With only 60 days left for one of the most difficult and yet popular exams, CAT, there is need for the aspirants to keep certain key aspects in mind. Not treat this test like a typical university exam, concentrate on the percentage and not the percentile and most importantly, work on performance, says Arun Sharma
With only two months left for the D-Day CAT exam, what needs to be communicated clearly to every aspirant is that in order to maximise his chances of doing well on the test day, there are a few things that need to be kept in mind.
Realise that CAT is not like your typical school/university exam. One of the common mistakes most aspirants make is to prepare for this exam on the same pattern as preparing for a university exam. What people across the country make the mistake of doing is to focus solely on studying for the exam. This then translates for them into running blindly towards portion coverage and portion completion — at the cost of doing the more critical aspects of understanding how to approach this exam.
Not that you should not complete the portion that you have set aside to do. But for the CAT, working on your ability is as crucial as working on your performance. Yes, test taking performance becomes the key differentiator between the good and the great. Hence, working towards improving your ability to perform in test taking situations is perhaps a vital cog in the preparation cycle.
The majority of aspirants miss out on this very crucial aspect of the exam preparation and hence never get close to the kind of scores they should score. look at it this way — A batsman with great ability and skills who does not know how to perform in a match when there are thousands of people watching.
Obviously the question that arises is: What are the aspects one needs to take care of in order to improve on one’s performanceIJ Well of course the first of it is about making sure that you take a lot of tests (minimum of 25 to 30). You would need to do these tests spread over a minimum of three to four months ideally, but if you have not started yet, please do so immediately. Don’t wait to complete studying the entire portion before you start your testing. You can start so by initially doing one test a week and then increasing to two and later even three or more tests per week. But the bottom line is ‘start taking tests’. And of course, ‘start getting scores’.
From one test to the next, your focus should then shift on how to improve your ‘score’. Your last couple of months of preparation process should be consumed with going back and forth between: First, the work you do to improve your ability by going back to the basics. Second, analysing your test performance and third, taking more tests with an eye on improving your score in the tests
While doing so, focus only on your percentage score and not on your percentile — this is again where differences arise among majority of the aspirants who are taking test. Usually aspirants get excessively bothered by the percentile that they are scoring in their tests. There is need to understand, that your percentile means nothing. Block that out completely from your reading of your test score. Instead, channelise all your energies towards strategising and working towards your percentage scores. Remember the adage — Take care of your percentages and your percentiles will take care of itself.
Analysing your performance is the next big thing. When you start your test taking process you would realise that solving questions under the pressure of a test is very different from solving questions in practice under normal conditions. Each of the following things is likely to occur to you: Silly errors; Not being able to solve questions that you knew and would normally be able to solve; Not being able to read a significant part of the test; Getting stuck in individual questions; Allowing the negative experiences of previous questions/sections to influence and defile your mind while solving further questions; Your focus and concentration while taking the test waxing and waning over the period of the three-hour exam; Allowing your emotions to interfere in your thinking – by getting overly depressed or overly excited.
How you control your mind and minimise each of these influences becomes a vital indicator of how far you would go with your test score. Remember, the difference between a 99 percentiler and an 85 percentiler is never more than five to seven questions. After a certain point, it is not about ability. It is about performance.
(The writer is CEO of Mindworkzz & an IIM Bangalore alumnus)