with about a month or so to go

8/4/2019 With About a Month or So to Go

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With about a month or so to go, the question that junta is asking at this point is not Do I have it

in me to crack CAT? as much as Do I have it in me to crack me in crack CAT in a month?

Now let us presume that you present your problem to a management consultant like say

McKinsey, what would they come up with? Remember they would give you only strategic

advice, no actual implementation level micromanagement. Here are a few pointers that couldactually turn up in their analysis report:

(1) Dont boil the ocean

Simply put, dont try to do something unimaginably huge (boil the ocean) to bring results thatare not proportionate (get salt). This ways you will just cause more anguish when you realize

half way through that the latent point of boiling for the ocean is pretty huge. Another way to put

it is: Work smart, not hard.

Try to come up with a list of possible tasks for CAT and try figuring out what the amount of

effort required to do it is. At the end of it, you can either lessen the effort or cross it outcompletely. Here is an example. A lot of you may be wondering if it is really wise to do the

word-list. Go through a realistic run of where you are. This is a good time to go through the kind

of words given over the last 4 years (over which CAT has kind of streamlined the questions) andfigure if you really need to go through those huge word-lists. Amazingly at the end of the

exercise, you might want to do away with it all together, or go through a selective portion just toramp up your rusted skills. (For example, you might decide to do only the High Frequency

words from Barrons GRE.)

(2) Pluck the low-hanging fruits first

An important point that many students dont realize at this juncture, due to immense pressure, isthat it makes more sense for one to consolidate what he/she knows, rather than make animmature attempt to try learning everything. Do not attempt anything that is difficult. I have seen

many students coming to me at the nth moment asking if they should be attempting Permutation

Combination. My simple answer is If you have not done it in your schooling, if you have notdone it in college, if you have not done it through out your CAT prep so far, then the chances

that on November 21st the neurons in your brain actually go into a synaptical surge and the

answer will plop in front of you are well, to be frank quite bleak! Rather I would

strengthen topics I know wellpercentages, profit-loss, mensuration etc.

On the flip side, is it wise to be completely ignorant about these topics? The answer is a

resounding NO!!!! I strongly suggest you take out some time (a few hours perhaps from anotherwise eventful study schedule) for each of these dreaded topics and figure out which are the

formulae and basic types of problem. The test-setters of the more diabolic variety are known to

sneak in a few deceptively. Most test-takers are blissfully unaware of this till the coaching

institutes print a bold SITTER next to that question a day after the CAT and the cutoff seemsall the more further away. Better safe than sorry!

(3) Think out of the box


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Edward De Bono once famously remarked An expert is someone who has succeeded in making

decisions and judgments simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

Try to ensure that whatever you do from now on is not something that is mechanical or by rote,

but something that involves you actively in the process. So take up each problem and try figuring

out stuff likecan it work with some variation? How can anyone twist this problem? Is there asimpler way of doing this? How I can design a problem for someone along these lines? etc. etc.

In shorttry to internalize the problem you are solving.

A classic example is the mock CATs you have taken so far. Even for those questions which have

helped you inch towards the elusive cut-offstry to figure which were ill-considered attempts. Ihave seen many instances in the past when my reason for choosing a correct answer was

preposterous to say the least (I have, in good humor and on occasions, picked up answers

because, from among others, it sounded correct!) and yet managed to get them right. Try to sit

and figure if the same problem has a better way of doing it.

(4) Peel the onion

Layer by layerone thing at a time

Let us presume you have a problem with reading large data in DI. In short, number crunching is

not exactly one of your virtues, (normally these are areas you would not touch with a ten-foot

pole!), yet is a necessary evil which cannot be avoided (like say P&C). We need to figure outhow best to deal with this.

Take a couple of the mocks you have taken and try figuring out how you have done in it. See

what is it that actually stopped you from getting in the top percentile. I suck at numbers is an

answer which will neither aid your morale nor help you analyze yourself better. Be moreobjective and tough. Speed? Bad at approximation? The questions were too ambiguous?Whatever the reasonstry making a list of those things. Now instead of racking your brain alone

over what can be done for that, speak to someone at your institute. Better still, catch a

friend/mentor who has been there and done that for his/her insights on what can be done to

help bridge this gap. Remember that you may also use the boiling the ocean principle here and

remove any ideas of indulging in frivolous activities like learning Vedic mathematics at this

point.

(5) Paretos principle

The 80/20 rule. Some of the variations are :

20% of the time goes in doing 80% of the tasks, 20% of the business brings 80% of therevenue,20% of the world controls 80% of the money etc. The point here is: Try to figure which

is the 80% that is bringing you the marks and focus on that. I read somewhere what one of the

CAT 2003 100%iler had writtenhe had wanted to maximize on Verbal and tried to get cutoffin quant. And sure he maximized in Verbal with a score of 45 (and just around 17.5 in QA)!!


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There is no use spending all 1hour in quant and getting 2 marks more than the cutoff and

spending 20mins in verbal and get barely get the cutoff.

(6) Parkinsons Law

The law statesWork expands to fill the time available to do it I think the scourge of everyself-respecting graduate is doing a night-out to write that college journal a day before thesubmission. And we carry this habit with us to the work place too. Just look around you it keeps

happening all the timesoftware project, advertising campaigns, government decisionsyou

name it! So is it with CAT.

Set yourself challenging schedules and stick to it. Tell yourself you are going to analyze those

dreaded mock cats which have been piling on a corner for the last few months. Sounds

impossible right? But as the Nike ad says Just do it! Even if you are not able to complete it, sobe it, at the least you started and finished in a go. Keep challenging yourself; try sneaking out

every last minute you have to get something done. Do those distasteful tables when you are

having your smoke after lunch. Do those obnoxious RC practices when you are reading themorning newspaper.

And remember you cannot really challenge yourself unless you have a hard target to achieve.

(7) The fish cannot bat and I cannot swim

Words from Boycott could not be truer in the CAT perspective. Realize what your areas of

strength and areas of weaknesses are. But still at the end of the day there will be the odd ball

stud who licks the field clean. So in your approach you would be wise if you remember tosteer clear of any ego-issues. Dont try tackling that extra toughie DI problem set which goes

into 3rd decimals of approximation or the arcane RC passage on Madhubani paintings justbecause you are out there trying to prove you too are one. The point in case is that if you wereone, you would not have been struggling.

Last year there was this guy in IIT Chennai. He was a math and physics Olympiad with an IIT-JEE AIR of 12. He ended up with a 100%ile (and a score of 103 in CAT 2003!). He went on to

join IIM-B. Realize that there are always going to be guys like this. Instead of worrying about

them, realize that at the most there are going to be around 100 odd guys like this. Forget aboutthem. Think about the 1100 others who are vying for the same seat as you. And if you are really

bothered about such guys, then stock your fridge with some cold beer!

(8) Fail to plan then you plan to fail

Put in excruciating detail into the planning/scoping work before you start out. Make sure every

waking hour is accounted for. Doesnt mean you have to go overboard and start planning toaccount for each minute. Rather, a detailed account of how you are going to spend time over the

next month. A caveat to the fore-mentioned point. At times we do things just because it was inthe original plan. Make sure your plan is flexible. If a week before CAT you figure that doing


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more practice in RC is going to pay off, so be it!! But make sure you constantly check your plan

and ask Is it the right thing to do? rather than Am I doing it correctly?

(9) Life is what happens when you are busy making plansJohn Lennon (1940-1980)

Some words of wisdom that I keep telling myself everyday, CAT or no CAT. The longer I live,the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It ismore important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than

successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance,

giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company a church a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for

that day. We cannot change our past we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain

way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string wehave, and that is our attitude I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90%how I react to it.

At the end of the day it is a just an exam. Nothing more. Nothing less. No reason why you should

treat it differently. No reason why you should worry more. No reason why you should not think

about other things in life. No reason why you should not keep your cool. If you were expecting a

list of dos and donts I am afraid I might have disappointed you. But this is not meant to serve asone in the first placethe institutes are already doing a pretty good job of that. What I have doneis tried summarizing a few points (which I believe are neither mutually exclusive nor collectivelyexhaustive) to give you a checklist against which you can verify the usefulness of everything that

you would be doing from now on.

with about a month or so to go

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