VA and QUANTS- cold blooded murderers!

[pmstar_044]

Hi again,

I am trying CAT for the first time this year. I thought CAT was easy. God knows what made me think so. Now I am in jitters. My score is pathetic. My attempts in mocks are 50-60 max. And that too in DI it is better(sometimes) and fair enough in RC. These are my scoring areas. I should say I am pathetic in Quants while all these years I thought I was good at mathes. VA - here again all my misconceptions have vanished. Got to know how raw I am in this section. Especially in sentence correction. Please can anyone suggest me how I can improve my accuracy in it. My attempts are arount 40 and score 15-16. Again we have these set of 4 sentences formed with a single word. We got to find the sentence where the ussage is wrong. There again I get trapped. Waste some time and realise I dont have any clue to the answer. Can anyone suggest me how to crack these questions. And the in Quants. Please help me out. My attempts as low as 10-11 and minimum 4 wrong answers. I want to improve my attempts and score. Sometimes or to say often when I solve the same quants section at home I easily find 10 more easy questions which I didnt find in the exam hall. How do I search for the easy questions fast and improve my accuracy too. Help me out friends....
priya [glow=darkorchid:267c2c267b][/glow:267c2c267b][glow=darkorchid:267c2c267b][/glow:267c2c267b]

[Evanescence]

Welcome to CAT, priya!

I had the same problem. I know exactly what your problem is because I have been through it all.

I too think I'm great at quant and I feel insulted when I spot a seemingly easy question and cant solve it. earlier i used to 'fight' with these problems and solve them in 5min. but wats d point? thats d trap u hv to watch out for. if u cant get d hang of it/solve it in 30 sec forget it.

The strategy effectively boils down to picking at least 20 easiest questions from 50, right? The first thing u gotta decide is what kinda ques u wanna ans. Next step is to look for such questions. So u will now leave questions which do not fall under ur fav categories. also u must identify d sitters...d ones in which u can substitute values and arrive at an answer...problems tht require only listing out and counting etc.
at the end of this process im sure u will have 20-25 ques that can b ans in 1 min each. assuming u take 20 sec to read a ques, the 25 ques u leave will cost abt 9 min only. so u wud hv done about 25 prob in 35 min.

i know all this sounds very simple. but i hv sort of made it my habit by extensive practising.

Hope this cleared some points.

All the Best.

[Evanescence]

Hey Priya,

Regarding ur query on VA, i think d best way to develop skills is by reading a lot. since we dont hv much time its not a very feasible option. but do read d editorials of newspapers and read mag. it helps in impoving reading speed and so helps immensely in RC. chk out d material given by TIME for VA. i think its pretty exhaustive (though i hv never opened it!).

attempt 3-4 rc and dont leave any of d vocab stuff... analogies, incorrect usage, grammar,fill-in. attempt those PJs which u r sure of. i think u can get a score of 20 with 32-35 attempts.

my errors in VA/RC is alway high (around 10) and i make only 30-32 attempts. so im finding the going tough too esp since i thin quant and verbal are my strong areas and i need to maximise here. its diff o go by logic/reasoning in VA. one has to trust his instincts.

Good Luck!

[ImpossibleGuy]

Maybe, U ppl are from science background. And hence, The thinking that math is easy meat. Yes its still easy. But Under time-pressure, everything vanishes and it needs real common sense and intuition and NO-PENCIL-WORK to get through

[Evanescence]

Originally Posted by ImpossibleGuy @ Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:27 pm

Maybe, U ppl are from science background. And hence, The thinking that math is easy meat. Yes its still easy. But Under time-pressure, everything vanishes and it needs real common sense and intuition and NO-PENCIL-WORK to get through

Dude,

tell me honestly... how many ques in CAT do u think needs a science background? im sure u'll agree with me that d level is of std X. all we need to do is to brush up on d basic concepts n work on improving our speeds/learning shortcuts.

ain't i right?

and there r those ques which jus need common sense (as u very rightly say) and some which require jus simple arithmetic or counting or substitutions.

considering all these, d trick is just to identify these ques( im sure there'll at least b 18 such ques) and ans 'em all correctly.

Dont lose hope, pal.

ATB.

[catbert]

I suppose the only consolation to u is to say that everyone has been there, done that!