CAT Tales-4

Before I start telling you about AIMCATs and my scores in them, let me tell you what else you are going to see in this post. I will let you in on a secret. I used to maintain a diary in which I wrote my scores for the previous AIMCATs and also some notes regarding my performance. I tried to make a point of reading these notes before going for the next AIMCAT.

So the first AIMCAT that I gave I concentrated on clearing the Quant cutoff and managed to do it but at the cost of not so good scores in other sections. On the whole my percentile was 93 something. Well wouldn’t say that was a setback but that wasn’t too comforting either. But I knew that it was more because of me trying to put extra effort to pull up my quant than anything else.

Here are my notes for what was AIMCAT0818 held on 24th June.

"Tried to maximize Quant (sic), ended up doing very badly in English. Need to increase attempts In DI"

Interestingly the next exam was an AIMMAT. I loved the paper when I saw it. Just 150 mins to do 200 questions. As you will realize more and more later in this thread, I have an affinity for speed tests, the ones where there is less time and more questions. I tend to do not so well in papers which have less questions and are based more on concepts.

Here are my notes for the AIMMAT.

"Did well to choose easy questions from all the questions"

I managed to secure percentile of 99.69

Next came the AIMCAT0817 and my notes were as follows

"Accuracy in VA/RC should have been better.

DI-> should attempt more

Quant-> MUST attempt more

After finishing VA/RC go to DI stick to it for 35 mins and then go to Quant

Try to identify sitters in Quant.

%ile-> 96.77"

The next AIMCAT that is the 16 one was pretty much on similar lines (my performance wise). Here are the notes from AIMCAT16.

"Again accuracy in VA/RC was pathetic.

DI was very tough : lost cool and tried to attempt more which only results in more negative

Be confident while giving paper

Did well to attempt sitters in Quant : Improve on it

%ile ->96.14"

As you must have realized by now that I was going through the same dilemma that every CAT aspirant goes through while preparing for CAT, in what order to attempt the sections?

Actually the problem with me at that point of time was that I started off with Verbal and tried to attempt all the questions in the first 40-45 minutes. After that it all went helter-skelter. Whatever plan/strategy I had vanished at this point of time. I picked up either DI/Quant and tried to attempt some questions until I met with a certain question which I couldn’t make head or tail and then out of desperation moved to the other section. And this thing kept on happening again and again : moving from one section to other.

The major reason behind me not doing well at this point of time was not sticking to a proper plan and not putting in enough effort for certain questions which were crackable.

At this point we were paid a visit by someone who cant simply be described in words. In fact his qualities qualify him as a phenomenon rather than merely a person. He is one of the four or five people who I have huge respect for. I would say that he left a huge impact on me (didn’t the lines above convey that) even though others found him not so impressive.

Anyways more about this in the next thread.