This is a personal opinion of the author and may not necessarily be endorsed by IMS. The author regrets if he has hurt anyone’s sentiments in this article. The author respects IIMs and everyone in the training industry.

These days, the net is full of articles on how to crack the CAT. The articles that I love the most are the ones on strategy. How by merely strategizing you can get a great score in the CAT - 45-45-45 minutes on each section and 15 min in the end for one section where you want to clear the cut-off; start with your favorite section; how should one select questions; how can one pick up the sitters etc. Then there are the articles on how to prepare in the last 3 to 4 months before the CAT – practice, practice, practice; forget areas that you are weak; how to improve reading comprehension in 30 days etc. Most of these are written by people who believe that they have an authority on the subject simply because they have once tamed the CAT.
 

These articles give a false sense of confidence to many – this of course is my opinion. Mine, the one that you are reading now [hopefully, would read till the last line], is also an article on the CAT [I too believe that I am an authority on this subject since I have also tamed the CAT some years ago]. According to me, the best strategy for the CAT is to have NO strategy! To build the premise for my argument let me first explain the purpose of CAT.

With all due respect to the IIMs, they want the best set of students to be a part of their management program so that they can ‘claim’ that the success of the student’s career is only because of the efforts IIMs have put in 2 years. Why single out IIMs, I believe that this is what everyone [including the corporate] does. Coming back to the IIMs - There are more than 2 lac aspirants and it becomes practically impossible for the IIMs to take a serious look at each and every candidate. Do you how many apply to the top MBA program in the world – Harvard? 6000! [Mathematically, it is easier to get into Harvard than into IIM!] Harvard has all the time to look at the 6000 candidates and take a decision. IIMs do not have that luxury and therefore, CAT is here to solve this ‘logistical problem’. The main purpose of the CAT is to help weave out 6000 from 200000.

Having said that, the task in hand for the CAT is not all that easy. It has to satisfy the IIMs that students who clear the CAT are better than the ones who do not. CAT uses around 75 questions to arrive at that decision. Each question should help the CAT to differentiate the good from the rest. Imagine a question which is answered correctly by 100% of the test takers. Is it a good question? It is a useless question because it does not solve the purpose which is to segregate the “good” & “bad”. What if no one could answer a particular question? It is useless again, for the same reason as said before. A CAT question is not about difficult or easy. It is all about the question’s ability to get only around 20% to answer it correctly and the other 80% get it wrong! That is how each question is designed [this is true with any aptitude test. This is not my opinion. There are lots of white papers on aptitude testing]. This entire ‘gyaan’ only leads to this conclusion: CAT is NOT about the entire paper – CAT is a set of questions and to crack the CAT, you must have the ability to solve individual questions. Period! No strategy can help if you can’t solve a question.

Now let me attack various common strategies: The most common is how to divide time among the three sections of the CAT. There is this so called ‘theory’ [for want of any other better word] that you must spend extra time in your weak section – say 60-40-50. Here is my logic – the extra 10 minutes is AFTER you have already spent 50 minutes in that section. How many questions are you going to solve in that extra 10 minutes – 3 to 4? If that is true, then you would have solved 20 questions in the first 50 minutes, which with the right accuracy should be enough to clear the cut-offs! It beats me as to what miracle one will do with that extra 10 minutes. I believe that one should just divide the time equally to the three sections. If this is the case, how does it matter which section one starts with!

The other strategy is selecting questions. I have a doubt – how can one select a question [to solve or not] just by looking at the question? One has to read a question to decide whether it can be solved or not. This means one have to read all questions! This in turn means that the order of solving questions in a section does not matter!

The process is simple –

1. Read a question with the objective of understanding a question

2. Decide whether to solve now or later

3. Solve

I do not know what great strategy someone would require to select a question. My gut feeling says that CAT will eventually force everyone to solve every question by putting negative marks for un-attempted questions. As long as one understands the purpose of the CAT and focuses preparation on tackling individual questions there is no worry irrespective of whatever structure/surprise CAT comes up with.

Let me end this by giving a small input on how YOU should focus on the last 3 months [I can read your mind – “God!! This is not over!”]. Pappu [couldn’t think of another name] wants to improve his looks. On Day 1 he looked into the mirror and saw what he needs to change. Day 7 he looked into the mirror again, Day 14 he looked into the mirror once again. He is worried that his looks have not improved. It will not improve just by looking at the mirror. In the same way, a test [like the SimCAT] is a mirror. Just by taking test after test, you are making the same mistake that Pappu did. What you do between 2 tests is more important that the test itself. The purpose of the test is to only act like a mirror and believe me SimCATs truly reflects! The SimCATs questions are carefully designed with the same logic as the CAT. You need to do complete analysis of the test and do the necessary correction before you take the next test. Also, to aid you on the same, IMS has the intensive workshops. These are 15 workshops created after analysis of last 15 year’s CAT. [Only IMS has this expertise. It is easy to create a 200 hr program but very difficult to create 15 workshops for the CAT. IMS, because of the expertise it has, created it for you. Make the most of it]. Don’t focus too much on the test by focusing on what you do between the tests.

I wish you a great career. No matter what, believe that you are good and you are destined to have an impactful career. Keep the faith & stay focused.