How To Increase The Number Of Attempts In The Cat

By Author: Education Advisor
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The most important factor determining a candidate's success or failure in any exam is the score obtained. This is also true for the CAT; as you may know, the CAT is the first step toward admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) with the help of best teachers for CAT preparation.

The number of attempts and accuracy are two additional factors that influence the final score. We already know that these two are not independent of one another. Most of the time, they act like arch enemies. When attempting to increase the number of attempts, accuracy suffers. When the emphasis is on accuracy, the number of attempts decreases.

Is there a way for you to make these two arch enemies into friends? The short answer is yes!

Question selection
If there is any way, it must be this. You must ensure that you attempt and answer all of the easy questions in each section within the time limit of 60 minutes. If time allows, after answering the easy questions, you can move on to the more difficult ones. To do so, one must attempt questions selectively, judging their difficulty level as they read ...
... them. The cardinal rule is to not skip any easy questions on the test. How many times have you realized that you missed some simple questions on the test? Forget about not answering them; there could be some simple questions that you overlooked. In the context of the CAT, this is a colossal error.

So, how do you avoid missing out on simple questions? You must examine each question and decide whether it should be attempted or dropped immediately based on the area/topic/concept of the question and your familiarity with it. Only questions that appear doable should be attempted. This way, you can finish the paper within the time limit and ensure that no easy questions are missed. After finishing the paper, make a second pass to select the easier questions from those that remain. You could repeat the process as many times as necessary to ensure that the easiest of the remaining questions are attempted. As a result, you will ensure that you are only working on the easiest questions in the paper at any given time.

Two thoughts would have occurred to you:

How will I know if a particular question is doable?
The main motivators here are practice and exposure. The more practice you put in, the more questions and question types you are exposed to, and thus the greater the likelihood that you will encounter some of them in the exam.

How will I reach the end of the paper in time?
You will only attempt the seemingly easy questions as you train your mind to refuse to attempt any question that appears difficult. Assume the number of easy questions is around 15. In a best-case scenario (two-three minutes per easy question), you would not need more than 30-45 minutes to complete the paper. In any case, if the number of simple questions is less than 15, you will finish the paper sooner.

If the number of easy questions is greater, you will reach the end of the paper after approximately 30 such questions in the best case scenario and approximately 20 questions in the worst case scenario. Regardless, be happy - you don't have to look any further because there are so many simple questions now. Follow them with the help of your best online teachers for CAT preparation.

Please read the paragraph below and then try to internalize it in conjunction with the paragraph above.

By now, you would have seen many of the AIMCAT scores/percentiles. Some of you may have also seen the actual CAT 2021 results. You'd notice that the 99th percentile has been hovering in the 55-65 percentile range. That means you can answer around 75% of the questions and expect to be in the 99th percentile. This means that if you exclude the 25% unattempted questions, you have one hour per section for approximately 25-26 questions. This increases the time available per question from about 1.7-1.8 minutes (if all questions in a section are counted) to about 2.4 minutes. As a result, a scenario that falls somewhere between the best and worst cases described above will work best for you and place you in the 99+ percentile range. Pushing it beyond that requires 'that' extra bit of effort.

So, how will the question choice transform the arch enemies into friends?
Let's wait and see. At any point in time, you have only answered the simple questions on the paper. An easy question is so named because it takes less time to answer. As a result, the number of attempts increases naturally. Furthermore, because the question is easy, your chances of getting it wrong are lower, especially when compared to the 'not-easy' questions. We're increasing both the number of attempts and the accuracy at the same time.

A few more suggestions for question selection.
The question you have is whether we should scan the paper first or answer them on the spot based on the difficulty level before attempting the questions. The answer is dependent on the section you're working on. It makes no sense to return to the questions after scanning them in a section like Verbal Ability because most of them can be answered or skipped in the first reading.

However, the constraints for the Quantitative Ability section are different. The questions can be left to be solved later after identifying all of the easy questions in the paper during the first reading. The disadvantage of doing so is that there will be duplication of effort in reading the same question twice. This is because by the time the scan is finished and one returns to the first question, the information on the question has faded and the question must be read again. To avoid this, divide the section's allotted time into different chunks (for example, divide the 60 minutes into four 15-minute chunks) and focus on a set of questions to be scanned for difficulty level and attempted in each 15-minute chunk. This way, you can ensure that no question is overlooked and that all easy-to-medium questions are attempted.

A similar approach can be used for the DILR section, with the advantage that most questions are already divided into sets, making your job easier.

After all is said and done, it is your mental state that will be crucial in the exam. Maintain a level head, ignore the hype and hoopla, and concentrate solely on performing well in the CAT. Best wishes!