Well to start with get rid of your notion of being an average student. This attitude wont help you at all. Start from scratch. Learn the basics, do not jump into shortcuts at first attempt. You can try books from Arun Sharma. Practice a lot. Take a lot of sectional mocks. Only practice can help you crack CAT. Do not forget the below points:

1. Cover all topics- It is important that you cover all the topics to a basic level at the least to be able to solve easy questions from areas you are weak in.
2. Calculations – Use shortcuts - DI specifically needs a lot of calculations and hence it is imperative that candidates prepare themselves for it. Various shortcuts could be learnt using number theory and estimation techniques.
3. Art of elimination and substitution - Since CAT is multiple choice exam, through analysis of options by substituting in equations or logic can help eliminate the choices.
4. Log your learnings - When practicing if you encounter any new trick, make sure you note it down somewhere for future reference.
5. Knowing when to move on - It is important to know the right moment when a question needs to be left to move to next one as that particular question is taking more time than it deserves.

All the best!

There is no fixed mantra for the same. You have to be decent in all 3 sections: Quants, DILR, Verbal. There are sectional cutoffs (80%ile each) failing to qualify which even with an overall 99%ile you can't get through premiere B-schools. If you're not good good with numbers, acquire minimal proficiency in it and focus on Verbal & LR and turn them into your strengths. Clear cutoff in quants and score max in the other 2 sections. Even within sections, focus on certain areas more than others, like in Quants, algebra  & arith are easier than geometry that come. Look through past papers and ientify patterns in topics. Attempt decent no. of questions. Speed+accuracy is the key. Manage time-sit for around 70 mock tests (TIME+IMS).

Hello abhipsha,

First let me clear your myth, the level of Maths question is not at all difficult. The syllabus which is asked in QA section is from class 6th to class 10th Maths plus probability and PnC whereas Di-LR section is completely based on the calculations and tricks how you approach and find out the solutions. No doubt in both the sections there are tricky questions and most of all it is a test of speed with accuracy. Learning this is not at all difficult and with a little hard work on basics, with few tricks and a lot of practice in the mock test can make you expert in just a few days.

For quantitative ability, you can start preparing through Arun Sharma book which has a good explanation of the theory and question solutions. Also, it provides a high variety of questions with the different difficulty level.

Along with this, you should start giving lots of online mock test and analyse solutions of each one of the thoroughly which will help you in overcoming your mistakes and come up with a strategy to definitely improve your marks and percentile. It will also help you to know about your strength and weakness which will help you in attempting easy questions first, that will reduce your chance of committing a silly mistake in an easy question or missing out an easy question. Along with this, you will also get enough time to attempt medium level difficult questions which will overall increase your speed with accuracy which leads to increase your percentile. Practice as much as you can.

Thank you.