CAT 2010 toppers and their winning strategy!

A high score in CAT is sine qua known for admission to the PGDM programme at the coveted IIMs. Three toppers share how they cracked the test
MBA entrance tests are designed to surprise test takers, more so with CAT (Common Admissions Test), the premier test for aspirants to IIMs. As Prof Jayaram K Iyer, faculty with LIBA says, its prime aim is to eliminate the 99.99 percent of the test takers.

So planning for such an unpredictable exam also throws up surprises. And three toppers inform us how different their strategy was. For Vidit Aggarwal, it was his third attempt at CAT.

Two self-study attempts did not yield the desired result, so the 24-year old took no chances for the final. He joined a coaching centre in a bid to get professional guidance.

Deepak Mehta, a student of BITS, Goa on the other hand cracked the exam with 100 percentile in the first attempt. As for Shashank Samant, he took CAT in 2008, then worked for two years and scored 100 percentile in 2010. “CAT doesn’t require much preparation,” he says. We scope out some useful pointers from our interviews with the three toppers.

Coaching

CAT coaching is a multi-crore industry. From established players like CareerLauncher, T.I.M.E. and IMS to one-room operators in small towns, it is a thriving industry (read our story “Does CAT coaching help?” in the February 2010 issue). According to Vidit, coaching does help because it enabled him to study regularly and systematically. To him the biggest advantage of coaching is that it helps one assess and measure ones preparation levels vis-à-vis others, a view seconded by Deepak. However, Shashank does not think highly of coaching. He says, “I joined coaching but didn’t attend any classes.I scored over 99 percentile in the very first mock I took. Thereafter I just kept on giving mocks.”

Mock Test Series

The most popular preparation tool, Vidit joined two test series. “One is good too, but personally, I needed to gauge my preparation,” he says. He took one from CareerLauncher but his friends suggested that the one from T.I.M.E. was better. So, he took that too. According to him, the results helped him understand his weak areas. Shashank seconds this. According to him, even though he joined a coaching class, all he really did was take a series of mock tests. According to Deepak a mock test helps one in assessing one’s speed, which is very vital in CAT. So in mock tests he focused on attempting a minimum of 18 questions from each section and getting to solve all 54 of them.

Approach to the exam

Getting just one question right can make all the difference between success and failure in CAT. The right way to attempt questions is the most vital component to get it right, suggests Ullhas Vairagkar, T.I.M.E Delhi centre Chief. Vidit says he began by attempting all easy questions first, to ensure a sureshot score and garner the confidence to tackle the more difficult ones. For him, English took the least time, and he spent 45 minutes on the Data Interpretation section.

“My strategy was to attempt as many questions as possible,” says Deepak. He attempted 57 out of the total 60 questions and spent 35-40 minutes on each section. So conscious was he of time management that he moved on to the next section when he couldn’t complete a section in the self-allotted time. To him time management is crucial in CAT preparation. Shashank while concurring with others also says, his other advice for future aspirants would be to identify one’s strengths and weaknesses as early as possible.

Toughest CAT Section: Verbal Ability

Both Deepak and Vidit vouch for this. Reading Comprehension was the most difficult component in English for Deepak. So in order to strengthen his grammar and vocabulary, he referred two books apart from the course material provided. These were Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis and All About Words by Rosenblum and Nurnberg. For Shashank too, it was Verbal Ability that played truant. Wren and Martin according to him is the best book to improve the same. All three of them, being engineers, cruised through the quantitative domains.

Shashank does give credit to the element of luck. An objective test, success in CAT depends a lot on factors like how one performs on the day of the test, whether the questions match one’s domain of preparation and so on, he says. But as they say, the more you prepare the luckier you get. Prepare well, don’t panic and do not guess seems to be the mantras these toppers lived by.