1)Vocabulary: Many questions on VA will use words that you do not typically see in normal conversation. If you know the meanings, it will be much easier to score. You can search for words lists online. Here's something I found:Page on yolasite.com

(Apparently, exams like GRE, CAT, SAT use the same set of words.) If you think this list is too big, you might want to look for high frequency words list. (I found a few for GRE, but none for CAT. And I am not too sure how much overlap these smaller lists have.) But one year is a good enough time to learn most of it, if not all. Here's a strategy I read somewhere:

- Learn 20 words in the morning on weekdays (Monday to Friday)

- Revise these words once or twice through the day.

- On weekends, revise the words learnt over the week.



Occasionally, you will need to revise everything you have learnt so far. It is going to get time consuming, but it is doable.



Use mnemonics for words which you can't seem to learn even after a few attempts. There are plenty of websites that contain a lot of mnemonics for all these words.



2)Reading skills: The more you read, the better you'll get at comprehensions and other questions on VA. Practice comprehensions from sample papers, previous year papers, study material from coaching classes, etc. I think reading novels at this stage might not be particularly helpful. Newspapers may be a good way to revise the vocabulary - a lot of words from the words list appear in the newspapers. And newspapers help you keep updated with current affairs.



3)Logical reasoning: This section is actually fairly intuitive, but comes with a little bit of practice. And I think this is one area where you can have a edge over other candidates. The type of questions that are asked is limited. So with practice, you get to know the techniques required to solve different kinds of questions.



Another important point here is speed. If you do not practice enough, you will be able to solve most of the questions, but it will take you much longer that others who are more prepared. So when you practice, make sure you are focusing on your speed.



4)Data interpretation: This is almost similar to LR in terms of how to master this section. One very important point for the exam is that you'll find 2 kinds of questions - (1) those that require some calculation, and (2) those that require a lot of calculation. Because most questions in this section will appear in sets (2-4 questions based on single data), it is important to be able to judge which of the two categories each set of question lies in, fairly quickly, because you don't want to spend a few minutes on a set of question and then realize that it requires way too much calculation, and then end up not answering. My advice would be to leave the more calculation based problems for the end. Another thing is to be comfortable with approximate arithmetic. It will save you a lot of tedious calculation.

Some tips on judging calculation-intensive problems:

- If the options are very close to one another, then approximate arithmetic might not work, and you may need more time to solve the questions exactly.

- Many a times, the options will be non-numeric (e.g. you are given how much 5 people drive each day of the week, and you're asked who drives the maximum over the week.) See how the data looks. Are the numbers similar to each other? If yes, then it will require more calculation. What operation you need to do on the numbers? Addition is the fastest, subtraction slower, multiplication even slower, and division the slowest (assuming you cannot approximate).



5)Quantitative ability: Practice the important topics well, and you should be good to go. This will also require some judgement: several questions in my paper were fairly non-trivial. You need to be able to identify them quickly.

Check previous year papers and sample papers to find the important topics.



How to practice:

Here's one of my answers where I describe at length a very effective practice strategy:Prashant Sharma's answer to Suggestions on how to get a rank below 1000 in JEE



Exam-taking skills:

There are a lot of skills you need to develop to ace an objective exam. One of them is approximations as mentioned above. Practice a lot of objective questions before the exam, so you can develop these skills. Some of these are the following:

- Being able toguessthe answer, without solving: For instance, if a math question involves square root of 2, and no other radicals, and you do not need squaring and square-rooting to solve the question, then most likely any option with square root of 3 will be incorrect.

- Getting the answer by substituting the options into the question

- Eliminating unreasonable options: Often, in QA and LR, some options just do not fit the scenario. They can be eliminated and it then becomes a lot easier to solve the problem for the remaining cases.



My suggestion is that when you practice objective questions, first try to come up with the answer as quickly as you can by any method. Then, solve the problem by proper method and check if your "shortcut" worked. You'll gradually get better at it.



Mock tests:

Take some practice tests early on to see which sections you are better at, and which ones you need to focus on. Then focus on your weaker sections, and take few more practice tests every few months, to check your progress.



Finally, there are some other tips that I have discussed here, that might be tangentially related to this question:Prashant Sharma's answer to How do top students study?

Join a good good coaching like TIME study well and give the exam.

Hi,

There are following tips you can follow to prepare for cat :

Common Admission Test

Answer Key | Eligibility | Application | Exam Pattern | Admit Card | Preparation Tips | Result | Accepting Colleges

Get Updates Brochure