We have about 40 days left for the CAT. This is the time when students are faced with a unique problem — Mock scores have hit a plateau at their respective levels. And most are facing the same dilemma — I don’t want to increase my speed and go below the current scores and get demotivated, but if I don’t increase my speed my scores will not go up, what do I do. Well, in this blog we will try to resolve this dilemma that our beloved students are currently facing.
Are you solving in Autopilot mode?
One of the things that are very common about test-taking is that your best scores will take everything out of you, you will not be doing it comfortably. All of us, have two modes of solving, one is solving comfortably knowing that we will do well enough, this is the autopilot mode — you are driving the car at 60 and you can do it without having to concentrate very hard — the second is when you are fully on and are smashing your best times — you are driving the car at 80, you are aware of every turn, every bit of pressure you are applying on the accelerator and the on the brake.
So to cut a long story short, you need to up the intensity during the 60 minutes of a section. But the intensity is only half the battle, how and what do you direct the intensity towards?
Taking the VARC scores a notch above!
You will find that sometimes the intensity with which you approach RC might be missing. So tighten that bit and focus. On RC questions, you are getting all the direct/specific questions right but the moment it comes to inferences or indirect questions such as which if the following will add least depth to the author’s argument, you either make a mistake or are okay leaving it since you are getting the other questions right.
Goes without saying, If you need to squeeze out more from the RC questions, you have to thread the needle on the tougher application questions. You have reached that stage of the match where you need to make the big shots, you can’t be comfortable taking a single, so ask yourself,
- Do you pause at the end of the passage to paraphrase the main idea?
- Do you pause at the end of a question and before going to the options to frame the function that the right answer should perform in other words the shadow answer?
If you are not doing these things then you will always be stuck at these scores in VA-RC.
If you are already doing these things and have good accuracy, there is only way up, read faster, do not be scared, all you have to do while reading faster is concentrate deeper. Remember, it will not be comfortable, if you want comfort make peace with your current scores.
Teach your brain new approaches to get a good hold of dicey DILR sets
With DI-LR, aspirants say that they seem to have got hang of the selection to reach a decent score but then they are beaten by a tough DILR section in the mock test.
In the next 40 days, resolve all the sets from CAT 2017 2018, 2019, and 2020 again. Select the right sets at the beginning, spending 10 minutes, and then try to knock off 4-5 sets in 40 minutes.
Sit for an hour or more to analyze this:
- Are you good at making number combinations of totals based on ratios given?
- Do you realize that if 5 cells have the possibilities P/Q/R, R/T/S, P/Q/T, P/T, and P/T then P and T can be eliminated from the first three?
You will find that you are currently limited to a few approaches. When faced with Mathematical Reasoning sets, your brain does not throw up such suggestions to make number combinations or write equations.
If you spend enough time with the solutions of the 9 DI-LR sections that I mentioned earlier then you will teach yourself newer mathematical reasoning pathways. This will help you to change your DILR game.
Do you step out of the crease to Quant questions?
There is a lot of you who like QA and score decent marks comfortably. Can you do better in terms of core QA ability, yes, but are you doing it no. Are you happy with QA, yes, but then you also see people with similar ability attempting 24-26 and getting 20-22 questions right and wonder what they are doing?
Increasing intensity on the QA section means that you are solving at a faster pace than you normally solve and that happens in two ways. The first, writing fewer steps, never writing whole equations can do wonders. To put it simply if people look at the solution to a question on your sheet they should not be able to understand a thing — it should just be a few numbers written here and there. The second is to use your wit to go from answer options, to approximate& eliminate appropriately and find the questions where ratios might work better than equations. You may not be able to solve many questions by these methods but if you can get 4-6 right, that can transform your score.
Isn’t this exactly what England did to India in the 2019 World Cup — four of their batsmen, Jason Roy, Bairstow, Root, and Stokes, hit six unconventional hits to the fence, primarily reverse sweeps. This not only accelerated their score but also put a lot of pressure on the bowlers.
Now some of you might say — but if Virat Kohli can’t do it, can we? The fact is that if a batsman as staid and traditional as Joe Root can do it then anyone can. Indians did not try not because they couldn’t but because they felt they needn’t. Our high scores were a function of a couple of batsmen going big and not a function of an entire team having the array of unconventional strokes that have become common in the modern game.
Some of you might ask — but are they not high risk? Some of the shots in T20 cricket such as the upper-cut or the scoop or the ramp shot were shots that were started by an individual player but now they have become commonplace with everyone mastering it. Ben Stokes hit a reverse sweep for six in the recent historic chase during the Ashes, it means that it is no longer a high-risk shot for him, he exactly knows which balls to do it on, just like good solvers know exactly the question on which to use answer options. So start stepping out of the crease and go big!
Just to be clear, we are not advocating a laissez faire risk-taking approach. A reverse sweep is a risk only if you pull it out for the first time in a final. It is less of a risk if you have played it 100 times in the nets. The key idea is to not become staid and conservative during your mocks – and this can be achieved by taking some risk.
Another thing that might be stopping you is that there still are one or two areas that you do not like to solve questions from, you might end up spending more time on a tougher question from your favorite area than doing an easy one from an area you do not fancy. Revise the QA section of the previous CAT question papers to go through them to look at easy questions from areas that you do not like.
How to stay relaxed in the last lap?
Break the psychological barrier
Train your mind to not exhibit any sort of emotion after seeing the score that appears at the end of the mock. It may be low, it may be high. Just absorb the score and know that there is more to a mock than just numbers. Training the mind is an art, and it is important to learn this art. The more you say things like ‘QA is very difficult, there is no way I can do this, the more your mind feels the same and the loop will continue. Without realizing it, you have installed a barrier in front of yourself. Fighting this psychological barrier is very important.
Relax!
How is it that, every time our mobile or laptop heats up, we immediately shut it down but fail to replicate the same practice when it comes to our mind and body? The more you invest in your mind and body, the better results it will give you. Post mock refreshing is as important as pre-mock revision. Because, if your mind isn’t refreshed, your mock analysis is going to take a hit and hence beating the whole point of analysis.
What you need to do is something that will refresh your mind. It could be watching an episode of your favorite series, going for a run, sleeping, talking to a friend over the phone, cooking, etc. What this does is calms your mind and creates space for new content. You need to learn to maintain the right balance in terms of the amount of time you spend relaxing. This practice will ultimately culminate into a habit that will serve you for a lifetime.
What to do in the last 40 days?
You have reached a particular level, the last jump will mean that it will take more out of you mentally, but there is no way out. 20 mock tests, one every alternate day, with full intensity and in the days in between the things that are listed above.
You need to get used to performing at your optimal level. Optimal does not mean a number in terms of score, it means that if the test is really easy you hit it out of the park and if it is tough to still manage to clear the cut-offs. And yeah, a Sudoku puzzles every day with the goal to lower your best time.
And if you drive on your way to work or college, drive at your normal speed 😛
Abhishek Mukherjee works for 2IIM. Apart from solving interesting math questions he likes to eat biriyani and watch movies.
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