How to prepare for CAT Exam in 100 days
Any reasonable aspirant will need approximately 500 hours of overall preparation to pass CAT exam. Given that there are 15 weeks left, one needs around 33 hours each week, or 3-4 hours per day during the week and 15+ hours on weekends combined. This includes studying, practicing, and taking mock tests, and analyzing the results. The earliest phases place an emphasis on learning, with little practice and even less on mocks. A month later, you’re learning diligently while answering a thousand inquiries simultaneously.
A month later, you’ll take a tonne of mocks, aggressively analyze them, and return to learning/practice based on the gaps you uncover in your mock analysis.
Also read: Importance of CAT Mock Tests
How to Make the Most of Your Time
Spend 2 hours per day on Quants. Begin with Arithmetic, which is one of the most significant topics for Quantitative Ability. Once you’ve finished Arithmetic, move on to more difficult Quant topics and begin preparing for DI and LR. Every day, read for one hour. Practice with previous CAT papers, preferably as tests.
Change your mindset toward precision.
75% accuracy is nonsense. To achieve a high score, you must have near-perfect accuracy in QA and DI-LR. I freak out every time a student claims he or she has attempted 26 questions in Quant and expects 75% accuracy. Which questions do you anticipate being incorrect? Why did you try these? Or is it more than one question?
Reduce your efforts.
Carry out this activity. Reduce your tries in Quant and DI-LR until you have everything correct. Reduce the number of attempts dramatically. If you’re currently attempting 19 questions and routinely getting 4-5 wrong, try 10 and get them all right. Your score may suffer, but you will be better off for having watched one error-free mock. You may even have an Aha moment that influences the rest of the mocks.
Study in small groups and do your best.
When I was genuinely prepared for a competitive exam many years ago, I was the ‘flair’ candidate. A typical 50-question paper might have 40 standard questions and 10 hard ones. I’d get 36-37 of the standard ones and 5-6 of the tough ones correct? Students rarely got more than 2-3 of the tough ones correct, therefore I was usually among the top few in math.
A new kid entered our group and used to do exceptionally well. This astonished us because he was never the man who had the best approach to any new hard topic. After a few weeks, I noticed he used to do really well since he used to get all 40 of the usual ones correct, and quickly enough to grit his teeth and get two of the tough ones correct as well.
Also read: Tips to Improve Accuracy in CAT Exam
For CAT, three months are sufficient.
You may not realize it, but students used to believe that three months was approximately the perfect amount of time to prepare for this exam. Before CAT preparation became an industry (in the early 2000s), practically all of us used to think about CAT about mid-August and only then begin to prepare grudgingly. However, due to the abundance of 12-month, 18-month, and 24-month CAT courses, students have come to assume that this is a phenomenally difficult exam.
Make a note of this: the CAT is a verified non-genius exam. 90% of students who perform well on this exam and achieve a score of 99th percentile or higher are bright candidates with no pretensions about their abilities. They plan well, work hard, and take a lot of flak, but they’re just guys with slightly above-average IQs.
Squeeze out every last minute.
Cut that extra half-hour of a sitcom, sleep for one hour less, and answer inquiries during your lunch break. If you have no other options, read articles from The Economist or The Guardian. But, from now until the big day, cut all corners and find additional time.
Best resources to crack CAT in 100 days!
