Online Preparation: Key to Success in CAT
Online preparation is vital in the preparation for CAT. If not the entire course, taking lot of practice tests online is a must if you aspire to crack the CAT. There are various reasons for this
Put you under real test conditions—A stress-free mind looks at the CAT examination paper from different eyes. However when a student runs his eyes through the question paper sitting inside the examination hall, his perspective is altogether different since his performance on that day is an index of his future. To him, the question paper of CAT seems nothing less than a nightmare since his scores in that entrance examination would decide his admission in a business school. Taking online tests would put him under real test conditions, and repeated practice would make him used to the entire test process. This shapes the student into a confident candidate sitting for the exam. No anxiety, no fatigue!
Give you required practice of solving bulk questions in one go—Unless you’re put under real exam conditions, it’s human behavior to take frequent breaks & attempt solving a question paper in multiple installments. Online mock tests help you gain enough practice to solve the entire paper in a single attempt, which eventually prepares you to the competence of solving questions in bulk & crack the exam.
Use elimination method to solve objective questions—CAT examination is objective like most other competitive examinations. Since you score according to the number of right answers you make, it’s not like a regular school or college exam. So, you need to be smart in your problem-solving approach, which would eventually help you gain a competitive edge over the rest. Elimination method can help you score better as you can eliminate 4 (least likely to be right) options out of 5. Hence, this methodical approach increases your chances of scoring better manifold. Then, it’s not necessary for you to attempt 100% questions. You can leave some difficult questions & not devote more than required time to any one question particularly.
Get maximized percentile—CAT exam is driven by percentile score. The relative grading plays a crucial role in deciding your fate as far as getting admission into a good business school is concerned. You essentially need to have an edge over 99% of the test takers. That can only be possible when you benchmark yourself continuosly with other candidates. The larger the pool of people, better is your estimates of performance. So taking test which is taken by other thousands of students help you to fine tune your preparation as well as test taking strategy, So, practice as many tests as possible online.
After having read this write-up, you must have realized the great significance of online preparation for CAT entrance examination. So, follow this saying stringently—“Practice as if you’re the worst, perform as if you’re the best.”
The preparation for CAT is incomplete before taking a lot of practice tests. Full length practice tests/Mock Tests helps a student in multiple ways:
1. Practice to work in real test conditions, so real stress, real anxiety and real tiredness
After CAT’08, one of the student brought the paper back to show to its faculty. The faculty started looking at questions and found them very easy. His first reaction was ‘ such a easy paper”. It was for sure if you also see the questions in the situation of the faculty sitting in his cabin with no stress in his mind. But when the same paper was with Student in CAT examination hall with his future in stake, the same questions looks very different. When the entrance to one the premier institutes depend upon this once performance which can take your life to new summits, things are totally different.
2.Solving 90 ( or more) questions simultaneously is a different art than solving one at a time in home
When you start studying or even working in the morning, the first 30 minutes are perfect. After that, most of us take a coffee break which keeps on happening after every 30 minutes subsequently. During CAT or any other exams like XAT, SNAP, GMAT or SNAP, you do not take coffee breaks. You need to prepare yourself for long extended hours of concentration without coffee.
3.Developing the art of leaving questions and using options
Remember CAT and almost all the entrance exams of this world are relative and objective. You need to score better than others and you need to mark one out of 5 options. There are no marks for most scientific solution so why bother to find one. If you can eliminate 4 options in a question, the last option has to be correct though you do not know why. Secondly, though you need to get over 99 percentile in CAT, the actual marks needed to get this is hardly 50%. So you are supposed to get only 50% questions correct. Unlike your school and college exams where you are habitual to score 90% thus attempting all the questions for sure, here you are supposed to get 50% marks only. So if you leave 3-4 tough questions, no harm is done to you so do that. Do not fall in love with any question.
4. Benchmarking yourself with others, as the success criteria is relative and not absolute(Percentile system).As mentioned briefly in point 3, CAT and other MBA entrance exams follow relative grading. So you are not trying to get 50 or 90 marks out of 100, you need to get more marks than 99% of students taking that test be it 50 marks or 90 marks. In CATsinglequote06, when the quant paper was dirt easy, many of students being trained by coaching institutes were happy after attempting 10 questions correctly and movign to other section. But incedently, the CAT paper that year had a very easy Quant section adn cut off was higher than last 10 years. So you were supposed to attempt 15 questions out of 25 minimum. Hence there is no startegy regarding the expected cut off marks in a section. The expected cut off would be decide by you and other CAT takers only. So you need to know your percentile scores vis a vis the entire bunch of CAT takers. It would be real helpo if know for the past 5 months so that you can strategise your preparation accordingly.
And most importantly, you can CAT only once a year, why to take the chance in that. Practice as many tests as possible so that CAT is just an another day in office for you.
( This article is taken from www.topCATcoaching.com)