaker sections, right? WRONG! Once you find out the section you're the most comfortable with, start focusing on that section itself. Make sure you absolutely nail it. Follow the 60–40–20 rule.

Now what is the 60–40–20 rule? Let's suppose your strongest section is English. Now you should start prepping for English in such a way that you get a raw score of 60/102 in that section, no matter how difficult the questions are. Don't panic. Scoring a 60 in your strongest section isn't that difficult if you're willing to practice and be dedicated. Take multiple sectional tests and mocks. Don't just take the mocks and leave it at that. After you're done attempting the tests, open the solutions and assess the mistakes you've made and work on them. Once you're done with this, move on to your second strongest section. Assuming its Quants, focus on getting a 40/102. Follow the same steps I mentioned above. Once you're confident of scoring a 40+ in this section as well, you can finally try to tackle your weakest section - LRDI in this case. You only need to try and get 20 over here. A raw score of 20 means a net correct of 7 questions out of 32. Trust me, even if this is your weakest link, getting 7 questions correct after putting in effort and practicing is very much within reach. Once you have done finally dealt with this section as well, your mock scores will probably be in excess of 120/300.

Once you have achieved the 60–40–20 goal, it's your time to start pushing the limits. Go for a 70–50–30. And then 75–60–40. Set small targets and try achieving them. By the time CAT comes, trust me when I say this, you'll feel comfortable in all 3 sections.

Now, obviously, this isn't as simple as it looks. It takes a lot of effort to be able to achieve these small feats. So do not get demotivated with low scores in mocks. It's absolutely fine. Just keep working hard and you'll see the light at the end of the tunnel. All the best!

Hi,

CAT – Common Admission Test is the national level management entrance test. It’s one of the most competitive management entrance test in the country. Around 2 lakh candidates appear for it every year and around 5000 seats are offered through 20 IIMs and 100 other B-schools in the country which accept CAT scores for their admission process.

Now, you would have got an idea about the kind of competition is there in CAT. You definitely need to prepare for the exam in a guided manner if you wish to crack it. It’s not impossible but it’s definitely not easy to crack the exam. A regular study plan with consistent practice of mock tests is the basic preparation tip for CAT exam.

First, check the eligibility criteria of CAT because you can write the exam only if you fulfil the eligibility criteria – Here it is:

CAT 2018 – Eligibility Criteria

Second, you should know the exam pattern of CAT which is divided into three major sections - Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC), Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DI & LR) and Quantitative Ability (QA). There are various books to prepare these topics and sub-topics covered in these sections. Have a look at the detailed exam pattern of CAT. Here it is:

CAT 2018 – Exam Pattern in Detail (all the topics)

You also need to the entire syllabus of the exam – CAT Syllabus 2018

I would request you to download the e-book of Careers360 which is specifically dedicated to CAT preparation -

CAT Important Topic and Must read Books to prepare

Section-wise Tips to crack CAT 2018

Hope that’s helpful.

• VARC
• DILR
• Quantitative apptitude