Author: catcracker

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D-day

All the best for CAT, everybody! Today, we finally come face to face with the incubus that’s been hovering over our minds for months.  A day for dedication, a day for dreams, a day for destiny…

…a good day to meet arguably the most famous mystery cat in literature! 🙂

Macavity, the Mystery Cat – T. S. Eliot

Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw –
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air –
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!

Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square –
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!

He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s.
And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair –
Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair –
But it’s useless to investigate – Macavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
‘It must have been Macavity!’ – but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place – MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known,
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime.

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10 Things You Need To Do On CAT-Day

D-day

Now that you are done with doing everything you can prepping for the CAT what matters most is how and what you execute in the 170 minutes on D-Day.

What are the things you should do?

What are the pitfalls both strategic and psychological that you must avoid?

Here is a list of the 10 Things You Should Do On CAT-Day.

1. Beat The Waiting-Time Blues
The first thing you need to tackle on test-day is the long wait before you get to start the test, at least a good 45 minutes will be spent twiddling your thumbs. There is a very strong chance that your brain will go off into sleep mode during this period. So you need to ensure that the system stays sharp during this period.

One way to do this is to keep yourself mentally occupied with the any of the following things — mentally go through the solutions of good problems you have encountered in your prep (old CAT problems, alternate solutions to problems etc) , go through the tables or values of fractions and decimals or remind yourself of the other 9 things mentioned in this list :-).

Do this at a slow and relaxed pace. Imagine sportsmen practicing their warm ups – cricketers facing tennis-ball throw downs or footballers stretching.

2. Be Quick Off the Blocks, Do Not Get Stuck Anywhere In The First Ten Questions
Given the baggage of engineering exams that we carry we tend to start slow — the I-will-do-every-question-properly-attitude — and finish in a hurry.

We do this because we are greedy to get marks under our belt, but if you have time under your belt you will have more marks at the end of the test. I would rather have gone through 10 questions in 5 minutes and not attempting anything rather than spending 20 minutes, to get 3 right and 2 wrong.

Tell yourself that you are going to choose your questions decisively. Be quick off the blocks and do not get stuck anywhere in the first ten questions.

3. No Question Is Worth More Than 4 Minutes
Do not throw good money after bad money. Do not restart solving a questions after you have already spent 4 minutes on it. You might think you can get 3 marks if you spend another 3 minutes but there are always plenty more fish in the sea, especially easier fish. Remember all those SimCAT questions you discovered you could easily solve only after you went home. No question, not even ones from your favourite areas, are worth it.

4. Strategically Leave 30-35 Questions
It is always better to leave a question/set than to play and miss. From our previous post on scores and percentiles you will see that you can leave more than 30-35 questions and still get a 99 percentile. You should not spend more than 15 minutes in leaving these questions. This will leave you with enough time to correctly solve the questions you select.

5. Time-Limits Are Sacrosanct, Do Not Exceed Them
The most precious thing on an aptitude test is time. So if you have set some basic time-limits for yourself then you should stick to them. Even an extra 5 minutes here and there can jeopardise your sectional cut-offs and hamper your chances of getting a call.

IIMs take sectional cut-offs very seriously, right down to the decimal. Remember it is a computer that will generate the list of candidates to be  sent a first call based on the input parameters and not people sitting and evaluating your application qualitatively. So a 79.9 instead of 80 on a section will mean that you will not get a first call.

So if you feel you need to give 10 minutes more to a section, do that later not immediately. We had discussed a timing strategy here.

6. Skip questions within a set in DI and LR
Within a particular DI or LR set (more DI than LR), there will be one question which might end-up being time-consuming. This can be the first one or the second one. So first estimate the number of steps involved in solving a question or the precision of calculation required (close options), if both are high then quickly move on to the next question. In many cases it does turn out that solving two questions of a set in 4 minutes is a much better option than getting stuck for 10-15 minutes with 3-4 questions.

7. Do Not Let Your Favourite Area Jeopardise Your Test
Very often test-takers go in to the test thinking that they have to score heavily from a particular area be it LR or Quant. Sure you have to, but only if the questions permit you to!
For example, I would rather do two/three solvable LR Sets in 15-20 minutes and leave the seemingly tougher ones after trying for 3-5 minutes rather than spend 35-40 mins trying to solve all the LRs. Always exit when your prescribed time-limit for an area is done.

You should also be prepared for your favourite area to be less rewarding than usual. When I solved SimCAT 12, I spent very little time solving LR, despite LR being my strong suit because I realised they would sink my time. How do you realize this? By taking your blinkers off! If after 5 minutes you have got no hang of a set unlike on easy sets, then that is your biggest signal!

VA and RC might not be your strength but there might be easy questions lurking there, finish them first and then come back later to try your hand at the tougher LRs.

8. Remember, unfamiliar does not mean unsolvable!
How many times have you left a DI Set just because it is unfamiliar looking only to discover later that it was actually quite simple? I am sure quite often.

We are wired to be wary of the unfamiliar, it helps us survive. But on aptitude tests this can be your undoing. Very often DI Sets where the representation is not a regular one or LR sets that do not seem to be the standard arrangement types might not be difficult to solve once you invest 3-4 minutes trying to understand what they mean.

In fact the converse is also true, familiar looking sets can lull you into investing time to solve them, only to realise much later that they should have been left alone. The LR Sets in SimCAT 12 are a case in point , the tough sets were very standards arrangement type of sets.

9. Do Not Carry Baggage From The Previous Section, Think About The Question In Front Of You 
Your ability to crack a question depends on your level of engagement with the question. It happens quite often that based on the number of questions they are able to attempt in a section, test-takers’ performance on the second section is affected. Test-takers go in to the test having a fixed number in mind and if the do not hit that number on that section, they attempt the second section with nervousness, lower confidence and concentration levels. Please remember that on test-day your ability will not drastically fall or rise. So if you were able to attempt fewer it just means that the section was tougher as a whole. Do not carry baggage from one question into another section!

Also, often when you are doing questions from areas that you are not really fond of, you are thinking about questions from areas your are fond of. Does this really help? Think only about the question in front of you.

10. Take Only Your Brains To The Test, Leave Your Feelings Outside The Lab Along With Your Other Belongings
Most things are won or lost as much by aptitude as by attitude. When Roger Federer plays Nadal you know that somewhere (despite Nadal relentlessly pounding heaving topspin forehands to demolish Federer’s single-handed backhand) Federer lacks the belief that he can beat Nadal. When Djokovic beat Nadal in a final last year, after losing a few matches to him previously, the newspapers said that he displayed a monk-like focus. Both of these examples indicate that half the battle is won or lost in the mind.

Your performance on aptitude tests is dependent on how well your brain processes the information in front of you. So if you let all the myriad things around the test — if I do not get it this time I can’t imagine myself continuing in this job, if I do not get it this time my parents will get me married off and so on and so forth — affect your ability to process the information in the question and execute your timing strategies, it will result in you not performing to the best of your abilities.

I know this might seem to be easier said that done but people truly have bigger problems — not knowing where their next meal is going to come from, not having money to pay their child’s fees, being there with a loved one fighting cancer and worse — none of your problems are really bigger than these.

So do not let your emotions get the better of your abilities. Take only your mind to the test, leave your feelings along with your other belongings outside the lab.

And the most important thing that that cannot be part of a numbered list: DO NOT GIVE UP AT ANY STAGE OF THE TEST. 

This is perhaps the most important thing that will be demanded of you. Fight till the very end, despite the fact that your favourite area did not go well, despite the fact that you find the paper tough, because every mark counts. This will ensure that even if you do not make it to your dream college you might make it to a college that you have applied to and will give you the career break you are looking for. Giving up at some stage of the test can cost you an entire year!

That was may be one of the longest posts I have written but I know that if you can do these 10 things and do not give up, you will have performed to the best of your abilities.

So here is wishing all the readers of this blog all the very best for your CAT! Go forth and maximize your score!

T.

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How To Set A Target Score For CAT 2014

The CAT is a week away and one question we keep getting asked is what score should I target. While percentiles are all that matter, the question is not entirely invalid in terms of its relevance to setting score-based milestones to evaluate your performance during the 170 minutes come test-day. The best way to go about it though is by looking at what the numbers from this year’s SimCATs tell us. We will be looking at data from SimCAT 8 onwards from when the new pattern fully took effect.

What is the SCORE RANGE that a 99 percentile can take?

Crossing the 99the percentile overall is a pre-requisite for general category students aiming for a call from the old IIMs. So what is the range of scores translated into a 99th percentile on SimCATs 8 to 13?

A range of close to 74 marks! Even if we discount SimCAT 8 since the pattern had just changed and test-takers were yet to find their feet, the range is still 50 marks. On SimCAT 12,which was the toughest of the lot, it was was low as 127. The average score for a 99 it turns out is a 150.

Lets us look at the range at other percentile levels (excluding SimCAT 8).

Percentile Score Range Average
99 127-177 150
97 115-163 136
95 105-150 126
90 91-133 112
85 83-120 102
80 77-108 93

Sectional Scores and Percentiles

What do things look like at a sectional level at the various percentile ranges.

Percentile QA – DI

Score Range

 QA – DI

Average

 VA – LR

Score Range

 VA – LR

Average
99 78-111 90 62-86 75
95 63-90 74 53-73 63
90 55-77 64 45-64 55
85 49-68 58 40-58 49
80 44-61 52 32-54 45

How Do You Set Targets For Yourself?

As you can see the score required for a particular percentile depends on the paper you get. One of the benchmarks you can use is the average scores at various percentiles as per the
data above. From the scores you can calculate the number of attempts you would need to achieve your desired percentile.

How Not To Use Target Scores

While the average for a 99 in QA-DI is a score of 90, it does not mean that on test-day, if at the end of your QA-DI section you you estimate your score to be less than 90, you panic.

Quite often test-takers go in with a number in mind and when it does not happen they panic and they end up either allotting additional time to the section thereby jeopardising the other section or go into the other section with a negative mindset and perform poorly. Once the results are out that they realize that they had in fact performed well on the section they attempted first and a good performance on the second one would have meant a 99 plus percentile instead of a 98. More importantly they might miss out on a potential FMS convert and we don’t need to tell you how much that would cost!

So use the data above only as a reference, like the average score on a particular pitch. It does not mean that if you reach the average score in the 45th over you are going to take singles in the last five overs! Nor does it mean that you give up trying to save every single and bowl yourself to victory if you end up with a score slightly less than the average score.

I know it is the last week and most of you might be neck deep in prep but go watch Interstellar some time before your test-day, just to take the weight off your shoulders and shoot off into space.

All the best!

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Data Interpretation – Strategy

When attempting a test like the CAT, a fair number of people follow the (mindless) strategy of “attempt question 1, move to question 2 only after that is done, then question 3…” and so on, often failing thereby to see all the questions. One should remember that one need not win every single battle to win the war. Given that most people (even most people who will eventually make it!) will not attempt all the 100 questions, your “shot selection” becomes very crucial. You need to recognise – as Rahul Dravid used to so elegantly – which balls to hit and which ones are best left alone, and the faster you can judge this the better.

This becomes all the more crucial in the “set-based” questions (DI, LR and RC) as it generally takes significantly longer to judge these. A typical singleton question (such as a parajumble or remainder or PnC or vocab-based one) can be weighed in 20-30 seconds, and judiciously left without feeling too bad about it. But a set can take up to 3-4 minutes just to understand in detail; and if after spending so much time you realise that you have not been able to decipher it, it can induce a panic.

In the past 5 years, there were 30 questions in each section and there would be around 9-10 questions each (or 3 sets each) of DI or LR. This year, it is likely that there would be 4-5 sets, and as many as 15-18 questions, of each. This means that, as in days of yore, your choice of which sets to attempt first could become crucial. In this post, then, I will try to look at possible mechanisms and criteria to help in the decision-making process (as always, this is indicative and you will have to adapt it to your own areas of strength and weakness) so that you can pick and choose which sets to attack first without actually getting into the nitty-gritty details.

Here are some questions you could ask yourself:

1) Is the given data in a familiar form or in an unfamiliar or haphazard state? And is it precise or ambiguous?

If the data provided is in a standard table / line graph / pie chart and is complete and precise, then even if there is quite a lot of data it should still be very manageable. However, if

  • the data is provided in an unfamiliar form – a histogram, a scatter-chart, a cumulative table, or some even more esoteric format (which means you would require an inordinate amount of time just to understand how to interpret it properly)
  • there is some data missing (which means solving the question might entail a lot of pre-work)
  • the data is not precisely readable, such as a bar- or line-graph where the values can only be approximately estimated to around 5-10% accuracy (which means that even with your best efforts accuracy cannot be guaranteed)
  • the data is presented as a caselet (which means you might have to spend precious time at the start to bring it into a manageable form)

then it might be worth leaving the set for later.

2) Is there additional data provided in the questions?

I’ve observed that a lot of people base their judgement of the difficulty level of a set solely on the pre-information before the questions. In my opinion, though, the questions are almost always worth a dekko; if they are straightforward queries like “Who is sitting next to Mr Sivaramasubramanian?” or “In which year is the profit of Megahard Corporation the maximum?” or “How many people failed in maths?” and the options are not of the “Cannot be determined” flavour then it is a pretty fair indicator that the set is going to give you definite answers in one go.

But if you see questions such as “If Germany defeats Brazil 7 – 0 in the final round*, then who will end up in 3rd place overall?” or “if in 2014, Froogle reports a 10% growth in sales and an 8% growth in costs over 2013, then what will be their percentage profit in 2014?” or even more flagrantly evil question-types like “Which of the following cannot be true” giving three statements and options like “I and II only”, “All of I, II and II” and so on (which effectively means you have to solve 3-4 questions for the price of one), then I would recommend you skip lightly on to the next set and return later.

* This example is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any real-life match is purely coincidental. 

3) Does the set lean more towards the calculative or the reasoning based?

This can be a powerful decision point, depending on your skill-sets. A set which involves intensive calculation is unlikely to go out of its way to confound you with traps, while one which involves simple numbers will often require careful reading and weighing of alternatives. (Personally, calculation is something of a strength for me and hence I choose to do the calculative sets relatively early on, but as I said earlier, this decision has to be based upon your knowledge of your own strengths and weaknesses.)

4) How far apart are the answer choices?

This is a useful question to ask yourself when deciding between two calculative sets. If the answers are far apart – on a percentage rather than absolute basis, mind you! – then you can approximately fairly wildly and still arrive at a correct answer confidently. (For example (3, 7, 12, 18) or (35.7%, 52.8%, 88%, 122%)) However if the answers are close together, then you calculations must needs be carried out with nit-picking accuracy and this will affect your speed as well. (For example (62375, 62525, 62845, 63635) or (35.7%, 36.8%, 38.7%, 39.9%))

5) How many questions are there in each set?

If the sets are similar on the above parameters, then this could be a tie-breaker – a set with 4 questions will give you more value for money (i.e. more marks as a result of the time spent on it) than a similar set with 3 questions.

Try and apply the above criteria to a set in real-time, under test conditions. An excellent case-study would be the DI-LR section from CAT 2008, which had 7 sets covering a wide range of types and difficulty levels. If possible, in a future post I shall try to do a video analysis of the same and roughly demonstrate how one could have approached the section during the test.

regards

J