Self Study Tips to Prepare for CAT

I would like to recommend you to spend at least 5 hours a day for the ultimate preparation.

Concerned tasks for CAT preparation

Preparing Maths Preparing Data Interpretation Preparing Analytical reasoning Preparing Reading comprehension Preparing Verbal ability word list Reading

There are two phases of preparation

First phase:

In this phase you should get good grip on fundamentals and get familiar with all chapters and problems . Do not look for speed solving or feel any sort of pressure while preparing fundamentals. Learn with your own efficiency, without getting into fundamentals clearly speed-solving is not useful. Please manage to allocate at least one hour a day for reading newspapers, magazines. It is better to subscribe for any good magazines during the preparation. Get in touch with current affairs.

I request you to schedule your weeks to prepare accordingly because haphazardness will waste lot of time. If you have been preparing without any study structure then whatever you may achieve would have been increased up to 50%. Try to shuffle the subjects also, so that you do not get bored with one subject. A good time table for 1 days look like below:

Day 1:

1 hour reading

2 hours of math

1 hour of analytical reasoning / data interpretation

1 hour of reading comprehension exercises / verbal ability

second phase(self analyzing and improving):

By the time you finish the fundamentals which is about second week of august, you will get a fare idea on the area of your weakness and strengths. Make a tabular form of topics categorizing strengths and weakness to have a clear picture on it. Keep weak areas in mind and try to improve yourself by focusing them more.

From second week of August you can take section tests along with revision of topics in alternate day ,here if you think you have to allocate more time you should do.. You must start taking comprehensive tests by the beginning of September.

Things you look to learn in comprehensive tests of 2-3 hour long, is how to manage paper so the attitude here should be the same like a batsman who wants to score as many runs as possible in the last 10 overs in onedayers. You should think of scoring as much as possible ,but most people will get emotional to have a challenging problem and stuck up solving only that problem.

After you tested yourself spend time to analyze it. The key points to analyze your test:

Speed: see if your speed is better than previous tests, notice if you do not understand basics you cannot apply them to tougher problems. Both these attributes are a prerequisite for speed solving; Concentration Most of we do not use two hours sitting at a stretch; a high degree of concentration is also not easy for first time test takers. Comprehensive tests make us to sit for two hours at a stretch and we increase our attentive span. Time Management The most important value provided by the comprehensive test is an idea of our strengths and weakness. So you should manage time and allocate certain time to each section depending on your strength and weakness accuracy : accuracy is the number of correct questions out of attempted questions. if this is low you need to go and revise the chapters which are reducing your accuracy because marking wrong option will impose negative marks in cat finding traps :you should avoid false positives or false negatives i.e., you shouldn’t leave easy questions thinking they are hard and attempt hard questions thinking they are easy. analyzing your progress on the above four : compare with the previous attempted paper on above all points

Take comprehensive test for yourself on every alternate days with analyzing and revision of topics on another day,

Some institutes also conduct all India mock test on weekends please try to give as many mocks as possible you can.

Try to attempt at least 30 comprehensive tests (including all India mocks)

Finally give yourself a break on every weekend to relax and start fresh from the following Monday.