How mocks help you to maximize your CAT score?

The CAT (Common Admission Test) is a highly competitive entrance exam for admission to management programs in India. To gain success in CAT, it is highly essential to practice regularly and take mock tests to assess your progress in preparation. CAT mock tests provide you with an opportunity to assess your strengths and weaknesses, identify areas for improvement, and develop test-taking strategies.

In addition to these test-taking strategies, it’s crucial to maintain a positive mindset. Confidence and a can-do attitude can go a long way in improving your performance in the CAT exam. Stay motivated, stay focused, and remember that consistent effort and  practice will lead you to success.

Here are a few effective strategies to maximize the benefits of the CAT mock test:

• Stimulate the Real Exam

To optimize the benefit of your mock tests, endeavour to replicate the authentic CAT exam environment closely. This entails selecting a serene and obtrusive setting, scheduling your practice tests for the same time of the day as the actual CAT exam, and employing identical equipment, whether it’s a computer or traditional pen and paper. Such simulated conditions will facilitate a more realistic test-taking experience and better prepare you for the actual examination.

• Post-Test Analysis

After completing each mock test, allocate time for a thorough performance analysis. Carefully review your answers, focusing on the identification of your strengths and weaknesses. Pay close attention to the types of questions that you find challenging or tend to make mistakes on. This detailed analysis is a critical  step in your preparation process, helping you fine-tune your approach.

• Craft Strategies

The CAT exam consists of three distinct sections: Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension, and Quantitative Ability. To enhance your performance and maximize your score, it is crucial to formulate crafted strategies for each of these sections. Customized approaches will enable you to address the unique challenges presented by each section effectively.

• Problem-Solving Skills

The CAT exam goes beyond mere memorization of facts and formulas; it assesses your ability to solve problems swiftly and accurately. Enhancing your problem-solving skills is essential. Practice tackling various problem types to sharpen this critical skill and improve your performance on the exam.

• Effective Time Management

Effective time management is crucial for the CAT exam, given its time-bound nature. Practicing answering questions swiftly and accurately is essential to avoid getting bogged down by any single question. Managing your time efficiently ensures you have ample opportunity to address all sections and maximize your overall performance.

• Solve Challenging Questions

When faced with a challenging question, persistence is key. Don’t be discouraged; instead, skip to the next question and return to the difficult one later if time permits. This approach allows you to answer the questions you find more manageable while ensuring that you don’t miss out on valuable marks. It’s a strategic way to tackle the CAT exam efficiently.

• Remain Calm and Composed

Remaining composed and maintaining focus throughout the CAT exam is vital. In moments of stress or anxiety, employ calming techniques, such as deep breathing, to regain your composure. Reassure yourself that your diligent preparation has equipped you to tackle the challenges posed by the test effectively. This mental resilience will aid in optimizing your performance.

• Peer Review

Engaging in discussions about your mock test results with friends, classmates, or mentors can be highly beneficial. These conversations may  provide with valuable insights, alternatives, perspectives, and strategies for improvement. Collaborative learning and sharing experiences can contribute significantly to enhancing your performance in the CAT exam.

It’s well understood that, as per the spaced learning method in psychology, one is more likely to retain something if one learns it in periodic intervals of time. Since practice tests stimulate revision and studying, they encourage earlier learning and so spaced learning, which is likely to improve retention. CAT mock tests are taken as practice tests before the official CAT examination. It imitates the actual CAT Exam experience to make students more exam ready. The accuracy and performance in the exams can be impacted by some candidates’ fear or anxiety during the exam process. Mock tests can reduce test anxiety.

The standard CAT mock tests are based on the exam questions of previous IIM entrance exam question papers, and the projected scores generated are based on previous result statistics.

Each and every CAT mock exam plays a significant role in deciding the next stage of your plan in preparation, depending on the performance. Take, for example, these particular situations:

If a question is left unanswered, the next stage would be reviewing the relevant concept and learning how to apply it.
If the answer is incorrect, despite using the right technique, the next stage would be analyzing the solution description & fixing the error.

Advantages of CAT Mock Test:

• Monitors your test performance
• Improves speed & accuracy
• Devises a suitable strategy to attempt the exam
• Adapts to the new CAT Pattern quickly and effectively
• Overcomes anxiety by exercising mock tests multiple times before the actual CAT.
• Analyses your strong and weak areas in order to better your performance.
• Generates data for self-analysis and in comparison to others
• Given the numerous advantages this practice holds, it is of utmost importance to take as many mock tests for CAT as possible.

How to analyze CAT mock test performance:

Before starting the preparation

Attempt one mock test before starting your CAT preparation. The reason for giving a mock test unprepared is to understand the kind of questions asked in the CAT exam. it is natural to first understand what you should be aiming for before starting to prepare for that aim. This first mock test will also tell you your strengths and weaknesses.

Once you have some basic information about your performance, prepare your study plan accordingly, giving more time to the weak areas. Remember that CAT is not a test of intelligence but aptitude. This is why it is better that you have minimum weak areas rather than one or two very strong sections. This advice may be taken lightly by many readers but this will give you invaluable insight and give a needed direction to your CAT preparation.

Sectional mock tests

Once you have attempted the first mock test and started your preparation according to the CAT syllabus you will complete topics every few days. But since you will be far from the competition for the complete syllabus, it is a good option to give sectional mock tests. Once you have prepared enough sections, you should start giving sectional mock tests every week. This will also help you revise in addition to helping you track your progress and performance. Sectional mock tests will help you understand more possible types and varieties of questions that may be asked from each topic. A full test that has 32-34 questions per section may not be able to give a correct representation of your detailed preparation in each topic. The sectional mock tests are better for this purpose.

Full mock tests

Once you have done enough preparation, start solving full mock tests. Do not wait for the syllabus to complete. You should ideally solve one mock test every week while your preparation is still going on. Once you have completed the preparation, you can increase the frequency. While attempting the mock tests keep a few things in mind:

• Keep all distractions, like phones, away.
• Close your room and tell others not to disturb you.
• Sit for a complete 3-hour session without getting up.
• Do not get up for bathroom breaks or refreshments.
• Keep the environment as close to the actual exam.
• Keep the guesses minimum.

The best way to attempt the initial few mock tests is to keep a target of a certain percentage of the paper, for example, you may aim to attempt 40-50% of the paper. Try to get maximum questions correctly before trying to solve more questions. You may aim up to 60% of the paper or more depending upon your level of preparation or progress. Never attempt to solve the complete question paper. This is a bad strategy to attempt the CAT exam. The correct strategy to attempt the paper would be like this.

• Spend the first 3-4 minutes scanning the whole paper.
• During this time, mark all the questions that can be solved easily inside a minute
• Also, mark questions that can be solved but will take more time
• Leave the questions which you cannot solve or the ones which you can solve but they will take a lot of time.
• Start attempting the paper with the easy questions you have marked
• Then attempt the second type of questions you marked
• If there is time left after this, verify that the questions you have solved are correct.
• Only after verifying should you proceed to solve more questions, if any time is left, that is.