HOW TO PREPARE FOR CAT

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1) Know your enemy - Solve a paper from last year's CAT. Take your time and understand what
the test demands of you.

2) Once you have a fair bit of understanding of the test, go ahead and enroll yourself with a
coaching institute. They will give structure to your preparation and it takes a lot of burden off of
your shoulders. If you can't then you need to do a little extra work in managing the preparation
but you still can make it.
IMS/CL both are equally good. Join anyone or both. Why I mentioned them is because I have
used their resources only so can't comment on any other institute. I haven't used any specific
book, I only used practice materials from their websites.

3) Coming to the respective sections of CAT:

a) VARC - I was not much of a reader so I heavily focused on practice. I made it a habit to solve
2-4 RCs + 4-5 VA questions daily and analyze my mistakes. I used to challenge myself with
tough looking RCs on diverse topics. I might not get the questions right but what I developed
was familiarity with different topics. As a result I was not intimidated by a tough RC and always
believed that I can work my way through the same. For choosing the right answer option, my
approach was to eliminate wrong answer choices on BANET principle where B-Broad(in relation
to the question/passage), A-Alien(to the topic/passage), N-Narrow(in relation to the
question/passage), E-Extreme(in relation to the author's position/passage), T-True, but(true in
the passage's context but not applicable to the question). And almost always I would arrive at an
answer which was correct. As Sherlock Holmes said, "when you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth". I have borrowed the BANET
principle from Gejo Sir's VARC1000 course which I took in my 2nd attempt.

b) DILR - According to me, there is no pattern or set guidelines for DILR preparation. So you
just practice, practice and practice again. I used to solve and analyze 2-4 sets daily. Only thing
here to pay attention to is that you don't practice just for the sake of it. You should be able to
make mental processes around how you approach a particular set. CAT has never repeated a
set in DILR so it's highly unlikely that you will get a familiar set. So what's important is to develop
a knack of solving DILR questions so that you can work your way through an unknown set
which might be the easiest set of the paper. Set selection is of utmost importance as 1-2 right
sets and you end up with a very high percentile and one wrong set and your paper is almost
done. You will get an idea of set selection once you have practiced a good number of sectional
tests and mocks.

c) QA - This is the only section in CAT which has a knowledge component to it. Follow any
coaching institute materials or famous book, cover the basics of all the topics and start
practicing. Slowly and steadily you will see your scores improving in this section. According to
me this is the only section where one can be certain of getting a set number of questions correct
almost every time.
4) Past CAT papers are your best friend, always keep them near and dear to you. Solve all the
past year papers that are available in the market, especially the papers from the last 3 years.

5) Mocks - Mocks are a little subjective, I know people who have given less than 5 mocks and
have scored 99+ %tile and people who have given 30-40 mocks still hardly getting a 90%tile.
So, think of mocks as a tool and not as a resource to be exhausted. Learn from the mistakes
you committed in previous mocks and try to avoid them in future mocks. Mocks will help you
build a strategy of how you want to approach and time the paper in order to maximize your
score.

6) Don't be overconfident about any section if you're good at it. Keep on practicing. Consistency
is the key.

7) How I managed CAT preparation with my job - On weekdays I used to study for 2-3 hours in
the morning before starting office work. On weekends and holidays I gave 6-8 hours. WFH was
a blessing in disguise for me.

8) Final Suggestion - Not to demotivate you but to make you aware. Even after all this you can
still end up with an unsatisfactory performance on the D-Day for N number of reasons and it's
totally fine as long as you have given your best. Take a break, come back and analyze what
went wrong and then come back stronger. Yes, there is a luck factor involved but hey "luck
favors the prepared".

8) Adding a beautiful article from Sreeni Sir to bring in a new perspective about the CAT exam.
Definitely worth a read.
https://sreeni.org/2021/08/15/what-is-cat-really-all-about-have-you-ever-given-a-thought/

9) My motto - To get something you never had you have to do something you never did.