CAT 2012 - Thoughts based on CAT 2011

CAT scores are now out, and this is a good time to think about what we have seen from the results. We had published something similar post CAT 2010. Many of the takeaways mentioned in that post hold good now as well.

Opinions that have been reinforced

First-principles based preparation is a must.
We had discussed this last year as well. Almost all questions are application-intensive, and few can be answered using a blanket-formula. So, forget the shortcuts and the word-lists, learn from the basics. This means that if you are going to a coaching center for aiding your preparation, it is important to go to a place where the quality of teachers is very high. Oversimplified preparation can take you till 75th percentile, but not any further

Journey from 90th to 95th percentile is tough. 95th to 98th and beyond is tougher still.
This bit is obvious, but still important because one needs to get a reality check before pinning all hopes on CAT. If you have given it your all and ended with 85th percentile. It is probably time to refocus, aim for a 95th percentile and join some good college once you get that. The number of good B-Schools in India tops 50 and a 95th percentile could still get you a great college. Also, when you are preparing for CAT, do the basics well and early, make sure you have enough quality to hit 90th percentile-ish consistently, and then restart and fine-tune preparations for the final climb. Do not sit back and do the same things over and over again.

Importance of good profile has gone up
You would have heard stories of how someone who had flunked n papers in engineering managed to get an admit in IIM Cal in spite of all this. That era is slowly disappearing. You can no longer say - "I have skeletons up my cupboard and in order to get away from that I want to do an MBA" (I know that feeling. I had that same feeling 10 years ago :-)). Focus on academics, clear that paper you hate, make sure you do well in your job. All those things matter. And all those things matter more now than they ever did.

New pointers from CAT 2011

Reading is uber-critical
We cannot over-emphasize this point. The guys who have the reading habit have a healthy advantage in CAT. Not only the RC section, almost the entire verbal section barring LR are going to be far easier for guys who have a habit of reading. Importantly, these sections are getting tougher to prepare for. There is no great way to "practice" for sentence rearrangement, paragraph completion, word usage, or fill-in the blanks. These are not grammar dependent, not vocab dependent. Ability to sift through these types of questions gets built with months of reading practice. So, if you have CAT in mind, set yourself a target of reading for at least 2 hours each day. Forget everything else, this alone will improve your score significantly. Read anything. What you read matters less than how much you read.

Cracking LR is a hygiene factor now
For guys not extremely comfortable with English, the thinking behind the verbal section goes like this - "If I can crack all 9-10 questions in LR and get some 5-6 other questions correct, I should be through." Good point. Some merit in this. But remember, a lot of people are going to go with the same strategy. Merely cracking LR will still leave you with too big a gap to bridge. Some of our students who cracked LR out of shape ended with 80th percentile-ish in verbal. Not bad at all. But if you want to climb above 90th percentile, you need to get going in the English section as well.

On the lighter side, age is not a barrier for cracking this exam
As someone who teaches for CAT, I hate it when people tell that they have been out of touch of math and have not studied maths for n years (especially when n is less than 5). One of the guys at 2iim got 100th percentile in CAT 2011 and he is on the wrong side of 30. So, there is no excuse for guys with 5 years experience telling themselves they are out of touch with math. For solving questions on percentages and averages, you do not need to be a 20-something :-)

Best wishes from 2iim for your interview preparation.

CAT 2011 - Preparation plan

With only around two months to go, it is a good time to think about the overall paper. We also need to keep in mind the changes in format. So, have given below our ideas of how the paper might be structured.

Caveat alert: This is our view of how they might structure CAT and might have absolutely no link with how CATIIM is thinking about it (Always good to get the disclaimers in early. This is the one thing they drill into investment bankers). With that out of the way, let us get to the sections.

This post focuses on quants. Will follow up with a verbal specific post

Quants
We would look at this as three segments, of about 10 questions each

Segment I: This is going to be the section that covers simple quant topics - Averages, Percentages, Profit & Loss, Pipes Cisterns, Simple Interest -Compound Interests, Shares, Progressions, Ratio-Proportion, Speed-Time, Races, Mixtures, etc. There should be around 10 questions in this segment. Almost all questions in this section will be do-able but time-consuming. Student should shoot to get 8-9 of these in about 30-33 minutes. Even if it takes more than 3 minutes per question, it could be worth it.

Take your time but get it correct

Segment 2: This is the set of concept-heavy questions - Number Theory, Geometry, Permutation-Combinations, Inequalities and perhaps a bit of Set Theory. These will be slightly non-formulaic questions. But these will help you save time in case you have the fundas right. Should shoot to attempt 6-7 of these in about 13-15 minutes.

Pick the correct questions and solve them really quickly

Segment 3: 3-4 questions of pure DI, 2-3 questions of DI presented in unconventional format, 3-4 of Data Sufficiency etc. Attempt 7-8 of these in about 22-25 minutes. In this segment DI will be time-consuming, DS will be hit or miss.

Overall, shoot to try 22-23 questions. This number should be good enough to hit 99th percentile +. There are two big mistakes that one should avoid.

1. Getting lots of practice for simpler topics, ignoring No.theory+Geometry: This is absurd. Get problems under the belt for the simpler topics, study from first principles for No. Theory and Geometry. One should know the basis for each formula, not just the formula. You should know how to solve problems like the ones seen here . And be clear on concepts in geometry

2. Skipping simple-topic questions because they take more than 3 minutes to solve: 3 minutes per question is good speed. If you understand a question based on Speed-Time and can definitely get it right in even 3.5 minutes, go for it. The concept-heavy topics are the ones where you should shoot to save time. Do not be in a mad rush for speed in the questions from the simpler topics. You HAVE TO get these correct. So, no point making some silly error here.

CAT Format changes - What does this mean?

The format for CAT 2011 has changed. The key changes are as follows

1. Only two sections now, instead of 3. We will have one verbal and one quant section only, with 30 questions in each section. The DI-LR section has been split mid-way and been apportioned into quant and verbal. Quant will now contain - math + Data Interpretation while verbal section will include Logical Reasoning.

2. Timing raised to 140 minutes (from 135 minutes). The big change here is that now the time limit is two water-tight 70 minutes. A student can no longer apportion timing as he/she pleases. The exam will now comprise two sections of 70 minutes.

What are the key implications for students?

1. Only two section cut-offs to worry about: This simplifies life
2. Time management becomes much easier
3. Balance across sections will get rewarded: Earlier students weak in verbal could just spend five more minutes in the section and compensate for this. With water-tight sections, this kind of time-shifting is ruled out
4. Verbal assumes more importance now. The widespread perception is that CAT was still a "quant" exam. This change in format could lead to increased importance given to verbal.

What has been left unsaid?
This part is pure conjecture. These are the things I expect to see.
1. In the verbal section, the LR questions will be more like CR questions (Critical reasoning questions). We will see more questions that resemble mini-case studies and fewer questions that are puzzle-based. In my view, the verbal section will have 9-11 qns from RC, 3 each in sentence rearrangement, sentence correction and sentence completion, one puzzle that has 3-4 questions and 5-6 questions based on arguments, hypotheses etc.

2.The puzzle based questions will still feature in the quant section. The DI-LR section is effectively getting squeezed out a little in this format-change, in my view.

What trends will be seen?
1. More skewed percentiles: The guys who are really strong in quant/verbal are now going to ace this section without worrying about hoovering up time for the other section(s)
2. Candidates with balance will be at an advantage.

How should preparation style change?

Focus more on RC. Spend more time on critical reasoning and case-study type questions. CAT used to have these kind of questions about 10 years ago. They used to be called as Analytical reasoning. Dig up those archives and have a go.

If you are reasonably strong in the basics, forget about building speed doing random (baseless) speed-building exercises. Multiplication speed, reading speed are all going to matter less. The examiners are effectively saying - "I give you 2.5-3 minutes per question. If you can think clearly, you will never be hard-pressed for time"

Longer-term, where is this going?
The path has been laid out. They want to make this an exam that can be taken more than once a year. A more standardised test, a test more in line with global practices (GMAT, GRE), test that isolates quant and verbal, are all steps to ensure that they can make this a through-the-year exam either in 2012 or 2013.

CAT 2011 - Thoughts based on CAT 2010

CAT 2010 results were released a few days ago, and it is time to think about what we have learn from the results. I have categorized my thoughts into two categories.

Opinions that have been reinforced

1. CAT is not an impossibly tough exam. A number of diligent non-genius candidates have done really well. (All the evidence I am going to refer to is anecdotal and not based on any survey.). Thorough preparation, lots of practice and good planning should be enough to get candidates close enough. The final ingredient is perhaps a little bit of luck, but we cannot budget for that. The previous post on Self-belief holds good even now.

2. CAT rewards preparation from first principles: Quant, DI and verbal have all become more application-intensive and CAT 2010 has continued on with that trend. There is a higher bias towards non-formulaic questions. In maths and verbal, intuition and deeper-understanding is getting rewarded vis-a vis blind formulaic learning. As my boss never tires of saying - Intuition can be built with practice.

3. Balanced preparation is a must: With competition this high, one cannot afford to say my strength in quant should take me through. A few of our students learnt that lesson this time around

New pointers that CAT 2010 has shown us

1. Quant level across the country is pretty high: 15 years ago, \a student needed to just now a bunch of formulae, and need not have been conceptually sound. 6-8 years ago, when CAT made a shift towards more application-intensive questions, it was sufficient if one was conceptually sound. And you could get away without much practice. You always had time to derive 1-2 formulae, do trial-and-error and build hypotheses, verify with bunch of examples, etc. Now, the luxury to do all that is disappearing. A student almost needs to pick the right method to solve a question straightaway. No time for any trial-and-error business. One needs to have basics sound and practice gazillions of questions. The more different kind of problems you can lay your hands on the better.

2. To crack DI, one needs to be good at DI and LR: One out of two wont go. There are some tough DI passages and tough LR questions that you are better of leaving. The option of "I will kill DI and leave all LR questions" will not work

Those of you who are preparing for CAT 2011 and beyond, best wishes.