How to Crack CAT: Find answers to some of the most common questions on CAT

Shiksha.com has uploaded many articles on CAT on a regular basis. Still, there are many students who still ask some basic questions about the exam every year. To address their concerns, we have decided to upload an article on some of the most common questions on How to Crack CAT here.

What is CAT?

CAT is simply the Common Admission Test for all the postgraduate management programmes offered by all the 13 IIMs as well as several other prestigious management institutes across India that accept CAT scores. From this year, IITs have also discontinued their Joint Management Entrance Test (JMET) and will accept CAT scores as MBA entrance criteria instead. Some of the non-IIM and non-IIT institutions that accept CAT scores to screen candidates for admission to their MBA or postgraduate management programmes are:

• Faculty of Management Studies, Banaras Hindu University
• Indian Institute of Forest Management
• National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli
• National Institute of Technology, Calicut
• National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal
• University of Hyderabad, School of Management Studies
• Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore
• Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), University of Delhi
• Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi
• Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology
• Department of Management Studies, School of Management, Pondicherry University

The CAT exam is usually conducted somewhere between October to December every year. Since 2009, CAT is being conducted online over a window of about 15 to 25 days. CAT 2011 was conducted from 22 October to 18 November.

The recent news streaming in about CAT indicates that CAT 2012 may be conducted all the year round and may also go global by conducting the exam on some offshore sites, starting probably with the Middle East and Sri Lanka.

How to crack CAT?

One of the most popular myths about CAT is that it takes a genius or a bookworm to crack CAT. The truth is that the students who crack CAT are not necessarily brilliant. They are not even very hard-working. The key to crack CAT is Consistency. If you are an average student but are consistent in your CAT preparation, you will probably crack it easily.

There are only two sections in CAT that you have to prepare for:

• Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation
• Verbal Ability & Logical Reasoning

Each section has 30 questions and a student gets 70 minutes to solve these 30 questions. There is a 15-minute tutorial at the beginning of the test too that students should go through very carefully.

There will be an on-screen countdown timer in each section. Within the assigned time limit, students can review and edit answers but once the time ends for the first section, they will automatically be presented with the second section and will no longer be able to go back to the first section.

The syllabus is not very tough. Once you start preparing for CAT, it just takes consistency to master it.

When is the right time to start CAT preparation?

The bandwidth of students who want to appear for CAT varies widely. From students in 12th to second-year students of normal Bachelor degree programmes to engineering students to students with a few years of work experience, MBA aspirants can be quite diverse. But majority of students who take CAT are in their final year of their undergraduate or graduate degree. Keeping that in mind, one should start preparing for CAT one year before they wish to write the test.

It does not mean that one cannot crack CAT by studying for only six months but it will mean putting in extra hours. Even then, it may not be enough to master the skills and practice enough questions to crack the CAT exam. One year of preparation is usually considered good enough to prepare for CAT.

Is it necessary to take admission in a coaching institute to crack CAT or other management entrance exams?

It solely depends on one's discretion whether one wants to join a coaching institute for CAT preparation or not. However, here are a few advantages of joining an MBA entrance tutorial at a good coaching institute:

• Joining a good MBA coaching institute give you an opportunity to interact with learned and experienced faculty members. It becomes easier to learn a concept when you hear it from someone. Besides a good tutor can help in solving your queries and resolving your doubts whenever required. Self-study requires more effort from your side and it may be difficult to find academic support when you need it.
• You also get to interact with other students, some of whom might be very good at certain topics. Group study can make studies really interesting and can help you learn things faster.
• Besides, good coaching institutes offer you excellent study material which is updated every year according to the latest prescribed syllabus and exam pattern. This study material is usually enough for you to score well in CAT.
• The mock exams and practice tests of the coaching institutes are quite good too. They mimic the actual CAT test and give you a good practice of how to make best use of your time and skills at the real CAT exam. These days, they offer you online CAT model exams. Thousands of students just appear for these model exams, giving you a real insight into the status of your own CAT preparation.

What are the steps for admission process of management institutes?

You already know that writing CAT is the first step of the admission process of major management institutes in India. The second step is that shortlisted candidates are called for Group Discussions (GD) and Personal Interviews (PI). We have a very good article on GD on Shiksha.

Many students seem to think that GD is just a way to eliminate students. This is not true. Most management institutes give 60 to 70 per cent weightage to CAT scores, about 20 to 25 per cent weightage to your performance in GD and about 10 to 15 per cent weightage to your performance in PI. Then, the result is published on the basis of your combined performance in all the three sections.

Recently, most of the IIMs have revealed the weightage that will be given to CAT scores may vary to let in a diversified set of students' profiles in a management class. In 2011, IIM-Bangalore has decided to skip the usual group discussion and substitute it with a note-writing test. Students will be evaluated on the content and style of writing. It is giving only 20% weightage to CAT scores.

IIM-Kolkata has brought down the weightage to CAT score to 40% while the Personal Interview will get a weightage of 44%. IIM-Ahmedabad too will be conducting a writing test between the two sessions of the personal interview process to judge the understanding and maturity level of the candidates.

Source: Ruchi Shrimali (Shiksha Team)