Info on CAT,GRE TOEFL,IELTS,GMAT,PTE Academic

What should be the Optimum Strategy for CAT?

There should be no fiddling with your Test-taking strategy at this late stage. As long as you know that the strategy you are using is giving you rewards, don’t change it… For example, you would know if your best bet is to scan a passage and then move onto to the questions, while another person could be more at ease scanning questions before going onto the passage. So just stick to whatever works best for you.

Will the analysis of the MOCK Tests help now?

Test taking is the most important aspect of your preparation now. Take two or at the most three MOCK tests in the last week. Test taking should be followed by an in-depth analysis of the complete Test. Analyse what mistakes you have committed and how you will rectify them. Also check the questions that you have missed, and whether you have missed any ‘easy’ question! That will help in your choice of questions later. Remember, CAT is not about last minute cramming and revising. It’s about being alive and mentally alert, here and now.

What be done to give finishing touches to the preparation?

Do away with your urge to cover the complete syllabus instead of revising or analyzing the test. Besides spending time on why some answers went wrong, also concentrate on why some answers were correct or whether there is any better way of doing the question. Furthermore, in any well-planned CAT Test, you will not be able to complete the whole section or Test. So go through the questions that you did not attempt and see if you made a mistake by leaving out those and attempting the ones you did. Also remember than in every Test, there will be both difficult and easy questions. This is where the concept of revision comes in. With regular revision, you gets better and better at questions and are able to do them in a short span of time.

Revise specific fundae, where you feel that there is a lacunae and your score can improve if you have better clarification on that part. For example you can go through the chapter of subject-verb agreement if you feel that you are making too many mistakes in Sentence Correction type Question because of that chapter.

Acclimatize your body clock: You must acclimatize your body clock to the test timing i.e. you must for the next few days practice test at the time during which you have booked you slot (1000 hours or 1530 hours)

Sleep timings: You must condition your sleep time according to your test timing, for example if you have booked the morning slot then you must start sleeping early and getting up early 2-3 days before your test day. If you sleep late then it is highly likely that you might not be able to get up early having fresh energy on the test day and which might affect your performance.

‘Which is the easiest way out and which are the easiest questions?

One of the biggest pitfalls is that as students we always search for short cuts, asking ‘ A critical issue here is the tremendous urge to skip questions. We tend to lose concentration at different stages during the exam and tend to skip questions because of the pressures of time. But things get better if you follow a couple of golden rules. If you want to identify the questions to attend, it is imperative that you read all the questions. Decide in two readings whether you are going to attempt the question or not. This is perfectly normal and don’t let it bother you. It will take not more than 15 seconds, at a very leisurely pace, to read a question. But if you read the question faster, you would have saved a few seconds. These can then be spent on understanding the question.

While reading the question, your attitude should be, ‘let me give everything I have.’Concentrating for those two hours and 15 minutes is not easy, but imperative.

What has been the cut-offs in the past CAT?

If we take QA section historically the cut off marks (93-95 percentile) of this section is hovering around 25-30 % of the marks allotted to the section in the last 5-6 years with CAT-2006 being the only exception when the QA sectional Cut-off marks was approximately 38-40% of the allotted marks, at the same time LRDI sectional cut off marks has varied from 20-30 % with CAT-2007 being the only exception when LRDI sectional cut off was approximately 35-36 % of the allotted marks. VA Cutoff marks has been approximately 20-32 percent of the allotted marks in the previous 5-6 CATs

Any Final Tips for the C-DAY?

CAT is not the end of your life. Many a time, very high potential students have not made it to the IIMs because they could not handle the pressure. So unwind, go for movies, do things that help you relax, go for walks, listen to soothing music, meditate…. People who stick it out, hang in there and continue to peg away will make it.

Learn not to carry despair into other sections. Be robotic in those two hours and 15 minutes. Act mercilessly and ruthlessly. Do not yield to sentiments. So what if you have messed up in English, quant is another compartment, maximize your score there. It’s a difficult preposition, but you have to be sensitive to the fact that at the end of the day it’s a game of nerves.

Fluid Management: This would be very important on the test day. Those of you who are taking the test in the morning slot, should not consume any fluid after 6.30 a.m. and those of you taking the test in the afternoon slot must not consume any fluid after 1 p.m. as it has been specified in the instructions by Prometric (www. catiim.in) that you should entering the test arena at least 1.5 hours before the start of the test and you will not be even allowed to go to washrooms. Bad fluid management can affect your test performance