CAT Preparation while working, 4 things to keep in mind.

4 Important tips for Working Professionals preparing for CAT

If you are doing your CAT preparation while working five days a week. Firstly, congratulations on your decision to balance both. You will need a lot more balancing to do once you start your MBA journey from a reputed institute. While it looks hard to manage, It’s not impossible. You need to plan out your schedule and work on your strategy to cover the syllabus and prepare for the exam.

Time is the most crucial factor for working aspirants on their CAT preparation journey. Most of us would have very little energy left after working for 9-10 hours. And this does not include the travel and other things you need to sort out. It’s hard, No doubt about it, yet you inevitably need to pull this off.  

Here are four tips to keep in mind while you prepare for your CAT examination:

• Spread out your preparation schedule
• Keep small, specific short-term goals
• Don’t overdo things. Focus on the essentials.
• Pace yourself and avoid burnout.

Spread out your preparation schedule:

For someone working 10 hours a day. Finding a whole three-hour window to sit and prepare for CAT will be hard. So it is essential to have your preparation time spread out. Keep 30-60 min windows for preparation. You might need to make small sacrifices, like reducing break times, giving up a few leisure activities, Trimming your sleep time etc. Spread out your schedule to cover topics and practice them. E.g., you can try solving one or two RC passages during lunch breaks. This shouldn’t take more than half-hour. It’s up to you to pick on a topic to work on or which time to study. But make it a point to be regular and spend at least two hours a day on prep during weekdays.

Keep small, specific, and short-term goals:

It always helps to have small goals or something like a to-do list. You can prepare your own set of goals on which topics to cover, a weekly set of questions to solve etc. You can devise your strategy or opt for a custom scheduler. But either way, make it a point to stick to your targets and complete them on time. This helps you in two aspects. Firstly, it gives you an overall perspective of where you stand and what you have done so far. Secondly, it helps you pace yourself and feel good about what you have completed. And more importantly, ticking things off enables you to avoid getting overwhelmed by the syllabus at a later stage of preparation. You are going to need that for mocks.

• 

Don’t overdo things. Focus on the essential topics:

The other common problem is we tend to overdo things. There is always more content to learn and more to read and look into. By doing everything you’d probably end up running in circles and getting confused. One thing I found most effective was keeping things simple. As we know there is more than one method to solve a problem in Quant, don’t try and learn every formula and every shortcut. Don’t overdo things. Be it Quant or any other section. Stick to the basics. Keep one study material and follow that. Also, it’s okay to let go of some topics if you aren’t too comfortable. Give it a try, and if you find it challenging to comprehend, just leave it and move on to the next one.   

• 

Pace yourself, Avoid burnout:

Working a full-time job and preparing simultaneously is taxing. After a ten-hour workday, it is hard to find the motivation to prepare. And at some point, it is easy to lose focus and just drop the idea. This is one of the most important traps to avoid. Try to take breaks between preparation schedules. Especially when you are working around mocks, and the mock analysis are heavy, So it’s okay to let loose and relax occasionally. Also, pace yourself during preparation and mocks. Go constantly and keep revisiting the completed topics to stay in touch. Lastly, don’t try to keep everything at the last minute. It will not be like one of those college semester exams where you can pull off things with an all nighters.

CAT preparation while working is like running a marathon, you need to have the strength and endurance to overcome the mental and physical fatigue. But it is totally worth the effort. So i would suggest keeping the eye on the prize and being your own motivator when times are a bit rough. It is hard but not impossible and you can definitely do it.

CAT is a Marathon not a sprint, pace yourself and enjoy the ride. – Harish V

Harish is an alum of IIM Bangalore who can’t stop talking about Chelsea FC