CAT - common errors and how to avoid them

With a little less than two months to go for CAT2016, the focus of the aspirants should start moving towards how to best utilise the time they have in the exam and thereby get the best score possible. Students have different approaches in which they try and get the best possible score.

CAT is different from most of the examinations that students have written so far in school / college. This article serves to point out the some common pitfalls that students should be on the lookout for, during their preparation and during the test.

Having a pre-decided target

Unlike most other exams, Bschools using CAT are not looking for you to score a certain pre-determined score. They look for the percentile rank, i.e., students who can score more than most others.

If you set a target of a minimum number of marks that you want to score, then you can be under pressure if you fail to reach the same in case of a tougher paper, and be complacent in case of an easier paper. Hence, set no target in terms of attempts or score. Attempt as many as questions as you are sure of.

Believing that more attempts automatically mean more marks – They don't

With negative marking, the belief that more attempts will invariably get more marks is a dangerous one! 2 factors determine the score obtained – Number of attempts & Accuracy. These two are not independent of each other – focusing solely on one will result in a drop of the other.

Therefore, the target of the students should be to improve on both at the same time. This needs a well thought out plan for preparation and practice – before the exam and during the exam. Blind and wild guessing is clearly a no-no.

Excessive focus/dependence on one area
Excessive focus on any area may not work on your favour if your slot doesn't contain as many questions as you expected. You will be left dry, with questions from other areas on which you did not put much effort.

Selective preparation
This is the other extreme of the point we discussed above. Going to the exam, not preparing on some topics because you are not comfortable with them is very risky. You may end up looking at a paper with more than the normal number of questions from the exact topic that you left out from your preparation.

With sections being individually timed in CAT 16, you may end up with time on your hands but may not be able to do much with it as the remaining questions in the sections are from the areas that you chose to ignore.

By: RAMNATH KANAKDANDI
The writer is Course Director CAT, TIME, Hyderabad