Countdown to CAT: Time to get cracking

LAST-MINUTE TIP: Experts say it's a bad idea to fall in love with any question or section in CAT.

      

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Keywords: Shreya Dhoundial, Common Aptitude Test

New Delhi: Two-and-a-half lakh students will be writing the CAT exam on Sunday, a test widely believed to be one of the most unpredictable in the world.

These students will try their level best to be among those 5,000, who will qualify from this test and then try and be among the 1,600 who will eventually make it to the seven IIMs. Mind you, one needs to score a mind-boggling 99+ percentile to be able to join an IIM.

CAT was the topic of discussion on CNN-IBN's prime-time show India360 on Friday, where Ulhas Vairagakar, Academic Director of Time Coaching Institute, addressed last-minute jitters of CAT aspirants and shared a few tips on how to make the best use of those two-and-half hours. The show was moderated by Shreya Dhoundial.

Shreya Dhoundial: What should a CAT aspirant ideally be doing right now with just 24 hours to go for the CAT? What are the three tips that you would like to give them?

Ulhas Vairagakar: Next 24 hours is the time to chill and not get any last-minute worry whether you have revised anything or not or if you have forgotten anything. Whatever is done is done. And one of the three tips, therefore, is to tell yourself right up to the time the two-and-a-half hours are over that you are going to crack CAT.

Keep on telling this to yourself right till the time your exam is over. Point two: don't fall in love with any question. Try and manage this two-and-a-half hours well. Point three: don't give up till the very end; you don't know how you are doing actually.

Student from Chandigarh: How to kill this nervousness? Initially it was just excitement that we are giving CAT, we were bombarding our teachers with questions as to what to study and what not to. Now at this 11th hour, how to kill this nervousness?

Ulhas Vairagakar: You keep on telling yourself that I am alright. I have prepared enough and I have worked hard. Whatever I know that is good enough to crack CAT. Also sleep well, that's very important.

Second student from Chandigarh: How to spend the last day? This is the toughest day.

Ulhas Vairagakar: If you have not seen Om Shanti Om, go and watch the movie.

Bhanwar Singh Dahiya, Rohtak: I am good at DI and LR but weak at Quant? Should I concentrate on these two sections?

Ulhas Vairagakar: Not really. Because what could happen theoretically is that Quant may be very easy like last year and these two sections could be very tough. So what could happen with Bhanwar is he would spent all his time grappling with these two difficult guys and would not look at the easy guys. You should take a look at all the sections. You don't know where the scoring opportunities are.

Amitabh from IIT, Chennai: How to crack the verbals, especially after the IIT-B announcement that English will hold a lot of importance? Any clue as to what should one do for verbals?

Ulhas Vairagakar: You seem to be reading too much into the IIM-B announcement. But in reality, nothing much has changed. All they have done is last year that had 7.5% weightage to language, instead of that there is a 10 per cent weightage now which is split into language and content. I don't think that will make much of difference. As far as English is concerned, I don't think you need to worry too much about it.

Nonu Singh from Delhi: House should I clear sections other than Quant, DI and RC?

Ulhas Vairagakar: If your strength is English, then what I would suggest is possibly give some more time to these sections and check if you can find the easy questions and crack them. But don't spend too much time on that, because that will leave you with little time for English and your score may eventually go down.