[junkymailer]

Originally Posted by arun_juee

Does your IIM Pass Out PM ask you about your CAT preparation?

Does he ask you to leave early because it is Nov and CAT is coming?

Does your Practice Head,while deciding your new Project assignment consider that in Nov you need to stay in your Base Location?

During every May-June-July,do you think of quitting your job to prepare all-out-for-no-loss once for CAT?

Yes,I know..
You are finding similarities,beacuse these are the Questions of every next person appearing CAT,and you are one of them..

I am starting this Thread for Working Professionals appearing for CAT..

Our focus will be on coming CAT..
Now for CAT 2008..

Then may be for CAT 2009..

So that peers can get a help from this thread..

I expect this place will be some of our's Second Home..
You can share your success,failures,anything..and above all CAT related Discussions..
Like-Preparaiton,Stratagies,Scores,..I mean everything..

C'mon..
Lets build a Family..A BIG One..

Wishing You all Best Wishes for Coming New Year..
Always Keep Well..

P.S.-To Moderators,If you think this Thread is irrelevant,Please do the Needful.

If at all i had a IIM passout PM

[raghav507]

hi puys,
the next article in the monday Arun Sharma series...

CATch it, if you can
YOU CAN IMPROVE YOUR TEST SCORE BY DOING A CLOSE ANALYSIS OF YOUR BEHAVIOURAL PATTERN DURING THE DURATION OF A TEST. ARUN SHARMA TELLS HOW


With just two months left for the all-important CAT exam, most of you must be revising the syllabus, desperately covering new topics and definitely taking mock-tests. This time-frame is most crucial for your CAT preparation. However, we have observed over the time that most CAT aspirants are unable to utilise this time-frame well. And the typical experience for most students is that their percentile scores get stuck in a certain range in whatever mock tests they are taking. In today's article we will concentrate on a crucial question that must have been appearing in the minds of CAT aspirants at this stage — "How do I increase my test scores?" We want to communicate to you, at this stage, that a lot is possible in this direction — provided you are able to find the right things to do.
So what can be done? You can work in three directions to improve your test score:

• Ability improvement
• Belief improvement
• Test taking behaviour improvement

In this article we would be elaborating on the third issue — the test taking behaviour improvement.

In a past article, we mentioned that the statistics of CAT 2007 revealed — while a score of about 110 out of 300 was sufficient to score 99 percentile, a score of 70 plus gave a score of about 80 percentile. It is a moot point that a student scoring in a range of 80 percentile would think that s/he was away from cracking CAT. However, we believe that improving test scores by around 40 to 50 marks does not necessarily require a year's preparations. It could be a matter of just a few days to a few weeks — provided you hit upon the correct strategy and work dimensions to execute your preparation.
For every student, who will be able to increase test scores on his/her own, there would be over 25 aspirants whose scores would get stuck in a range, which can at best be considered sub-optimal when considered against the backdrop of his/her abilities.
In context of the marking pattern used over the last couple of years — four marks per question and negative one for a wrong answer — increasing your scores by approximately 50 marks could just mean overturning about 10 errors.
A close analysis of behavioural patterns during the test can help in improving the test score.
Your test score is directly dependant on your ability, as well as behaviour pattern in each of the three sections of the paper. However, even while the multitudes focus heavily on their ability aspect, little or no attention is given to the all-important aspect of behaviour.

You will be surprised how much change you can create in your test score by closely analysing your behavioural pattern during the test. The primary reason for this is that if you go back into the way your mind worked during the exam, you will realise that for major time chunks, during the exam, your mind was not working at all! You were thinking sub-optimally. Perhaps this is the reason why most students have had the experience of having got stuck and not being able to solve a question during the test period or being able to solve the same question without the examination pressure within a matter of seconds.
What are the components that you need to measure under behaviour patterns?

1) Your inherent and expressed insecurity with a particular section: Your inherent insecurity is the amount of residual fear that you carry within your mind with respect to a particular section. If you carry negative beliefs in your mind about a particular section (and/or a particular question type) it is bound to impede on your ability to score well in that area. Your expressed insecurity is the amount of your inherent insecurity that is brought out while solving the paper.
A negative belief that tells you: "I cannot solve Quant or data interpretation questions or English section" is the main reason for these insecurities. If you allow any of these insecurities to remain in your mind, it will hurt you badly inside the CAT.
Hence, your target before CAT is to remove these insecurities. In other words, in your mind you should shift to "I can" from "I cannot." While doing this, your focus should be to deal with each section by breaking it into different question types/chapters. We will be discussing this process of dealing with insecurity in each section independently in later articles in this series.

2) Your behavioural pattern in the first 5-10 minutes of the test: This time period can be defined as the warm up time during a test. Students make the mistake of either being overcautious or over nervous during this time period.

3) Your behavioural pattern in the last 15-20 minutes of the test: We have often observed good students falter in the last 15-20 minutes of the test paper. Does it happen to you too? If yes, you need to train your mind to keep its bearings when the pressure is on.

4) Your reaction to not being able to solve a question: There is a tendency among students to carry psychological scars of not being able to solve one question or a set of questions into the next set of questions. If you also have this tendency — you better guard against it through doses of positive thinking.

5) Your tendency to hold on to a question/inability to move out of a question within the appropriate time: Every exam that students take up until CAT, the philosophy is to keep trying a question till you crack it. In CAT, the paradigm changes. Here you might be more rewarded for leaving questions unsolved rather than trying it from different angles and wasting your time. For all you know the next question might be a matter of 15 seconds. Hence, if you are having the tendency to stick to a question, you need to train yourself to leave it as soon as it conveys the first danger signals to you.

The above negative behaviour patterns have a profound impact on your test scores. Unfortunately, while students work very hard on practising questions, they miss out on the opportunity to raise their scores by making minute adjustments to their behavioural pattern.
(The author is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore, a nationally renowned CAT trainer and the author of a series of best-selling books published by Tata McGraw Hill on CAT and other aptitude exams)

[Raja_The_Ruler]

Hi All,

I have been writing TIME - AIMCATs and CL- MOCK CAT for last few days. I am scoring between 80-85 percentile in CL-MOCK and 65-75 percentile in TIME-AIMCAT. My problem is in every exam I mess up one or two section, also there is no consistency in any section. e.g. in AIMCAT-11, I score 90 percentile in VA section but in next AIMCAT-09 I got 48 percentile in VA ,same with others.
What I have observed is, I lack in proper strategy to take up the exam. Can you people suggest me how to cope up this situation? Please also share your strategy to take up the exam.

Regards,
Raja

[raghav507]

Originally Posted by Raja_The_Ruler

Hi All,

I have been writing TIME - AIMCATs and CL- MOCK CAT for last few days. I am scoring between 80-85 percentile in CL-MOCK and 65-75 percentile in TIME-AIMCAT. My problem is in every exam I mess up one or two section, also there is no consistency in any section. e.g. in AIMCAT-11, I score 90 percentile in VA section but in next AIMCAT-09 I got 48 percentile in VA ,same with others.
What I have observed is, I lack in proper strategy to take up the exam. Can you people suggest me how to cope up this situation? Please also share your strategy to take up the exam.

Regards,
Raja

hi bhai,
you need to analyse the error properly...
that can be done by analysing the mocks in a thorough way...
this very thread has many posts regarding the same issue...analysing the mocks...
please go through them and they will definitely help you out...

don't get disheartened...if you are down once then try to come up with same force with which you went down...
it will definitely help...
best of luck...

[I Must]

Originally Posted by prez_bbe

free mock and an interesting one at that....

Hi,

Can u plz provide the URL from which u got this pdf?

[mrholmes]

Hi Puys,

Plz help me with this:

I have IT experience of over 3 yrs. Which all MBA collges should I go for ?
(have filled only CAT form till now)

Regards,
holmes

[keshav_lakhotia]

Originally Posted by mrholmes

Hi Puys,

Plz help me with this:

I have IT experience of over 3 yrs. Which all MBA collges should I go for ?
(have filled only CAT form till now)

Regards,
holmes

Fill up for SNAP too..

[raghav507]

Originally Posted by mrholmes

Hi Puys,

Plz help me with this:

I have IT experience of over 3 yrs. Which all MBA collges should I go for ?
(have filled only CAT form till now)

Regards,
holmes

hi buddy,
it will depend on your long term targets rather than any word of mouth...
have a look at this thread...
http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/cat-an...it-thread.html (Wondering which Bskools to apply visit this thread!!!)
it might be of some help...

[spiro]

Hi Friends...!!!

i have 2+ yrs of IT exp....

came back home after taking leave thinkng of slogging hard, and making the much needed improvement in these last few days.....

my mock scores since last year... va-(95-99),QA(80-93), overall(89-94)..nad my weakest section DI...(50-75).....

As advised by friends here, i haev tried to complete di sets from lst years time aimcat papers....have left out the very tough\lengthy ones as i felt i should not be attempting those in cat...

but now i am facing a tough proposition.....pressure.....

i am getting tense thnkng of the fact that i,v left my job fr 1.5 mnths and so i mst crack cat this tym.....this is really getting to me and im not able to execute my plans..... i am switching from one thing to another....

also, i had managed a 98.89%ile in aimcat09...but screwed up va for the first tym in aimcat08 in wat..maybe the first tym in last 20 aimcat's...this has further contributed to the pressure...

as far as my prep...

haven' done prob,P&C, COORD-GEO,SIMPLE INTEREST... am good otherwise....but still missing cut-offs in quant by a whsker or jst managing to clear it ..

what should be my strategy friends....i know preesure could be fatal but it's really gettng to my head....what should i do in these last few days.....????


Regarsd,
spiro

[nihilist1986]

Originally Posted by spiro

Hi Friends...!!!

i have 2+ yrs of IT exp....

my mock scores since last year... va-(95-99),QA(80-93), overall(89-94)..nad my weakest section DI...(50-75).....

but now i am facing a tough proposition.....pressure.....

Regarsd,
spiro

hii dude.. the game is all about handling pressure and nothing else.. dont let the pressure hit your preparation.. since u still have 1.5 months so dont stress yourself.. and CAT is not the end.. if you keep on thinking tat u've left your job and CAT is the only hope ten u r only adding to tat pressure..

as far as preparation goes.. u've been consistently performing well in VA but for the last mock, so check y did u falter to score this time.. is it tat over-hyped pressure of urs.. and still take the positive tat even wen u dint perform well in ur strongest section still u managed a very decent percentile.. tis means tat u must hv scored well in other two sections..

as far as QA goes i knw one is not well versed with all the topics.. still u shd hv the basic understanding.. In CAT, I believe half of the questions require logic and no formula at all.. so analyse ur mocks very well..

u've mentioned tat u r already working on DI so no need to say about tat.. still practice variety of questions in DI.. reasoning, charts, data sets.. and practice Data Sufficiency as it requires the conceptual understanding..

P.S. all i can give are suggestions.. the strategy has to be ultimately devised by you.. and chuck out tis pressure thing from your mind.. one or two day before CAT plz stop thinking about CAT and go with an open mind.. forget about the mocks, pressure and all..

ATB for the D-Day