CAT 2010: Key points to make your test taking hurdle free - By: MBA

At this stage, when there is just two weeks left for the CAT 2010 test phase to start, the mantra should be to get your test taking strategy fixed.

Though it is often said that once you see the questions, your strategy can change, but if you have a strategy in place in advance then it is easier for you to concentrate on the paper, rather than spending time on thinking about what to do and what not to do with regards to the sections and the individual questions.
To help all MBA aspirants in devising a good strategy for test taking MBAUniverse.com brings this special article in which top MBA experts and CAT toppers give their advice based on their rich and varied experience.
According to Vivek Gupta, CAT expert, author and IIM Bangalore alumnus, there are two schools of thought on attempting the paper. The first school is to attempt the section in which you are strong first in order to gain confidence. The second approach is to attempt your weak section first as you are in your freshest state of mind at that time. “You should try both in your mock tests and see which one gives you better returns,” says Gupta.
On the topic of time management Aniruddh Phukan, 99.74 percentiler in CAT 2009 and now a student of IIM Kozhikode says, “The time you get for CAT is 2 hours and 15 minutes, excluding the 15 minutes tutorial. You have to make most of this time and also keep 30 minutes in buffer for additional review. For a two hour paper this would ideally be a breakup: 30 + 40 + 50 minutes.”
According to him, you should spend least time in your strong areas and then progressively move towards the other sections. Don’t waste time by sticking to one particular question, advises Aniruddh.
Manish Saraf, COO, PT Education offers a section-wise strategy to attempt the paper:
Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning
Remember this is a very scoring section. You can first go through all the sets and try to identify which are the ones you can manage to do quickly. It’s important to go through all the questions just to make sure that you are not wasting time on a tougher set whereas there might be some easier sets which you might not be able to do justice with, if you won’t look at it in the beginning itself. So go through the sets and identify what to solve first and then once you are done with it move on to the next set. Don't stick too much to any set, because you might end up wasting time over that question which could have fetched you marks in some other set or section.
Quantitative Aptitude
What you need to do well in this part is to clear the concepts and try to identify the area of Quant you are strong at. Once you identify that, it would be easy for you in the CAT exam center to go through the questions once and identify which ones are easier for you. Some questions easier for you might not be easier for others and vice versa. So you need to find your strong areas and work on them first. Like in DI, here again you need to identify out of given questions you can do within a reasonable time and devote your time to those questions. Again don't stick to any question for more than two to three minutes if you are not going anywhere in the question.
Verbal Ability
You can practice a lot in verbal but still the level of questions asked and the options given are so close that you can never be sure of what to expect from each answer. So the best way out is to attempt as much as you can and guess reasonably. The focus is on grammar and Reading Comprehension, so you need to work through that.
Key Points to Remember during the Exam
1. Choose the questions carefully. If you see you cannot proceed farther with any question, leave it there and try other questions.
2. Do a very organized rough work so that if need be you are able to refer to it later during the course of your online test. Otherwise you may end up wasting time either searching for the working of a particular question or reworking the whole thing again.
3. Utilize the Mark & Review buttons properly. If you have doubt related to a question, you can mark it and come back to the question later. You should also keep reviewing the questions to see there are no incomplete questions. But make sure that clicking on the Review button often doesn’t distract you.
4. Don’t lose focus by looking anywhere else or listening to someone else’s conversation. Maintain your concentration for the entire exam duration.
5. Watch the tutorial of the exam carefully. It will tell you what you can expect in the test.
Also read:

Speed Reading techniques for CAT 2010 Reading Comprehension
Preparation strategy for 15 days to CAT 2010
Exclusive: An update on MBA entrance exams of 2010
Expect CAT 2010 to be tough: CAT Convener to MBAUniverse.com
Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more on CAT 2010 preparation.

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