BEST USE OF MOCKS!!

Section I: Introduction
Approach:
Treat each & every mockcat like a real CAT - with as much seriousness as you
would treat CAT. This means that you will divide your time in doing the sections
in a manner that you demonstrate your competence in all the sections so as to
achieve sectional cut-offs.
You are advised to distribute the total time available to you over various sections
as per the "Test taking Strategies" session/note.
Easy Questions
The way to conquer CAT or any other exam is to identify easy questions and
doing these as fast as you can with good accuracy. The other important part is to
leave most of the difficult questions so that in the given two hours, maximum
questions can be attempted.
Scanning SkiIIs:
Scanning the paper to identify easy/difficult questions is an important skill that
you will need to build, develop and hone with each AMCAT. A series of 18 tests
therefore greatly helps in developing this ability.
Accuracy:
You should target an accuracy level of 70-80%, which means that out of every
20 questions attempted by you, at least 14 questions should be right.
Section II: How do I get more out of MOCKCATs
This section deals with what you should do after you take the MOCKCATs (and
before you get to know your percentile scores and rank).
Basics
1. To get the best out of MOCKCATs, please budget at least 6-8 hours for a
thorough analysis which is essential to get full learning out of the same. A
number of students mistakenly focus more on taking a large number of tests
without rigorous analysis of the test they take. Remember, test-taking without
proper analysis is like eating without digestion.
2. While taking the mockcat, please ensure that you mark in your test booklet,
each question/option attempted by you.
3. After the mockcat is over, please DO NOT look at key/solutions to check your
marks. nstead, freshen up, relax a bit and get ready for a few marathon
sessions.
4. Please take each stage as seriously as you would take actual CAT.
5. Results in each stage should be tabulated as given in annexure.
Stage 1
n the first stage, please attempt those questions in the MOCKCATs which you
did not attempt earlier. You will need to fix a time period for stage 1.
This time period can be arrived at as below:
a) Suppose total Questions in MOCKCATs : 150 ( 100% )
b) Questions attempted : 60 ( 40% ) in two hours
c) Balance Questions : 90
d) Time period fixed for stage 1 to attempt 90 Questions: 3 hours ( this is
calculated using student's speed )
On the other hand, if the number of questions attempted was 90 then:
a) Balance Questions : 60
b) Time period fixed for stage 1 to attempt 60 questions : 80 minutes
Actual time you should fix will be more than what you calculate as above since
the questions that you left out will be more difficult/time-consuming than the
questions that you attempted in the exam. Hence, budget for about 20-30
minutes more than what you calculate as above.
After fixing the time period, you should now attempt the un-attempted questions
in that time period by using an alarm clock.
After stage 1, you may have still left some questions un-attempted.
Stage 2
Now you will attempt all the "leftover" questions that were not attempted so far
(at the first time or in Stage 1) without any "time limit". t is possible that even
after giving "infinite" time, you may still not be able to all the questions.
Stage 3
Now is the time to check how many of your attempts are right by using the key
only. Please do not look at the solutions at this stage.
Stage 4
Re-attempt all those questions which you answered incorrectly, still without
looking at the solutions, to see if you can correctly answer the same now. You
will find that you are now able to get a few more questions correct even without
looking at the solutions. Please understand that this is the way to improve your
learning. You do not need to set any time limit for this stage. At the end of this
stage, there could be some other questions that you still are not able to answer
correctly.
Stage 5
Now look at the solutions and check following:
e) Have you solved each question by the "approach" suggested in the solutions
or you used another/longer method
f) Solutions to those questions which you could not answer correctly earlier.
g) How to solve those questions that you were not able to solve at all at the end
of stage 2.
t is possible that some students may not be able to understand fully the
solutions/explanatory notes for some questions. n such a case, please take
guidance from your faculty members. n case, the question is from the chapter
that has not yet been taught in the class for your batch and you do not know the
basics of that chapter, please wait till the chapter is taken up in your batch.
Stage 6
You will now review each question and try to classify the questions into "EASY",
"MODERATE" and "DFFCULT" questions based on your perception of the
difficulty level of the questions. Use following guidelines while assigning difficulty
levels to various questions:
Easy: Can be done in less than a minute.
Moderate: Requires more number of steps, more calculations: Time taken could
be between 60 and 90 seconds.
Difficult : Questions where you may not know the basics for answering the
question, questions that involve very long calculations or that need to have very
accurate answers due to close options or questions that involve large number of
steps - all these leading to time taken - more than 90 seconds.
You will tabulate how many of these questions were attempted in your first
attempt, stage 1 and stage 2
Summary of Stages & Analysis
At the end of the analysis, you should be able to identify your strengths &
weaknesses and make an action plan as below:
a) Attempts Percentage (AP): Percentage of total questions attempted. While
this is undoubtedly important, a lot of students place undue emphasis on this
factor alone. More attempts without accuracy will only lead to less marks and
lower rank.
Attempts Percentage is closely linked to the second parameter - EQ. Without
high EQ, Attempts Percentage would normally be lower. The key to improve
Attempts Percentage is to build your skills in the area of:
i) Numerical Ability: This is all about your ability to calculate fast. You should be
thorough with Tables, conversion of fractions into percentages & vice-versa,
square & cubes, etc. to improve this ability. Needless to add, the more you
practice, the better you would become.
ii) Reading Speed (RS): Good RS does not only help in RC section but also
helps in all the sections, for, the length of questions in each test area has
significantly increased in the recent years.
iii) Ego Management: A large number of students lose precious time in
continuing with a question just because they think that they can do it and spend
unproductively high time battling with it. Just don't do it!
b) Ability to dentify Easy Questions (EQ): As mentioned earlier, this is the most
important skill that can make a huge difference to your score and rank. When you
do this analysis for every AMCAT, you should be able to significantly improve
your ability to identify "easy" questions. You should do this analysis for each
section / test area as well as for the whole paper.
Measure: EQ = 100 x (No. of easy questions attempted / Total no. of easy
questions in the test )
Target & Action Plan: mprove your EQ score by at least 10 percentage points
in the next AMCAT. EQ score of 80+ is considered to be very good.
c) Accuracy (Ac): Check your accuracy in each stage and try to identify the
reasons for making mistakes. The reasons could be many - carelessness in
calculation, application of wrong formulae, missing out some critical data,
hastiness arising out of desire to attempt more questions, etc. The objective is to
understand the reasons why you made mistakes and learn from them. This
analysis is extremely important for you if your accuracy is less than 70%. When
your accuracy is low, you are wasting a lot of precious time in attempting and
marking wrong answers.
Measure: Ac = 100 X (No. of questions attempted & right / No. of questions
attempted )
Target & Action Plan:
i) Try to get Accuracy score of at least 70. f your score is above 70, aim to
maintain it around 80-85 while trying to attempt more number of questions.
ii) Make a list of reasons and identify the number of mistakes that can be
attributed to each reason. Track your progress to check if you are learning from
your own mistakes.
d) Ability to Avoid Difficult Questions (ADS): This is a measure of your ability to
identify the 'tricky' ones so that you leave these alone. Some of you may be able
to solve and get correct answers to these questions. However, the time required
in answering these could be much better utilized in answering easy questions -
simply because you can attempt more of these! For most students, if their ADS is
high, their EQ will be low.
Measure: D = 100 x (No. of difficult questions attempted/Total no. of difficult
questions in the test)
Target & Action Plan: Aim for a score of less than 10%.
e) Areas where you need to build knowledge & techniques (KT): n case of
questions that you could not solve in any of the stages or found that the method
used by you was longer/more cumbersome, stage 5 is helpful in identifying your
weak areas.
You will need to build a storehouse of short-cut techniques and also work on
improving knowledge in your weak areas.
Section III: AdditionaI AnaIysis & Action PIan after
AIMCAT resuIts are decIared
1. Discrepancy between your estimated score and reported on the website
f you notice any large discrepancy (difference of more than 2 in your attempts,
right or wrong answers) estimated by you vs. as reported on the website , it is
possible that darkening of ovals done by you on the OMR sheet is improper.
Please pay special attention to this. Otherwise you may lose marks
unnecessarily.
2. How to use MOCKCATs Feedback
A thorough analysis of the MOCKCATs results provided by thE respective
learning centres will help you get an insight into what's happening with your
performance in the MOCKCATs. t also helps you to understand your relative
performance vis--vis the entire student community writing MOCKCATs
The feedback given to you on MOCKCATs, normally consists of the following:
Section-wise Results
Area-wise Results
All-ndia Comparative Performance
Question-wise Analysis
Toppers' List
Snapshot of your Performance
Performance across MOCKCATs
3. Target-setting
Your target in MOCKCATs cannot be just score improvement! You should be
clear that the ABSOLUTE SCORE in the MOCKCATs is not the most reliable
indicator of whether you are improving. For example, lower score in a relatively
difficult test could be better than a higher score in an easier one!
Percentile score or rank are the only reliable indicators of your performance.
t is suggested that you should fix a target for the next MOCKCATs after you
finish analysing the current one. This target can be a two-stage one depending
on your performance level:
Stage : Target to clear cut-off in any given section where your score is lower
than the cut-off score.
f you narrowly missed the cut-off in a section, did you miss it because:
a) you gave it less time? or
b) attempted fewer questions? or
c) have low Accuracy score?
On the other hand, if you missed the cut-off by a wide margin in a section, is it
because:
a) your "fundas" in this area are poor? or
b) you gave this section very little time?
n either case, you have to prepare an action plan to reduce/eliminate this
lacuna.
Stage II: Target a higher score / percentile
This is a bit more difficult. As explained earlier, higher absolute score may not
necessarily lead to higher percentile score or higher rank, hence your target has
to be in terms f percentile rank. To do this well, you will need to develop the
ability of assessing how difficult/easy each of the sections/whole paper was. This
can be done by benchmarking the test paper against the earlier test.
How to get the best out of the AIMCATs
Now that you are in the last lap of your preparation for the CAT, and regularly
attempting the AMCATs, you would probably be asking yourself the question,
"How do really improve my performance in the AMCATs?" Whether you
are someone who barely manages make it into the toppers' list or someone who
is struggling to cross the
sectional/overall cut-offs, remember that things can be changed and you can
improve your performance.
The key to making this possible lies in how much you can extract out of the
AMCATs that you take regularly. The
AMCATs are undoubtedly one of the most valuable tools you have at your
disposal to help you fine-tune and hone
your performance. But you must note that though the AMCAT series is as close
to the real thing as is possible - in
terms of the quality of the paper, the mode of administration, the crowd taking the
test, the results and the
accompanying analysis -
you can make it work for you onIy if you are reaIIy prepared to put in what it
takes
to extract the maximum out of each AIMCAT. In fact, most of the students
who make it into the top BschooIs
mention "reguIarIy anaIyzing AIMCATs" as one of the most important
things they did to crack
CAT
This article is intended to help you in exactly that, i.e., in getting the most out of
each and every AMCAT that you
take, so that you can move ahead in your endeavor to achieve top performance
in the AMCATs and subsequently in
the CAT itself.
Perspective:
The first aspect that we shall consider is your perspective of the AMCATs. n
order to gain the most out of the
AMCATs you need to have the right perspective about what they are intended to
be and how they can help you.
What the AIMCATs are intended to be
Benchmarking TooI: The AMCATs are primarily intended to be a
benchmarking tool, i.e., to help you honestly
measure your level of preparedness for the real CAT and discover your strong
and weak areas. They are
definitely not intended to scare you or discourage you and therefore you should
never look upon them with fear
or trepidation.
How the AIMCATs can help you
DeveIoping the Right Test-taking Strategy: The AMCATs are also intended
help you develop the right testtaking
approach/strategy for the real CAT through a proper analysis of your
performance in each AMCAT.
Learning New Techniques of ProbIem-SoIving: Finally, the AMCATs are also
intended to help you to learn
some advanced techniques, i.e., you may sometimes find some new and useful
ways of applying the basic
concepts.
How you should approach the AIMCATs
Treat each AMCAT as if it were the actual CAT itself and believe that your
performance in the AMCAT actually
matters. Such seriousness is a must if you hope to either perform well in the
AMCATs or to gain any serious
benefit from them. However, after each AMCAT you need to look at it as not just
as giving a mock test but as an
opportunity to learn and improve your performance. Also, do not miss out on any
AMCAT unless it is absolutely
unavoidable. However, do remember to take the AMCAT results with a pinch of
salt, especially when your
performance was not upto your expectations. In short, always give your best go
at it but never let it get to you!
Preparation and Practice:
Over the past few years, with decreasing number of questions in each section,
the CAT has been placing
increasingly more emphasis on problems which can be solved with a sound
conceptual understanding as against
resorting to shortcuts, speed, selection of questions etc. Therefore, you need to
be conceptually thorough to the
extent possible, at least with the topics that have been already covered in class.
f your preparation is lagging or
is below par at present, you should immediately plan for a complete round-up of
the basics and then start
applying the concepts in the upcoming AMCATs as well as while reviewing the
previous AMCATs. The online
sectional practice tests available on the Student Homepage should be used to
top-up your preparation through
extensive and high quality practice followed by analysis.
.Performance:
The three most important things to look out for here are time management,
question-selection, and accuracy.
Time-management: Time-management is all about planning your available time
so that you can display
adequate competence in all the three sections, while maximizing your overall
score. t calls for tremendous selfdiscipline
to ensure you never spend an inordinate amount of time on any question and
judiciously skip questions
that turn out to be more time-consuming than expected.
Also, a common quandary that many students often face is the order in which
they should attempt the three
sections. A broad guideline to help you with this tricky decision is that you order
your sections in such a way that
you give yourself the best opportunity to maximize your score in your strong
section and also, at the same time,
ensure that you don't completely fumble in your weak areas. You could manage
this if you try to attempt your
strongest section first, your weakest section next and then end with the
remaining section. However, you may
want to switch the order of the first two sections, depending on your
convenience. Also, many students find it
very useful to plan for a buffer time of at least 10 minutes, since it helps them to
effectively deal with any
surprises/challenges of the CAT on the exam day. This buffer time can be
allocated to the section/s which could
not be attempted satisfactorily enough due to unexpected circumstances, like
exceptionally unconventional
questions in a section, or new types of questions/topics or even a completely
different pattern of the paper.
Question-seIection: With fewer questions per section, the issue of question-
selection is now definitely easier
but not any less important. n fact, spending more time than is required on a
wrong or a relatively difficult
question than is required, can prove to be a costlier mistake, more so now, since
each question now has a higher
weight- in case of a 20 question section, 5% . The art of selecting the right
questions to attempt comes from a
combination of solid grounding in the basics and an ability to quickly see through
the situation given in the
question and anticipate the broad steps involved in the solution. This inevitably
requires considerable amount of
practice, both on and off the paper.
Accuracy: Finally, the accuracy of your attempts in the AMCAT needs to be
taken care of. For the same reasons
as explained above, any sort of compromise on accuracy, in a shorter section,
can lead to a drastic reduction in
your percentile score. Hence, an accuracy of 70% or more is highly desirable.
Often, a significant number of
mistakes are committed due to mere lack of concentration or unnecessary haste.
A cool headed, confident
approach can help avoid a lot of mistakes usually committed unwittingly.
. Post-Performance AnaIysis:
After each AMCAT, spend at least 2 hours analyzing each section of the paper.
Try and first work out every
question in as many different ways as you can think of and only then look up the
solutions for the same. t is in
this phase of your prep that you can expect to significantly improve your
understanding of the basics and more
importantly, your ability to apply them in an exam scenario. This analysis should
be done in different steps.
Step-1: Attempt all those questions in that section that you left unattempted
during the AMCAT.
Step-2: Try solving questions that may still be left over. Only after giving all the
questions a good try, check the
answer key to find out which questions you could answer correctly and re-
attempt all those questions that you
answered wrongly. You would be able to learn a great deal from this step since
you would actually be pushing
yourself to think harder and find out where you have made mistakes. Do not look
at the solutions until you are
finished with this step.
Step-3: You can refer the solutions and compare your approach with that given
in the solutions. You should
keenly observe and learn anything new that you may find in the solutions. At the
end of this stage of your
analysis, you should try to categorize the questions into levels of difficulty based
on the understanding required
and the amount of time that you would take to solve each of them in an exam
situation. This is a very important
step that will help you in identifying the level of a question, a critical input
required when trying to choose the
right questions to attempt in the AMCAT or the actual CAT.
Step-4: Carefully look up the extensive analysis Section-wise, Area-wise,
Difficulty Level wise and much more
that is provided to you on the Student Homepage after the results are declared.
The AMCAT results and
analysis that are made available on the website are meticulously designed,
comprehensive, and personalized
analyses that are intended to give you valuable feedback regarding your
performance. This feedback will guide
you towards a better, more focused and effective preparation and can set you on
a path of continuous
improvement.
Another practical way to boost your learning is to sometimes study, if possible,
with your peers in small groups
of not more than three to four members. You can analyze and discuss each
AMCAT as a group, after each
member is through with his share of individual analysis. This a very good
approach to maximize your learning.
The group should ideally be formed with members with strengths in different
areas so that there is scope for
everyone to gain from the joint effort.
Progress: One critical aspect that often gets neglected is keeping track of one's
progress in the AMCATs. You
should continually track your key performance parameters- sectional and overall
percentile scores and lookout
for any trends and if adverse, remedy the situation accordingly. Remember that
absolute scores do not
necessarily reflect your performance since it is a competitive exam where only
relative performance matters. You
should actively keep track of how often you cross all the sectional cutoffs and
also the number of times that you
make it into the toppers list or how often you cross a certain overall percentile
figure that you may be aiming for.
Failing to keep track of and inability to continually adjust, your performance and
preparation can seriously
undermine your preparation. Also, setting short-term and long-term goals for your
sectional and overall
percentiles, and other parameters like identifying and attempting at least 80% of
all the easy questions in a
section, or ensuring to spare some buffer time in the paper etc., will keep you
focused and motivated and also
yield better results.
V.
Perseverance: On a final note, remember the principle of perseverance. Know
and remember that the
competition is bound to intimidate you on more than one occasion over the
coming few weeks and things will not
always go the way that you may like them to. You should also be prepared for
occasional spells of self-doubt,
despair and discouragement they are all a part and parcel of the game which
you will eventually become
accustomed to, overcome and, hopefully, use as stepping stones to reach
greater heights in your preparation
and performance in the AMCATs and also your career in the long run.