By this point, most students are in the final phase of their CAT preparation. They can be divided into the following:

Category 1: I stand a very good chance to make it to IIMs. (Test-takers consistently getting over 99 percentiles in their tests)

Category 2: I am around there but everything depends on the day. (Test-takers consistently getting in the range of 90 percentile plus )

Category 3: Looks like I am not making it into the IIMs this year. (Test-takers consistently getting less than 90 percentile). Their thought process as October passes is either resignation to the thought: “The IIMs are too high for me,” or “I need to look beyond this year.”

The common concern for the students of the above categories (especially category 3) at this time is: “Can I improve my test scores at this stage of time?”

The answer to this question is a resounding yes!

In order to do so you now need to concentrate on two broad lines of work- Test-Taking Behavioural Improvement and Belief Improvement.

We will first concentrate on test-taking behaviour improvement strategies:

Ask yourself the following questions:

When you finish a test:

a) Do you find questions which you had read during the test and were unable to solve? However, the moment you reflected on the question once the test got over, the answer immediately struck you (We will call such questions ‘knew but did not strike’).

b) When you analyse your answers, do you find yourself cringing at the silly errors that you have made.

How many are they? While identifying errors you have committed look out for these types of errors:

i) Errors of calculations (An IITian I once trained committed the error of 3×3= 6 ).

ii) Process-based silly errors (A single step error in solving a question).

iii) Over reading errors (You get questions incorrect because you have not read them properly).

c) Do you end up finding questions which you think you could have solved easily had you seen them during the test? Let’s call such questions ‘knew but did not see during the test’.

At the same time, do you regularly have time zones inside the test paper where you get no return/negative return from the time invested in solving a question? (Typically, this occurs when you have spent a substantial amount of time in the exam without having got an answer or having got a wrong answer)

These three categories of errors (ie ‘did not strike’, ‘silly errors’ and “knew but did not see during the test’) give you your score improvement potential. Obviously, your concentration should be on at least minimising (if not eliminating) these error categories. Even if there are only 10 questions coming under these error categories there is a score improvement potential of about 50 marks (Under the +4, -1 marking pattern of CAT 2006). On average, there will be a score improvement potential of about 75+ marks even at this late stage. A look at the CAT 2006 score percentile correlations will give you a clear idea of what is possible at this stage.

A student who scored 70 marks in CAT 2006 would have ended up with a percentile of about 60-70 percentile. At the same time, the percentile score at 110 marks was 99 percentile. With the +4, -1 marking pattern, 40 marks could have meant just about 8 errors.

Ask anybody who got 60 percentile in the CAT last year as to how many questions fell into each of the above categories of errors, and you will find most of them coming up with aggregates of 15-20 questions, which would mean Score Improvement Potential of 70-90 marks; and that too with their existing knowledge levels.

Yet, in spite of this logic most people who end up getting scores of 60 percentile tend to think that the CAT was never meant for them.

The message for those is then loud and clear: Whatever tests you are taking, after every test find out your score improvement potential by analysing how many questions fell into each of the three categories mentioned. In the subsequent tests that you take, desist from repeating the same error types.

(The writer is a CAT trainer and the author of bestselling books on ‘How to prepare for the CAT’ published by
McGraw- Hill Education India)

Source: The Times Of India