Management

CAT Preparation Tips for Verbal Ability – Part 4

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With the dates for CAT 2012 declared, the heat has been turned up on the CAT students. With less than 3 months to go for the exam, it is imperative that those serious about making it through to the IIMs change gears on their preparation. Some students would be wondering if they really have it in them to make it through the CAT exam, after the initial set of Mocks that they have taken. But, if one can identify the weak areas and put in focused effort to improve upon them, the CAT will be a much tamer animal than it would appear to be otherwise.. Let us look at each of the areas in CAT and discuss how one can improve on them in the coming one month. CAT scores will be used for initial screening of the candidates.

Verbal Ability:

Reading Comprehension: CAT has traditionally been an RC centric paper, for English. The number of passages varies from 3 to 4 with three to four questions per passage. A few critical factors in RC preparation:

1) Reading on diverse topics

2) Target all direct questions followed by partially inferential questions.

3) During the Test : Ideally not more than 10 mins are to be spent per passage and it is to be ensured that all passages are looked at.

4) Verbal Ability: This includes grammar and word based questions. For grammar, ensure you practice on the rules of Grammar using your study material or any book like Wren & Martin. For word based questions spend 30 mins everyday on going through a list of most commonly misused words like homophones etc. The root-prefix-suffix method for word learning can help solve fill in the blanks questions in CAT.

5) Verbal Reasoning: This includes Para Jumbles and Para completion questions and Critical Reasoning Questions of the kind which appear in GMAT. Following are a few approaches to answer these questions:

– Identify the introductory statement (this statement would tell us what the paragraph is all about)

– Then identify links that would connect the two sentences. These are called connectives. These connectives can be conjunctions (but, and) or can be content connectives like cause–effect, generic to specific etc.

New IIMs – CAT Percentile Cut Offs for Interview Calls – Part 3

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Government of India has established six new IIMs at Shillong, Rohtak, Kashipur, Ranchi, Raipur and Udaipur. All these IIMs use CAT scores for screening the candidates for further rounds of admission process. Hence CAT scores decide whether a candidate get interview call or not. Candidates of different categories need different percentiles / scores to get interview call for these new IIMs. Following are the cut offs / percentiles of 2011-12 in 6 new IIMs for PGDM admissions:

Actual Interview calls in 6 new IIMs:

Category – No. of PI calls – Lowest CAT percentile for PI call

DAP – 104 – 61.57
General – 4779 – 97
NC-OBC – 2979 – 70.54
SC – 1603 – 65.57
ST – 410 – 60.24

This would mean that there is hope for those of you with reservation who may just be thinking of giving up your preparation, because of not so hopeful AIMCAT scores. We suggest that you hang on for some more time, look at the table above, put in increased preparation and target to cross the percentiles indicated here. Academics and work experience also play very important role in IIM admissions.

Those from General Category can also draw hope from the fact that an interview call for the IIMs is possible at 97 percentile also. I have already mentioned earlier that once you get a call, the con version depends mostly on your performance in the Interview/GD/Essay and not on your work experience / academics.