Difference in Quality of Test Series Student Base

[Psychodementia]

I forgot to add something to address the question for which the thread was started in the first place :

Quality of student *is* different among the tests for the top 100-200 students. Cracking into IMS top 10 is insanely more difficult (on a consistent basis too). CL is kind of easier. But TIME is the easiest. I don't know if its just "quality" or if the instis actually skew their rankings (like having faculties take the mock tests etc).

Take an example, (and I hope he reads this thread), in 2002 Phillip TJ was consistently topping the TIME AIMCATs (he had a record number of firsts in a row) yet could never come 1st on the IMS SimCATs. For those who came in late, he had a 100%ile that year.

But having said that, there is a bell-shaped curve of distribution. So over a few thousand people the quality almost always remains the same. The only parameter here being there should be a test-base of atleast 5000 students.


Arun

[samba77]

I think CL mocks come closest to CAT in terms of balance. But it does not matter as much as the follow-up. I think the classroom analysis + one-one that chari at CL chennai does is gr8 ...
that's where i realized how similar the CAT paper was to the mocks and how it has evolved over the years. They even have the scores of students who made it to the IIMs last year and how they were scoring in the mocks. I got a single call , couldn't convert. but this time i'm much better placed. though i cannot comment about IMS as I haven't attended their classes(only TIME and CL). Though, last year I can vouch that student quality (density) at CL was better than that of Time which can be measured by ranks-percentile.
i am an example.
i think some of chari and gopi's sessions are wonderful especially the geometry and puzzles workshop.
I would definitely say... look at 95%ile plus whether u r in Time or IMS or CL... and try to stay there...
We should also try and look at sharing good mock questions on this forum.. whatdasay folx??

[methuselah]

Thanks for the inputs...

Feeling a lot better now

I've vowed not to touch the TIME papers which daunt me...

Now concentrating just on CL mocks ...

And did someone mention chari ?? Hope u've seen his presentation " CAT paper demystified." ...He gave a lot of inputs on it....

He was talking abt iit-chennai ppl ...specially tdubey ....His sessions on puzzles and QA are great...and not to leave out shivku

Hope the CAT goes CL way :MG:

Thanks one and all ..

Methu...

[Psychodementia]

Hey all these CL names brings back fond memories

Shivku is one big stud when it comes to quant, I think he is up there in the top 10 in the whole country. There is the founder Satya whose personality is so overpowering you almost think he has an aura around him. Also Gautam Puri whose people skills are exceptional to say the least. Mumbai region had Manish Salian and ......damn forget his name..... who were superb in quant. I know Gopi and Chari personally. They had attended some CL faculty workshop with me in Delhi. Gopi has a personality which hits you like a sledge-hammer

Oops... I think Im going off-topic

Arun

PS : What was that guy in Bombay called ? A fair IIM-L faculty.

[starsunil]

Originally Posted by Psychodementia @ Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:58 pm

All things being equal (what I mean is you are taking all the tests which a same state of mind), here are the parameters which could possibly help you analyze the apparent discrepancy :

I am a verbal-heavy guy in this aspect I rate IMS, CL and TIME in that order. TIME verbal questions are not exactly the standards to go by. I figured they had this guy sitting in some obscure corner of Hyderabad coming up with something all the time. IMS is excellent to say the least. Right up from the course material to their SimCATs. CL was bad till a couple of years ago with their course material atleast but the tests used to be decent.

Given the above scenario a guy who is bad in Verbal has the most to gain in the TIME tests (since they are non-standard - the good guy always looses :P).

Coming to quant. I found TIME to be tough on most counts. Sitters were missing in about 40% of the tests that I took last year. I mean sitters as in the ones you could "spot". After the test Quant always gave you a distasteful feeling in mouth. I am speaking on behalf of most junta. And as you know in Quant, if it is a tough section, most people loose their bearings and end up screwing up the entire section. With CL the case is that there are these odd sitters sprinkled all over the place, kinda easy to spot if you get the knack of solving CL papers. With IMS its a Tamil Nadu election result. Either everyone screws up big time or everyone ends up scoring decently.

Hence for Quant heavy person, IMS doesn't provide much leverage to catapult his scores to a higher stratosphere. CL allows you to do it to some extent. TIME gives you all the margin you need to beat the hsit out of the competition.

So what I meant to say is : If you are a quant heavy, verbal deficient person, TIME is the best to boost your scores. If you are the other way round, IMS is for you. CL is kind of neutral in this aspect.

This is my personal analysis done over the last 15minutes, and the data is not of this year. Heck this year I have not even seen a single paper !!! *

HTH,

Arun

arun wat u mean by "time is bad in verbal"??Iam actually scoring in the range 22-28 in the mocks so far ( in a three section paper) and was thinking it was decent....
now when u mean its bad do u say its below standard???????u mean the verbal scores in actualy cat will be better or worse????Pls enlighten..

sunil

[Psychodementia]

I mean that the Verbal is kind of tricky. What it means is that the type of questions are not "Standard" and doesn't test your English to the core. Also the answers esp for RC are not unambiguos. More times than not I used to feel sore after looking up the explanation.

BTW, in a standard CAT a 30+ should ensure you atleast 98%ile+ and 35+ would surely be 99.2%ile+. So about 26 means 96%ile which is definitely decent.

HTH,

Arun

[enjoymohit]

Errrrrrr...just a bit of clarification here

Last year retest I had 28.25 in Eng and had 98%ile...so something above 33 should be atleast 99.2%ile.....

I also completely agree with Arun that Aimcats doesnt have the CAT standard Eng....although I cannot explain tht whether it is difficult or easy then CAT.....but definitley no CAT like ......just a small example.....

My %ile in English in the CAT(retest) 98%ile
In AIMcats .....FLUCTUATES B/W 85-96%ILE....BUT NEVER BEEN ABLE TO SCORE HEAVILY
I attempted a CL Mock 2(last years paper) today and have scored 99%ile.....according to last year analysis

I know the scores would fluctuate but it is my gut feeling that ....naah AIMcats English is not CAT comparable.....

Comments welcome....

Cheers

Mohit

[Psychodementia]

Originally Posted by enjoymohit @ Wed Oct 20, 2004 3:52 pm

Errrrrrr...just a bit of clarification here

Last year retest I had 28.25 in Eng and had 98%ile...so something above 33 should be atleast 99.2%ile.....

I stand corrected. Mohit is more on the target.

Arun

[THUSSU]

Originally Posted by t2s @ Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:23 pm

Don't forget the 'verbose' factor in DI and quant. Good quant / di studs tend to loose out when the questions are too 'wordy'. CL is one-liner or two liner types...IMS (and maybe time) are lenghthier if not also tougher. BTW Cat is not 'wordy'

So good RC skills are also much more required in quant / DI of Ims( and Time)

the 2002 cat quant paper was extremely verbose, so what you say may not be true..

as far as the variation across the mocks from various instis in concerned, i suppose the only thing we can do is ensure that we maintain a good percentile, irrespective of the mock we are giving. a 99 in CL and 85 in Time might not be a good sign and may require a revamp of strategy. the ultimate objective of all catters is to have a dynamic strategy that can fit into any possible cat exam pattern. this is very important given the unpredictability of the exam.
as long as we can keep up a 98+ percentile, irrespective of the mock, we are in the top 300 of that exam.
this way, even if there are 4 top cat training instis, one should manage to just about squueze into the top 1200 (worst case?)...although i agree that the worst case could be much worse!!
we all feel desolate and helpless after a bad test, but lets not put paid to our efforts. its just a sprint to the cat date now, so lets give it all we've got!

:P

[t2s]

the 2002 cat quant paper was extremely verbose, so what you say may not be true..


7 questions in the 'verbose' CAT 2002 were more than 3 liners, as many as 25 questions were 1 or 2 liners. In comparison SIMs test the RC skill much more in quant, where distribution is sometimes just the opposite....ofcourse we need to be prepared for everything.