The clock has started ticking. The D- day is coming nearer. As all you CAT 2007 aspirants buckle up for the toughest MBA entrance exam in the world, most of you are becoming nervous wrecks wondering why you are scoring low in your mocks and what wrongs you are committing. Many of you are also wondering if you are made to crack CAT at all. Perhaps some have already given up- mentally if not physically- even though they are continuing with the motions. While you’re going to your respective centres and taking mock CATs every Sunday (some of you are even taking two MOCKS in a single day), here are a few points I would like you to ponder over:

Mock CATs are not the actual CAT: “Yeah I know,” most of you would say. But still most of you take your MOCK scores and percentiles seriously and fret over them day after day. Here are some revealing truths about CAT:

â–¡        In the past, every coaching institute has failed to predict CAT in terms of number of questions, level of difficulty or type of questions. In short, NO mock CAT is representative.

â–¡        The percentiles that you score in mocks are also not representative because mock takers are a very miniscule percentage of people who take CAT. Also, since mocks are taken by serious students (and not the students who have filled the form and sleeping in their homes, only to surface on the D- day) your percentiles are because of students who are in the upper strata.

Let’s do a crude mathematical analysis: Let’s assume an average population of 15 000 students taking mock of a top coaching institute. If a student scores 85 percentile in this mock, 2250 students are above him. Assuming similar number of students from top three coaching institute in the country, 6750 students are above him. Assume a safety factor and make it 10 000 students ahead of him. If 2 lac students are taking CAT and 10 000 students are ahead of that student, the student scores a 95 percentile. Savvy? Remember that most serious students are taking one mock or the other; therefore these will be the only students who will be ahead (although we have taken the safety factor of same number of students) of that student.

â–¡        Top scorers in mocks are not always the top scorers in CAT. These are the students who have taken too many tests and become used to a certain type of paper. These students get stumped in CAT. Happens every year.

CAT is not IIT- JEE, Math Olympiad or an English Competition: Coaching institute operate under the philosophy that giving questions of higher difficulty level to students to solve will enable to solve questions of lower difficulty level. Most students also fall prey to this belief. The result is that all the students spend most of their time solving questions that only a Math or a Verbal genius can solve and the concepts for which are too complex to be covered in CAT. The students would certainly not attempt these types of questions in CAT or any other exam. Also, it is demoralizing to students who can perform well IF they invest time in study but who unfortunately get caught in the web of test-taking.

Remember that the Math or Verbal genius who crack CAT are only 50- 100 at most. IIMs have nearly 1 500 seats, most of which are filled by average students who are not Quant or Verbal Gurus.

Is knowing your percentiles a good idea? “Certainly,” many of you would exclaim without saying. I am sure you have heard about some seniors who started their preparations one month before CAT, didn't take any mock, just sat in the exam and cracked it. Maybe those seniors were super intelligent, but they also possessed one HUGE psychological advantage that you, as a mock taker, do not have- they didn't know where they stood. They took their CAT without pressure of knowing whether they are 80 or 90 percentilers. Knowing your percentiles week after week after week builds pressure on you. I see students reaching the breaking point because they are in those 80 percentiles or 93 to 98 percentiles. And I keep telling them "these percentiles mean nothing!" but it's no use.

Test- taking is NOT studying: From the month of September, I see students doing nothing else but taking tests and solving one mock after another. Although this exercise is fine for students who have completed their course, for students who started their preparations late, it is a disaster. The valuable time that they could have invested in studying and mastering their concepts is gone in test-taking. Tests are meant only to evaluate what you know. Tests are not meant to teach what you don’t know. If you are weak in grammar, only a grammar book can help you become strong. If you need to master Number System or Geometry, getting down to study all the concepts is the fist thing that you should do.

Which test scores are representative? If you really want to know where you stand with a small trace of certainty, take previous CAT papers. It is surprising how many of you students ignore the previous papers of the exam that you are preparing for. Many of you do not have an idea about the difficulty level of the exam at all! Is CAT as tough as these mocks led you believe? Check it out; you will be shocked by what you will discover. Also, CAT papers are the only ‘representative’ papers you can lay your hands on. These papers have already been taken by 1.5- 2 lac students. Your performance in these papers would be fairly close to your actual performance.
 

If CAT questions are easy why is CAT tough? I asked my Math instructor the same question once. His two-words answer still holds true- “People choke.” It would be a staggering number of people who would be paralyzed by fear of not performing and would choke or commit stupid errors in the exam on 18^th November, 2007. People choke because of fear. The questions which students couldn’t make head or tail of during the exam seem marvelously easy once the students come out of the examination hall.

And on the D-day, this fear is going to multiply manifold because each one you would know that this not a mock. This is the actual thing.

So what should you do with 15 days to go? Here’s what you should do:

1.      Take CAT papers as FLTs: If you haven’t seen them by now, it is high time that you did. Most of you would be planning to take some FLTs or the other. Replace them with CAT papers. For practicing the DI section, it is highly recommended that you finish all the CAT DI sets first. All of them are gems. And those sets are all that you need to practice for your DI section. Solving the quant section will tell you how childishly simple CAT quant is. The verbal section will really test you. I have yet to see a material which possesses half of the quality of a CAT paper with respect to verbal section.

Solving CAT papers will also boost your confidence. And I’m sure your confidence has been sagging for past few months. 

2.      Work on your strengths: It is not a time to do everything. Nail down the topics you are strong in. Start working on them like a maniac. In your strong topics, find shorter ways of solving fundas, bolster your knowledge, memorize the formula, solve every material you can lay your hands on. In quant, my two greatest strengths used to be the number system and geometry. When all my fellow CAT-takers used to trudge through the quant sections in tests, I used to hungrily search for number system and geometry question. Realize the difference. They had no idea what they were going to do in a paper. I did. And what if the number system and geometry questions turned out to be tough? Then I could leave them and move on to other topics anyways. But after having seen the tough questions in these two sections I could measure the level of he paper and gauge that the cutoffs were going to be low. Then all I needed to do was solve small number of questions with high accuracy.

3.      Accuracy not Speed: Ignore all the speed daemons. Solve them right. If you solve them slow it is okay, but if you don’t solve them right it is not. Many of you may not know but IIMs consider accuracy a big deal. So if you possess a high degree of accuracy, you have more chances of making it to your coveted B-school. Hence, work hard on your accuracy.

4.      Movies before the D-day: What has your MBA preparation got to do with movies? A lot. To refurbish you confidence and morale, I recommend two must-see movies for all of you. Do not disregard this advice. Watch these movies:

5.      Test-taking strategies: Although a lot of ‘gyaan’ has been given at every level about how to take tests, I followed these three test-taking strategies and stuck to them-

·         Equal time to all the sections: Trust me, I have tried all the variations such as deducting some time from my strongest section and giving it to my weakest section. It does not work. Before CAT 2005, I had taken 48 full length tests (not even counting the sectional tests) and experimented with every tactic that came into my mind. I realized that most strategies come because of the fear inside you. Keeping it simple helps. Give equal time to all the sections.

·         Strongest, Stronger, Strong: Attempt the section in that order. When I started test-taking, I used to keep Quant (strongest) first, DI (strong) next and Verbal in the end. Because my DI was weak, I figured that I would take more time in the section. As my reading speed was good I figured that I could make up for the extra time taken in DI with less time spent in Verbal. Although I used to clear cutoffs in all the three section, I was always fearful before every paper and was unable to pile up a huge score as my Verbal section was the highest scoring section. Then I let myself loose. Starting with Quant always put me in a good mood. This is the biggest reason for starting with your strongest section- getting few questions correct under your belt in the first 5- 10 minutes puts you in a good mood and overcomes your fear. From quant, I started solving the verbal section. As a result, by the time I reached the DI section I used to be in such a high that I could crack a lot of question. Every paper became a piece of cake.

·         Always reach the end of every section: This is THE most important test-taking strategy that I followed. If I had covered 1/3^rd of the section in half the time, I made sure that I cover the rest 2/3^rd in the other half. None of you can predict where the sitters are lying in the paper. To cover the whole section, you will have to rush through the problems and thereby you will only pick up problems which you can tell at first glance that you can solve. This is the crux of test-taking. You will be identifying most of he sitters. So make it a strict rule with every section- cover he whole section, end to end.

·         Two-markers first, one marker next: For more than two years, I have been developing content for MBA aspirants. I can tell you that there is not a single content developer on this earth who can gauge difficulty index of a question exactly. A question might be difficult for you but simple for him. Similarly, a question might rate higher on his difficulty table but you might solve it in ten seconds. Truth is, there is no exact division that question belongs to a two-marker or a one-marker category. So go for two-markers first. You might find some easy questions there and get bigger payoffs for the same input of time.

How is CAT 2008 going to be?

CAT paper is notorious for its changes every year. Every year teachers are fond of telling students that CAT is ‘unpredictable.’ The unpredictability might be true but are changes in CAT papers random or IIMs are trying something out? For last one year we have been hearing cries of “CAT going the GMAT way,” and there might be some truth in it too. But for me, the crucial question remained- were the changes in CAT paper made with a definite purpose?

I think I have an answer. It has been increasingly obvious that the number of CAT takes is increasing phenomenally every year and IIMs are struggling to handle the staggering number of students. Also, and the biggest problem they have to cope with is that CAT score is the main criterion to give call for GD/interview to students. The problem is that most of the call getters do not have sizeable difference between their scores! Having the percentiles running up to two decimal digits doesn’t help. Imagine an IIM professor sitting in the interview panel wondering if percentiles of 99.95 and 99.96 are very different from one another! If you think on this line on this line, it is clear what IIMs are trying to do:

They are trying to increase the gap between CAT scores of call-getters through the CAT paper itself!

When CAT paper used to have a lot many questions in every section, every top scorer could find a set of questions that he was able to solve. The result was that every top scorer solved roughly the same number of questions. Therefore, the first attempt was to gradually reduce the number of questions so that every student was forced to attempt the same question. The assumption was that the accuracy will vary if every top scorer was solving the same questions.

Previously, the marks for each question were the same. The second assumption was to have questions with variable marks (0.5, 1 and 2 in CAT 004, 1 and 2 in CAT 2005). Again the assumption was the same: that top scorers would attempt questions of different marks and hence the gaps between scores would be substantial.

Even the negative marking has not been constant.

They also tried different number of questions in each section in CAT 2004.

The next thing IIMs tried was to have questions with BIGGER marks, i.e. having 4-marker question in place of 1-marker question. Again, what they were tying was to have bigger gaps between scores. This also didn’t work. The hasty declaration by various IIMs about criteria for giving calls (percentage in college etc.) showed the problems they were having in giving out GD/interview calls.

They also tried having 5- options in the paper in place of 4 in order to induce more errors in marking

The questions also became of the type in which a student has more confusion in choosing the correct option. More confusion, more errors. More errors, more variation in scores.

This year, IIMs have already declared various criteria apart from CAT scores for giving calls. I suppose they are again expecting difficulty in giving out calls.

So how is CAT 2005 going to be?

Number of Questions: Since the 25 questions in every section didn’t work, I guess they will not try to reduce the number of questions further. This year I expect the number of questions in each questions to be between 30- 35. They might have different number of questions in various sections.

DI section: This section is where I am expecting the biggest change. If IIMs are even thinking of making CAT online, they would have to change the DI section the most as it is hard to solve big and tough DI set in front of the computer. I am expecting smaller questions (possible return of Data Sufficiency questions or small LR questions) along with other DI sets.

Verbal Section: A lot of emphasis on Critical Reasoning type of questions as they induce the biggest of confusion. The paper might have difficulty level same as CAT 2004.

Quant: Anybody’s guess.

Marking: Most probably variable. You might see recurrence of one-marker, two-marker questions.

Not to forget folks, it is all conjecture on my part. Please do not crucify me if I am wrong.

Hi TG,

Great analysis and more than that great pieces of advice.

I have watched those two movies and would definitely watch again on 17th. Way to go for TG!!!

So the mantra is 'it's going to be another mock for me' I will never ever think Nov 18th is any diff from any pre sundays...

fan·tab·u·lous  /fænˈtæbyÉ™lÉ™s/

[fan-tab-yuh-luhs] –adjective Slang.

extremely fine or desirable; excellent; wonderful.

---

[Origin: 1955–60; b. fantastic and fabulous]

 

Rare article, rare thoughts, rare genius - TG Sir!

 

Small Wonder!

Thanx sir

i think one more thing every cat aspirent must do in addition to watching films "READ THIS ARTICLE ".

You are actually a bigggggggggggggg TG = Total Ghodha

Excelent article

Hey just 2 words for you......

Dhanya ho !!!!!!

Abt to leave for d day. so thot of checking if there were any new articles on TG as usual.. felt very much happy in finding a new one.. (even thoh i didnt read, as iam very much sure tat watever article posted on TG will sure be benefitting us in d best way towards CAT..)

didnt feel like highlighting but felt like this minor typo in d article can be corrected..

So how is CAT 2005 going to be? (it's 2007)

Hi!!!..

This is my second post for this particular article... the first post "Dhanya Ho" was before I read the article and now that I have read it... I need to add two more words....

TG Sir----- "Darshan Do"

Cheers

One thing for sure.. I won't miss those movies.

TG,

Brilliant article  and a much needed one....... even I used to at times  ponder over these aimcats and simcats and mockcats.......... on their possible contribution to what one finally does on that day....... thanks again and yes I will check out "MIRACLE".......

terrific post TG!!!!

thanx a lot for the morale booster.. it did make a world of difference after reading ur post..

we may know few things among those u mentioned but there's a lot of difference in knowing them and Realising them .. u made us realise those ....

keep rocking TG,

-KK Kishore

thank TG this was an exellent article

Thanks again for this support

Thanks for the article!!!

...RK...

great article

certainly some of my doubts got cleared

Please suggest some books b4 the D day

TG Sir,

you are a genius ...

Aditya

TG ...I am not going to apppreciate you ..for this ...But I will say that This is a "MUST READ ARTICLE"

AND IT MUST BE REALEASED BEFORE A MONTH OR TWO

TG ROCKsssss.....

EVRY CAT STUDENT must GET A FACULTY LIKE YOU .....

Hi TG

THANKSSSS A LoT

was wishing some one could tell me all these things

Your words are such a relief

This is what setss TG apart from the rest

Thanks again

 AMAZINGGGGGGGGGGGG !!!

Thanks a lot !!! i left taking MockCat after 2   only

TG Sir,

How does it feel having received such great reviews and so many blessings?

Small Wonder!

THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH..... one thing which I have now( probably lacked earlier...) is Self-Confidence...and thats coz of TG......

Hi TG Sir,

I dont have any words for u...bt u are simply TG--Too Good

TG Sir,

We won't let you down!

Infact, if I get selected I would like to teach maths at TG voluntarily

Miles to go before I teach!

Small Wonder!

Hi TG

You have just striked the right chord !! I want to share my experiences now. May be it would help other guys . I used to score 75-98 % in mocks last year with a good score in QA and decent scores in DI. Used to follow the coaching's advice that "DO TAKE UR MOCK VERY SERIOUSLY AND TREAT IT LIKE REAL CAT" . Used to watch every serial and every news about the staggering no. of people taking CAT . I was surely on a disastorous path and finally it happened. On the C-day 2006 , I started with VA and broke down, or in other words , got completely choked in the first half itself! The reason , i found out later was that after giving 1 hour and 10 mins to VA , I formed a perception that the whole paper is going to be tough and i CAN NOT perform. Now since , i had made my mind, there was no way i could perform , so i made silly mistakes in QA and could not solve DI even. After seeing the paper outside the examination hall, i could solve the QA questions without a pen. It was a shattering performance.

Have joined the test series again this year but now for me , all it does is just to help gain my stamina , THAT'S IT ! I don't even give it a damn after comin out . In recent times, I have solved previous years CAT papers (happy to see that a genious is advicing the same) , marked tricky questions and just revised my concepts . And i know , i will do good this time.

Thanks TG for taking my grieviences out and boosting our confidence!!

You are a genious !!

This article was really a confidence booster..i always repent of not reading this kind of article 2-3 months before, when my confidence was shattered by these mock CAT and percentile scores. Anyway it's never too late. let me start it again.

thanks for this really good article.My preparations r not completed but i started giving tests but now i will give attention to my weak points.

u have done really great thing for giving tips for coming D-day

         from suchi sua  

thanx...!!

you are actually trying to make pple blv in themselves..!!

the Best thing tat u can do to any human being.!!

Ahaa.........

My assumption finally got a Stamp of approval ..

Thank you v much..

I allways assumed the same.............

I would also at somepoint of time in life would like to be associated with TG in material making/teaching ..

U Rock..

hi TG,

i would like to thank you for sharing such a nice analysis.

konik sood

Class analysis

i think its the best i've seen so far

HI TG

 HOW  RU

 A REALLY  GOOD AND HIGHLY PROLIFIC ARTICLE

TOO GOOD SIR !!!ILL SURELY  TRY OUT UR PERSPECTIVE OF WRITING LAST YEARS CAT PAPERS

REGARDS

GAYATRI

heyo TJ,

i am plannin to sit for cat in 2008!!

hope u would be by my side!!

keep rocking!

Let me share my thought well i have been trying cat for the past 3 years the first time i have scored 73.XX percentile second time 85.XX and lst that is @2008 i scored 95.XX as everyone iam too a IIm aspirant but i dint recived any calls no i feel like i have become complacent after years of hardwork.

Guide me or forward me you suggestions shall i end up again writing a cat next year or shall i reach out for part time MBA or an EXecutive Mba ( since my total work experience is 3.5 years and draw a gross package of 4.5 lakh ) and by the time if at all I qualify next year my work expereince we will be  5 yrs approx.

YOUR feebdcaks will be highly appreciated

Tks and regards

venky