Everything about MBA entrance exams #6(How can we tame ONLINE CAT?)

Hi all.

I am back once again. And keeping fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong this time & I keep writing regularly, now on. Please pray to god.

Hope you understood already what I am going to talk about. We all know CAT is going to be an online exam this year. How much successful an exam it will be, I will tell you that on 8th December. Successful in terms of the smoothness in exam being conducted.

Anyways, what shall we prepare and how shall we prepare.
Let’s understand one thing; whether it be an online exam or it be a paper based exam, for sure it checks certain qualities in an examinee. These include managing time, keeping nerves cool under pressure, visualization capabilities (which are checked through a particular set of questions), reading between the lines, looking beyond the obvious, strategy formulation and using smart approaches, optimistic nature, tough mindedness etc.

And believe it or not these are the qualities which are checked and may be some more. Believe it Maths and English are just the means to achieve the end. They are not the end.

Now, Lets understand some things. When you will be writing an online exam you will not have an option of circling the relevant information in the paper, that’s one. Two, you will not be having the facility of crossing the options which you think are for sure wrong. Three, though you will be allowed to move forward and backwards(at least I feel so) still its not convenient to move forward and backwards as much as it is on a paper-therefore your strategies of doing easy first and difficult later may go for a toss. Four, in RC area you are in a habit of underlining a lot, which you will not be able to do in an online test. Etc etc.

The good part is that you will be allowed to use some plain papers as rough sheets(that’s again my thought. How many papers they will allow I will tell you on 8th December). Now here comes the rescue strategy. I suggest as soon as you have rough papers in your hand, make a chart saying question no., option 1, option 2, option 3, option 4 and option 5. Example is here:
Q No. Op 1 Op 2 Op 3 Op 4 Op 5
1
2
3
4
5

Here showing horizontal and vertical lines is really not important till you keep everything vertically straight.

Now, assuming you have done this, u can start the test. But wait. On another sheet write RC 1. Para 1, para 2, Para 3 and so on AND RC2. Para 1, para 2, Para 3 and so on. Example:

RC 1
Para 1
Para 2
Para 3

RC 2
Para 1
Para 2
Para 3

RC 3
Para 1
Para 2
Para 3

Now you are ready to start the test.

How will you use what you have made? See, Sheet 1 will be used to cross the wrong answers whenever you are very sure of. Not just that, it will also act as a record of what’s the answer to which question (in case something goes wrong with the test and you have to restart it, god forbid). Please note I have personally used this sheet in many online tests and have monitored 1000s of my students doing same in many type of online tests including GMAT/GRE. And it reduces a lot of tension of students.

Now the second sheet. See any RC passage will have 4-8 small paragraphs. If you can write the jist of those small paragraphs in a line or less then that nothing like it. If you can’t, then I suggest write the line no. in that para which you think is the most imp. Doing only this will be a good boost up to you when you will actually start solving the questions on DI. One these pointers will help you locate where the answer is. Two they will remind you of the direction in which the RC is flowing. Three you will get a better hang of RC then what you use to get.

This much only for today.

I have a request. If you guys can tell me the topic on which you want me to write next, that will be a great help, as most of my time goes in figuring out what to write on.

All the Best

Vaibhav Mittal(VM)
CEO-Zion Education Services