Regarded by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and countless others as the most difficult entrance examination in the world to crack, the Common Admission Test, or more commonly, CAT, designed, regulated, and conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management, is the only gateway to the seven IIM’s which are known and accepted as institutions of excellence when it comes to acquiring an MBA degree in India. The eligibility for appearance being graduation, a candidate in this unpredictable test, comprising questions having multiple answer options, is expected to demonstrate roughly equal competence in using English as a language, solving Mathematical problems, interpreting numerical or alphanumerical or verbal data and reading and comprehending the various styles and subject matter of writings on a variety of subjects in order to deserve a call from any one or more of the IIM’s.
Through its four sections of Verbal Ability (VA), Quantitative Aptitude (QA), Data Interpretation (DI) and Reading and Comprehension (RC), CAT tests the partial fitness of a candidate for the degree of Master of Business Administration (MBA); any one of the following process / processes, personal interview or group discussion and personal interview or analysis of a case study and personal interview is the determines the final selection of a candidate by an institute after the candidate gets a call from it on the basis of his / her CAT score. The consistency in the quality of this test makes its score acceptable to most of the business schools in India, apart from the IIM’s, except a few like FMS or IIFT or Narsee Monjee who conduct their own uniquely designed entrance tests to check the candidates for what is specifically and institutionally wanted from them or some others who, in their arrogance and to satisfy their own inflated egos, conduct their own breed of entrance tests just to advertise their own, but universally unacceptable, blind belief arising from an inferiority complex masquerading as superiority complex that they are no less than the IIM’s.
Since, we are talking about cracking CAT, let us first understand what “cracking CAT” means. Even with a sub-95 CAT percentile and without clearing the sectional and overall cutoffs set by the IIM’s, a candidate may get a call from some of the better business schools in India but it does not mean that he / she has “cracked” CAT. A candidate is said to have cracked CAT only when he / she gets a call from any one or more of the IIM’s on the basis of his / her CAT score. Now, that is normally possible with percentiles above 99. It also includes the added criterion of qualifying the cut-offs in all the individual sections and the overall cut-off of the test. At times, the IIM’s may give a call to a candidate with a percentile below 95, yet whose academic record is excellent and professional experience beyond the average. However, it is always considered safe to qualify the cut-offs and aim beyond 99 percentile.
Whenever the degree of difficulty of any examination is reputedly high, it unsettles the minds of most of the candidates because they simply don’t understand how and where to begin the preparation. The problems increase because CAT does not prescribe a definite syllabus and expect a candidate to learn by the rote and puke memorized vomit during the examination. Rather, it prefers him / her to demonstrate competence in those fundamental skills believed to be possessed by an above the average student who has studied properly up to his / her graduation. To put it quite simply, CAT designs its question paper to test the intelligence and smartness of a candidate rather than memory. The average candidate for CAT, used to questions which demand answers in a straightforward manner, is confounded when the questions are tricky or require analytical or interpretational methods to solve them. Quite interesting, it is also to note that solving any of the questions set by CAT requires a fundamental understanding of only those subjects taught till matriculation. CAT, as we come to understand, is actually not a difficult test but a test in which many of the questions take a lot of time to solve without proper practice. It is the very time consuming nature of the questions, which are to be selected and solved within a limited period of time, which makes CAT difficult.
The total number of questions in any CAT paper is considered humanly-impossible-to-solve within the given time frame and necessitates the adoption of a selective approach towards solving questions and, here too, the average candidate faces a problem, accustomed as he is to solving questions in the same order as they are printed on the question paper. The worst possible mistake is committed by the candidate when he / she starts solving the questions right from the word go without giving all the sections a good look. This gallant and cavalier attitude towards a question paper, which takes some of the better minds in the country six months to design, pays scant respect to a test which deserves quite a lot of it. As a result, the candidate is not able to judge the degree of difficulty of the paper and fails to ascertain the right number of questions required to solve for cracking it. Mentally blinded by his / her faith in reputation of CAT for setting difficult questions, he / she also fails to identify the easier questions, which not only would have been easier to solve but could also have left him with more time to increase his / her number of attempts. Back home after giving the examination, when he / she analyzes the paper with a relaxed and easy mindset, he / she starts noticing all the easy and straightforwardly simple questions, among the difficult and tricky ones, which could have been so easy to solve, had he / she only bothered to look for them. CAT is all about handling pressure rather than solving impossibly difficult problems. It is more about finding out the chicken, egg, and prawn pieces (easy questions) in a plate full of noodles than messing around with the remaining constituents of the dish. One of the more important points that aspirants for MBA should remember is that the CAT paper is designed to check a candidate’s power of observation, quality of judgment, ability of selection, and, most importantly, smartness in avoiding those problems, whose solutions are worth less than the amount of time spent on trying to work them out; a quality much desired for but insufficiently found.
How should one begin his / her preparation for CAT? The bases of the questions in the VA section are grammar, vocabulary, and logic. For vocabulary, I would straightaway recommend solving Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis and going through those sections of High School English Grammar and Composition by P. C. Wren and H. Martin, which deal with the prefixes and suffixes used in English as well as the Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes as the preliminary stages of preparation after which they can build further on the acquired foundation. Candidates have to remember that building a good vocabulary is a process of evolution rather than revolution and thus, takes time and a lot of practice. Rather than forcibly cramming up words at a rate which swamps their brains, they should focus more on coming across or using unfamiliar words repeatedly and also their etymologies because in CAT, all the questions are followed by answer options and a candidate’s photographic and associative memories can be expected to work much better on the direct vocabulary questions, if he / she has encountered the words, used in the question, before. Instead of memorizing words, it is much better to go through the word lists as many times as possible because reading takes much less time than cramming. The candidates should focus more on the usage of the words than their dictionary meanings because of the myriad semantic functions that a word may carry out in connected discourse.
For grammar, the candidates can follow High School English Grammar and Composition by P. C. Wren and H. Martin or A Millennium Guide to Writing and Speaking Skills by J. K. Chand and B. C. Das or any book on grammar by Michael Swan or Thomson and Martinet. The candidate has to remember that he / she does not have to study the entire book but only those sections that are prescribed for a student up to matriculation. Grammar goes by rules, so it is better to learn and understand those rules than try and determine the error or, if necessary, correct a sentence on the basis of how correct it sounds to the ears. After this, he / she has to practice on and solve as many grammatical error questions as possible.
A logical mind is very important for all the sections and especially VA, in which one comes across questions involving arrangement of jumbled-up sentences, critical reasoning, and deductive and inductive logic. The candidate, in order to sharpen his / her mind logically, is recommended Inductive Logic and Deductive Logic by N. Durzie and plenty of practice on such questions.
RC is always troublesome for most of the aspirants of CAT because of their “wonderfully voracious” reading habits. For the generation X aspirants, who firmly believe in doing everything rather than reading about a few of them, reading is both tiresome and loathsome. Presence of overabundant energy and eternal restlessness precludes their ever dynamic minds from getting involved in the static activity of reading with patience. To worsen matters, they are so accustomed to an unquestioningly straightforward, warrior-like, and literal interpretation and acceptance of things and matters as they appear, that they seldom have the capability and rarely feel the necessity of dissecting and analyzing what appears on the surface. Overt focus on the superficial aspects of English and its spoken version makes them oblivious to the underlying meaning of the written word and also blunts their recognition of the fact that in RC, English is as much about literature as it is about language. To top it all, the minds of most of the aspirants are so exhaustively taken up by the affairs of their own ways of living that any awareness of any other subject, which does not fully concern them, is barely tolerable. Extreme focus and misplaced concentration cause most of the aspirants to mistake a part for the whole while deficient vocabulary causes the mind to fool around with effective comprehension of the passage. Aspirants aiming to do well in RC must remember a few points. CAT may set a passage on any topic under the sun, so it is considered smart as well as sensible to have a basic understanding of as many subjects as possible. Many of the passages deal with topics, which are considered boring by many of the aspirants so it is always advisable to cultivate the habit of indiscriminate and mechanical reading without losing focus. When it is a matter of any topic under the sun, it also pays to have a basic understanding of as many styles and tones in which a piece of writing may occur. Apart from that, a sound understanding of the various figures of speech is also useful. Practicing the technique of speed reading is essential because it helps the candidate in answering the questions of those interminably long passages which are expected, by the IIM’s of course!, to be solved within a few minutes. Choosing which passage to solve depends upon the degree of difficulty of its language, thought process, and associated questions and its subject, so the candidate must ensure that he / she has a few topics of his / her interest while nursing the hope that a serendipitous occurrence will bring him / her across a passage which is from or relates to his / her area of interest. The ability to read in between the lines is considered to be of primary importance because no CAT RC passage worth its grain will ever allow a candidate to escape by answering only direct or straightforward questions.
Preparation for QA is all about a fundamental understanding of all the concepts related to the various areas of Mathematics up to the 12th class. Aligned to it is the ability of a candidate to understand exactly what a question demands because questions in CAT are rarely straightforward or at least have not been so ever since MBA became “the degree to acquire” in the professional sector. Apart from that, a clear understanding of the techniques of Vedic Arithmetic helps the candidate to not only perform quick calculations but also discover the shortest cut instead of stupidly puerile shortcuts. Finally, continuous practice enables the candidate to easily identify the easier questions, recognize their nature, and select and solve them quickly.
DI involves a honing of the ability to logically interpret and understand data from the point of view of the accompanying question or questions within the shortest possible period of time. It also involves a fundamental understanding of the basic concepts of Statistics. A sound knowledge of fractions and percentages, ratio and proportion, permutation and combination, theory of counting, cubes and cube roots and squares and square roots is also unavoidable because a ready-in-the-memory information of their numerical values and an understanding of the techniques to find such values not only saves a lot of time which is always at a premium in CAT but also prevents the candidate from cluttering the limited Rough Space with unnecessary ditches, which not only ruin the aesthetics of the paper but may also confuse the him / her later on. The abilities to analyze and comprehend the available data, logically and critically, in accordance with the questions asked require the candidate to practice on and increase his / her proficiency in logical and reasoning problems and also have the discerning ability to judge and distinguish between necessary information and useless data. Inductive Logic and Deductive Logic by N. Durzie and books on teasers and puzzles, apart from the books related to the areas mentioned above have to be properly understood by any of the aspirants gunning to do well in DI. A lot of practice on the problems related to the areas mentioned above will take care of the rest.
The most important part of the preparation for CAT, which is unpredictable and in which it is impossible to attempt and solve all the questions within the time limit allowed, is mainly about managing time and handling pressure. It takes a lot of practice and judgment on part of the candidate to develop the abilities to select and solve as many questions as possible in the actual CAT because of its formidable reputation for going against the predictions of even the most seasoned of minds, involved in preparing innumerable candidates for it. Going a step beyond the chameleon, CAT has till now played around with some of its more fundamental aspects, a present day fact which no one in his / her wildest imagination would even have suspected CAT of doing in the past. No two CAT papers have ever been the same except for the fact that they are divided into an earlier-declared number of sections and have questions in them. Thus, candidates who have bothered to practice on previous CAT papers to get a feel of CAT must realize that, that is the only benefit of that practice. It would be foolish to expect a repetition of the types or patterns of questions. The best strategy to approach CAT involves a lot of practice, readiness to accept and counter unpredictability, the ability to adapt and innovate and, most importantly, an open mindedness that rejects any predetermined game plan. Spending the first 5 to 10 minutes reading the question paper to get a feel of the degree of difficulty, identify the sitters, decide the amount of time to be allotted to the different sections judiciously and set the sectional and overall cutoffs mentally is considered wisdom in CAT. The presence of negative marks for every wrong answer should be enough to deter even the most hardened of bluff-masters, no matter how intuitive they are, from using guesswork to answer questions. A candidate must always remember that a wrong answer not only reduces his / her hard-earned score but also decreases his / her percentile noticeably in the fierce competition of CAT where even the digits to the right of the decimal point of a negative number have sufficient power to ruin his / her percentile and, consequently, foul his / her ranking. Wasting a lot of time in a desperate bid to get a single question correct is unwise and a candidate must avoid that.
When it comes to practice, the candidates must always time themselves while solving questions. Aspirants for CAT would do well to go for systematic coaching in any CAT training institute of repute or, at least, appear in the simulated CAT series (appeared by more than fifty thousand aspirants throughout India) conducted by the institutes themselves, which will not only give them a proper understanding of CAT but also a sense of how well they can actually swim in the sea of competition. If an aspirant for CAT understands and follows all the above mentioned tips sincerely, then he / she should be able crack CAT.
The Common Admission Test is the first tier of a three-tiered selection process to find out the best available talents for the degree of MBA from the IIM’s. In a world, where Mammon is the ruling deity, an MBA from any of the premier management institutes is a demigod and if he / she happens to be from the IIM’s, he / she is, at least, a god in the Indian professional sector. The world runs on money and the various ideas to generate a lot of it, and an MBA degree holder is precisely concerned with the administration of such affairs. Not that he / she is complaining because the rewards are excellent. And since, the income at the end of the day may run into astronomical figures, the candidates must not only recognize the importance of an MBA degree from the IIM’s but also learn to respect CAT and put forth their best, humanly possible, efforts. Respect will lead to seriousness, which will develop into the carefulness, dedication, and perseverance required to produce the determined effort necessary to crack CAT.
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