Anisha has done MBA in Marketing from NMIMS And Executive Management(PMNO) from Harvard Business School. She has been instrumental in growing CATKing Digital with her experience with Marico and Henkel in the past.
The Common Admission Test (CAT) is a national-level examination conducted by The Indian Institute of Management (IIM). It is a mandatory exam for seeking admission into IIM or other prestigious Business Schools like the Faculty of Management Studies (Delhi), Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management (Mumbai), SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (Mumbai), and many more. The exam is conducted annually in the last week of November. CAT 2021 will be conducted on November 28, 2021. Click here to get complete detail about the CAT 2021 syllabus and important dates
Why are CAT Mocks Important?
One thing that makes a CAT topper stand out among the other candidates is ‘CAT Mocks’. A mock means solving a test for practice following all the rules of the actual examinations. This helps a lot while appearing for the actual examination. A candidate can analyze his/her performance in the mock and make the necessary changes in order to avoid the same mistakes in the actual examination. Just like other exams, there are mocks for CAT as well. Official CAT mocks are available on the CAT official website. It has verbal reasoning and reading comprehension (VARC), data interpretation and logical reasoning (DILR), and quantitative analysis (Quants) sections in it. Solving the mocks will help you to get to know how the actual CAT test will be. It will give you an idea about various things like the paper pattern, what kind of questions can be asked, the difficulty level of the questions, and how much time does it actually take to complete the test. Without taking the mocks you will not know how good/bad your preparation is. You can take the mocks and make strategies, plan your study schedule and make your preparation to the mark.
Here are top CAT mock strategies that are a must follow:
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Practice and analyze
Solve as many questions as you can. Keep practicing regularly. Work harder on the topics that you find tough. Keep practicing all the topics even the ones you are already good at. Be careful while solving each question and concentrate completely on it.
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Eliminate the options
If you cannot come to one final answer then try eliminating the options. This can make the process of coming to a conclusion. Most of the time, options can be eliminated using simple logic without thinking much or without even solving the complete problem. After eliminating the options, coming to a result will not be that difficult. This might also consume less time than the traditional method of solving the whole problem.
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Time management
Be quick with solving the problems. Don’t waste much time on a particular question. If you are not sure about an answer, keep the question for later and solve it if you have time in the end. But while solving with speed, you cannot afford to make silly mistakes. Silly mistakes are a major reason for the low percentile. You need to be careful and alert with every question. Understand the question correctly.
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Be in the correct state of mind
Be confident of the practice and hard work you have done in order to prepare for the section. Being calm and patient do wonders not just while preparing but also while actually appearing for the exam. Do not panic before or during the exam as it can wash away all the hard work that you did before finally appearing for the exam. Being in the right mind will give more effective results.
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Avoid making the same mistake
Once you analyze your mistakes, try noting them down in a book. Before solving a mock each time, have a glance through it. This will help you avoid the same mistakes. Also, try and not to make new mistakes. This will help you lose fewer marks. Be careful while solving. Be quick with solving the problems. While solving with speed, you cannot afford to make silly mistakes. Silly mistakes are a major reason for low percentile. You need to be careful and alert with every question. Understand the question correctly.
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Post-mortem analysis
Analyze your performance in absolute detail. Look where you have made major or silly mistakes. Question yourself on why you made those mistakes. Recognize the questions that consumed more time. Know which questions shouldn’t have been attempted by you which resulted in unnecessary loss of marks. Also, identify the questions that were unattempted but were doable in actuality.
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Take a break
Make sure you take enough rest. Do not fatigue your brain and body. One must rest well in order to perform well. The amount of time you take rest is equally important to the amount of time you study. Make a schedule and make sure you just don’t study but also do other activities that you like.
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Try different plans of actions
You can plan and implement different strategies in each of your mocks and implement the best one during the actual exam. This will give you a chance to experiment and strategize well for the exam day. Click here to know about the top non-IIM institutes for MBA
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