You are nervous and anxious about the exam. For first-timers, students or professionals, it’s not the end of the world. For experienced people, you’ve been there on the battleground before. But giving the exam boils down to one thing strategy.
Enough mock tests have been given and analyzed. It’s time to focus on your strengths. The following strategies can help you score high and keep calm.
Time and speed
CAT exam has 100 questions to be solved in 180 mins. The total average time spent on each question comes out to be 1 minute 48 seconds. Average time for each question in Verbal and Quant comes out to be 1 minute 45 seconds and 1 minute 52 seconds for DI & LR section. But that calculation is only valid if you pick all 100 questions.
If you are able to attempt at least 48 questions with 100% accuracy or 60 questions with 80% accuracy, scoring 144 marks (minimum), you’re on your way to score 99% percentile. This also gives you more average time per question. The number of attempts and marks scored can vary based on the difficulty level of the paper.
Question picking
It’s all about the picking the right questions and avoiding the deceptive ones. Identify question types among easy, medium and difficult. Mark them (using mark button) and initiate the exam by picking the easy ones. Picking the hard questions will add to frustration and waste a lot of time.
Based on your mocks, identify your total attempts out of 100 questions. You don’t have to solve all the 100 questions. Analyze your maximum and minimum attempts based on the exam difficulty and build around that strategy.
Difficulty level
The difficulty level of the exam is neither in my control nor in yours. If the exam is difficult for you, it’s difficult for everyone and probably even for the top scorer. Relatively the average scores will fall. Don’t panic if the exam turns out to be difficult. Be mentally prepared. CAT is highly unpredictable. If it comes out to be easy, well the average scores for scoring 99 percentile are going to shoot up. Question selectivity matters.
If you’re stuck on a question option for more than 30 seconds and not able to select the right answer, mark the question and move on.
Accuracy
The classic puzzlement Should I focus on solving more questions or fewer questions with high accuracy?
Again go back to your mocks and analyze the pattern. What strategy for a particular section helped you score the maximum marks? Difficult exam might put restriction on your ability to maximize your attempts.
Remember, accuracy is foremost. Never ever compromise quantity for quality in the exam, even if time is running out. Additionally test takers end up solving more questions in their respective area of strengths. Example, Verbal, Quant or DI & LR. The distribution of question solving doesn’t have to be equal across all the sections.
Last minute solving
The initial minutes in the exam matter a lot, since you end up solving a lot of questions in that period compared to the end minutes. As the time progresses, the brain exhausts. Let’s say you have 10 mins left with 10 questions (or more) in a particular section.
If you take a realistic measure, your mind might start panicking seeing the clock. Keep clam. Instead of working 3-4 question in 10 mins, don’t start aiming for unrealistic attempts of 7-8 questions, unless you’re super-confident or a particular section is your strength. Pick the questions which you think are relatively easy to solve.
Picking up questions will also take few seconds. But worry not, solving correctly will increase your confidence and give a psychological boost to crack next questions (or even more) with higher probability. Aiming for higher attempts in last minute, will put you in panic mode, which will not only hamper the accuracy in the current section but also your performance in the subsequent section.
Courtesy: India Today
