How should working professionals prepare for CAT 2018?

Since you have landed at this article, you must have prepared your mind to attempt the CAT 2018 entrance examination. Preparing for such an important exam in your hectic schedule is definitely a challenging task. Is working for nine hours a day don’t let you concentrate and moreover tiredness letting your motivation down and down? Then you have to make a plan smartly. See, what CAT preparation need is, a thorough understanding of the concepts. If you know the topics well, then 12-15 hours a week for 6 months are enough to prepare for CAT.

What is lacking right now, is motivation. As you have lack of time as compared to other students. Look at the positive side. You don’t have time, so what? you have the work experience. It is the thing which can increase your chances of selection. With your experience, you already know how to handle the pressure. As compared to other students who are preparing for MBA full time can get easily distracted whereas, you will have the fixed time in which you have to study daily.

After knowing the syllabus of the exam, what you can do is analyze yourself. Take a brief test and know your strength and weakness. Further, divide your time into five sections ie Quantitative Aptitude, Data Interpretation, Logical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension and Verbal Ability. Ideally give 2 hours daily on weekdays and atleast 5 hours on weekends.

Utilize your traveling time, break time in office for a quick test like vocabulary, verbal ability or RC test. Utilize your mornings like wake up an hour early or give an hour extra during the night. Try to avoid office parties and hangouts on weekends, learn to say NO.

For Verbal Ability, what you can do is

• Practice two to three RC’s, Para-jumbles, Para-completion daily. You can do that during office hours. Instead of a tea break, use your meantime in solving the questions.
• For vocabulary, you can download any good app and practice during traveling or even during washroom breaks.
• For reading, you must not have time to read novels. Then what you can do is read blogs and articles online download apps like Quora, In shorts etc.

Preparing yourselves for this section is a continuous process. Some are already good in it and some need more practice, so give your best in any case. Yes, you can also enroll yourself in good online test series. As you cannot afford to lose your precious time in coachings. Moreover, coachings will take the lots of time, so spend your weekends doing practice and giving mock tests.

The next important section is Quantitative Ability. First, know your weak points and give initial few days in clearing those concepts. After that, it will get easier for you to attempt the test and you will get more time to revise your mistakes. Write frequent mistakes in a notebook and try to avoid them in next mock or test.

For the Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning section, practice is the key. It is the most challenging section of the exam which scares the candidates every year. With this section difficulty level increasing every year. This year also, this section will test your pressure handling abilities. So, for this the more you practice, more you will feel confident in it. First, improve your calculation speed and basic reasoning skills. Then practice two to three sets daily covering all the topics under it.

Apart from this, are you thinking to quit your job? You have to consider many factors first, before taking that decision. The most horrendous outcome for this is ” How will you explain the interviewers about your work gap?” I can suggest you can join any certificate course for this and prepare side by side for the entrance.

Prepare your plan first and make a proper strategy. There is no definite answer to how to prepare. All you can do is constant practice, optimum utilization of time, discipline and concentration to crack CAT 2018.