About CAT
Held in the third week of November every year jointly by the six Indian Institutes of Management, the CAT is increasingly being recognized as one of the toughest exams in the world. Its basic purpose is to be that of an objective aptitude entrance exam for the six IIMs as well as a host of other management institutes. The number of students attempting the CAT is increasing every year with the number expected to touch 3 lacs for the exam to be held in November 09. Less then 2% of these will get interview calls and less than 1% will finally make it to the IIMs.
The duration of the exam is of two hours and it generally consists of three sections, Verbal, Quantitative and Data Interpretation. Few generalizations can be made about this exam. The fact that negative marking for wrong answers exists is one of them. The exam is a test of speed, accuracy and often a degree of smartness under pressure.
What IT Takes
Sit back and try to quantify the difference between the knowledge you have and the knowledge of one of the guys who consistently comes in the top 50 in a representative sim/mock cat. You will realize that the difference while not being negligible is not high enough to warrant a massive difference in CAT scores. Here by knowledge we of course, imply "CAT related knowledge". In fact a fair estimate of the knowledge difference would be 10%. Think about it, what content does the CAT test? The content does not exceed information which even a tenth standard or in some cases an eleventh standard math might possess. So what differentiates the crackers from the losers?
According to us the most important variables are: Application and an Optimum level of speed and accuracy. This really changes the perspective, because given the right kind of training for sufficient periods of time, both these things, we are certain can be taught.
In our opinion acquiring the following skills makes the difference:
- Ability to do problems faster as in reading them the right way to avoid the usual "getting lost" feeling.
- Ability to recognize simpler problems first.
- A few smart short cuts to do the difficult problems faster.