CAT 2007: Strategise, analyse and practise!

As CAT rapidly approaches, many students find the pressure unbearable.

In order to help you deal with some of the tension, we're publishing previous student experiences regarding CAT. Remember, you're not alone!

Nikesh Rathi who scored in the 99.52 percentile in CAT and is a second year student at IIM Lucknow, shares his CAT advice:

We are just around a fortnight away from the most important and perhaps the most hyped day for any aspiring B school aspirant!

Assuming that you are through with your basic preparations and are giving your mock tests regularly, now the important things are strategise, analyse and practise, in that order.

Don't let the hype affect you and don't get bogged down by pressure

Share you CAT experience and advice!

You may get hazaar words of advice on what time to sleep, what to do in the last week, which kind of movies to watch, what to eat, what to study and what not to do on the last day, what to do 48 hours before the CAT, what to do 24 hours before CAT etc etc.

Don't just blindly follow this advice though. Do what you LIKE to do. It is quite normal to have butterflies in your stomach before the exam. Just ensure couple of things:

1. Don't press the panic button. You get nothing by getting panicky

2. Don't get too stressed out in last couple of days

As for preparation during last few days:
Give around 2-3 tests per week, including some that gives an all-India ranking. And most importantly, analyse them. Before giving the tests analyse previous tests and look out for grey areas and unattempted questions. Try especially to look for the sitters that you might have probably missed.

Check out for the questions you got wrong, especially the easy ones

By now, you must have developed a strategy for attempting questions in the paper (ie order of the sections, which kind of questions in each section to attempt or leave). Don't play around with them now, and stick to those for the last few days.
Stick to your strengths. If you are not comfortable with certain kind of questions in any section, place it last in your priority of attempts. Also, don't try to challenge yourself to solve a question in case you are not able to do it. This is one mistake that many people make and end up wasting a lot of time. So beware!
Don't get panicky if the paper appears too difficult. Remember, in this case it will be difficult for others also, and it is the relative score that matters. On the other hand, if any section is too easy, ensure that you have decent number of attempts so as to clear the cut off, as others would be trying to maximise in that section. Don't deviate too much from the time you generally devote to each section.

Try to solve papers under test conditions. In case you are writing the paper at home or anywhere not under test conditions, try to write the test without any interruption and give around 10 minutes less than stipulated time (accounting for the disturbances you may have to encounter during actual test!)

All the best for CAT!

Remember the golden words --"Don't panic"

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