Picking Up The Right Questions - What Difference It Makes!!!!

[navneeth_keys]

Hi everyone
I start this post so that everyone (including me) gets to know about one of the most crucial aspects of taking CAT - picking up the right questions. I would like to have all your posts regarding how you choose or reject a question that appears in CAT.
Every area in CAT is different and picking up questions is a matter of the test taker's convenience. Also the strategy to be adopted in picking up the right questions seems to vary with every aimcat/simcat/mockcat you take.
Now coming to my case, I have a very peculiar problem - getting marks in short bursts rather than uniformly over the entire 2 hours. I am a TIME student and when I take an aimcat, I feel I cannot sit through the test for 2 hours with utmost concentration. I lose my concentration every now and then. When I lose my concentration, I waste time on improper questions and screw up the sections.
I am working on improving my concentration. But is there any generalised rule that has has to be followed in order to pick up the right questions?
Is there any way one can identify what kind of questions one is strong at?
The above questions may sound silly, but i'm asking them because even after 12 aimcats, i've still not been able to identify my weak areas. Cos i've got over 98%ile in all of them and also missed sectional cutoffs by more than 3 marks. So for inconsistent guys like me what is the right strategy?
If you people can post messages on how you choose the right questions, it will be very helpful.
Regards,
Navneeth

[Jackal]

Originally Posted by navneeth_keys @ Mon Oct 04, 2004 12:07 am

If you people can post messages on how you choose the right questions, it will be very helpful.

evry1 has his own way.. u have 2 make ur own.. ( i wish even i had one but unfortunately lack this ut-important skill of picking Qs)
it usually is based on the areas ur comfortable.. with.. like if u r comfortable with algebra.. so attempt Qs based on tht... some ppl also go by the length og the Q like if it i s just a 2 line Q attempt tht.. (though may not always work) look its all upto u.. no 1 can explain ne1 which Qs 2 attempt.. u havta develop ur own strategy..
thz wht CAt is all abt.. isn't it..

Cheers

[G O V A R]

Originally Posted by navneeth_keys @ Mon Oct 04, 2004 12:07 am

Hi everyone
I am a TIME student and when I take an aimcat, I feel I cannot sit through the test for 2 hours with utmost concentration. I lose my concentration every now and then. When I lose my concentration, I waste time on improper questions and screw up the sections.
I am working on improving my concentration. But is there any generalised rule that has has to be followed in order to pick up the right questions?
Is there any way one can identify what kind of questions one is strong at?

If you people can post messages on how you choose the right questions, it will be very helpful.
Regards,
Navneeth

Actually there is no defined right strategy to choose questions. English, you can have a predermined idea of what to choose and in which order. Generally people try to choose all the non-RC questions and then 3/4 out of the RCs.

DI, its entirely your comfort level. If you are good in LR, you can go for that. But its alyways a high risk/high return section. Either you get all the q's in 2 mins or don't in 10 mins. Watchout. My strategy (if it helps!) was to isolate all easy looking DI sets (the ones with lesser diagrams/simpler looking q's) first and solve it. Then I'll go for some LRs and then come back to some more DI. That was just what I did. Practice mighty helps to identify easy questions in DI!

In quants, its always very tough to find easy questions. So I went by comfort areas. I was quick in number oriented and geometry oriented questions that in Time/distance etc. So, I try to choose those questions first.

Check the 'How to solve quantitative apt for CAT" by Amit Sharma. The book gives details of the importance u gotta attach to sections.

ATB.

[navneeth_keys]

thanx jackal & govar. jus wantd to know this cos when something goes wrong during the test, it is in quants that my marks come down to ridiculously low single figures . And i still am clueless about picking RC ones cos i dunno which of them are dicey .
Anywayz thanx. I'll check out that book.

[coolcataspirant]

When i studied in TIME i learnt a golden rule -- IF a question could not be understood in 30 seconds there's a fair chance that you would not solve it even if u spent 2 minutes over it.. So ditch it there aint any point pondering over it.. For all u know 75000 other people might have found it difficult too.. So use the 30 second rule -- if u read a question and u get something within 30 s then continue else forget it... There are 149 more questions... And as far as concentration goes u better develop it soon.. Coz u don't have any pressure in MOCK CAT... But in the real CAT anything may happen -- lousy hall supervisors who crack jokes among themselves, a loud speaker blaring in the neighbourhood, your pencil lead breaking anything may upset you -- so start concentrating from now !!!!!!!!!!

-- Karthik

[pabby]

Well it can make a difference of taking a guy in or out of the IIMs . This is especially true for the guy who is just at the border of crossing the cut-offs. If u can choose the right questions then in most probability u will get that right in very short time.
So it's necessary for one to pick the right questions.

If he chooses a wrong question it will take more time and even though if one gets that right it will not be worth it.

[shatadipsom]

I would add something here. Like someone said...that during the actual cat anything can upset someone...it happened to me last time. The venue was Presidency college in kolkata. The students were practising songs with an orchestra and that destroyed the CAT for a few hundred aspirants! Even I gave a very bad paper because i couldn't concentrate at all with the blasting music! months of hard work went down the drain.

so although these things are out of our hands, one mush ensure as far as they can that the environment is more or less cool and raise a protest as soon as one finds something distracting them