CAT 2021 Preparation How to Prepare for CAT 2021 – Tips

7 months to go for CAT 21.......Make the task easy.

Three major things to do.

1. Revisit the basics and fundamentals of maths up to Xth standard and some areas of Algebra, geometry, and Permutation and combination with probability.

Solve at least 30 to 40 questions per day of each topic and focus on accuracy (90% at least)

Solve online tests section-wise once the topics are covered and identify your strength and weak areas and work on them to improve your scores. Around 17 to 20 questions to be attempted correctly should be your initial target to achieve.

2. Read as much variety and genres as possible of different authors.

Editorials from the Newspapers are a must and prepare a critical review of at least one article per day.

Build your vocabulary skills and start solving at least 3 to 5 passages every day. Work on the critical reasoning questions more. You can also read international journals and if you actually go through the actual CAT papers you will find that the passages have been extracted from the international newspapers and journals. Try to cover scientific, literature, philosophy, medical fiction, and other genres while reading.

3. Logical reasoning and data interpretation are areas of concern for the last 5 years. The cut-offs are very less hence it becomes imperative for one to solve different sets of LRDI of topics ranging from analytical reasoning to logic-based cases and also sets which are calculation intensive.

For logic-based sets, my take would be to first solve the actual CAT papers from the last 6 to 7 years first and then focus on solving at least 3 to 4 sets of LRDI per day. Take online tests to check your preparedness and identify the areas or subsections where you feel you are weak or your accuracy is not good enough to clear the cut-offs.

Above all, only testing won’t help. You need to analyze each and every test you take whether it is topic-wise or section-wise test or Mocks. You need to identify on a regular basis as to which questions were meant to be solved in the actual CAT and which were not to be picked up. This kind of analysis will help you to understand the right and wrong selection of questions. Almost 70 to 80 % of students falter in the selection of the right questions and hence land up losing time and energy on the wrongly selected questions. 

Sit down with your peers and mentors or faculties to help you analyze your strong areas and help to consolidate them and also help to work on your weaker areas.

By the end of July, if you are starting your CAT preparations now, you should be able to complete your preparations, and then it would be the most ideal time to start solving your All India Mock CATS. You should closely monitor and compare your scores with the toppers and where and how much effort you need to put in the concerned areas. Career Launcher test series are the closest to actual CAT papers as per the feedback given by the CAT takers. So you should take regular mocks and improve your scores on mock to mock basis with an in-depth analysis of each mock you take.