My Strategy to boost VA from 44%ile to 96%ile in CAT 2019

Verbal Ability is the first section that appears during the CAT entrance exam. Just before you start this section, you already are a bit tired because of the long waiting period between, you are entering the centre and the start of the test. You might feel drowsy, but try to keep up the energy or else you would be sleepy during the VA section. Try playing music in your mind or meditate or anything that shall help you to relax. (Pro Tip: Take a few mocks in a similar condition, also may travel far from your home because your center can come anywhere in your or outside your city).

Verbal Ability is divided majorly into RC passages and VA questions, and there are several techniques through which you can solve like: 40–20, 45–15 or 50–10-minute division. I particularly had a target of 40–20 because my reading speed was fairly decent, coupled with VA not being my strongest suite. I would take some more time to solve it. As I used to feel drowsy in the waiting period, I started with RC because you have some story so it wakes me up and then I go to the VA. (One should try and apply different strategies and see what works best for them. Do not follow anyone, just do whatever suits you the best!)

As my VA was the weakest of all, I knew I had to work extremely hard, else my entire scorecard had no meaning. I took one mock scored, just to see my position and scored only 44%ile in VA with amazing other two sections, then went to several professors and mentors to seek their help. A bit summary of what they said:

• Whenever you read, read once and ensure you understand it, or else it is meaningless reading.
• Note your speed and work on increasing it to the maximum possible. (Though average should be 400–500 words per minute).
• Read online as much as you can, because the CAT is online!
• Research on the sources of the passage of CAT and read articles from that.
• Don’t write anything while reading passages, make mind-maps in your mind and not on your paper. You need to save every single second possible.
• Always eliminate the other 3 options, rather than selecting the option. (You may be sometimes lucky to get the answer correct in mocks, but will that also happen at actual CAT?)
• Take sectional tests along with mocks to practice your weak area.
• Analyse your mock really well. More efforts than you actually had put while solving the mock. Know your mistake thoroughly. Prepare your SWOT!

I can actually feel my mentor teaching me like this

My personal learning and strategy for the VA section, I followed these techniques to boost my score from a mere 9 (2nd May 2019) to 81 (23rd November 2019) -

• Kept a target of 99%ile. Anything below that sounds unacceptable to me (in all sections).
• First segregate and list down all genres that come in RC like Economics, Science, Environment, etc. Took different materials from various sources, read the paragraph and noted my speed of reading in terms of ‘words per minute (wpm)’. I realised I had 400–500+ wpm in some genres like Economics, Science, etc., but only about 300–400 wpm in genres like History, Sports, etc. I made a table of the same, and would update this every week (initially) and then every month (in later stages).
• Read any random topic on Wikipedia (on these genres only) for an hour at a stretch, click on random links on the page and keep on reading. Meanwhile, don’t hunt for any meaning of the unfamiliar words, but just try to make sense of the word along with the previous, current and the next sentence. At the end of 1 hour, go back to such words, now Google the meaning and see if you took it in the same context. Also, note them in your excel sheet, will help later.
• Took as many sectional and topic tests as possible and analysed them well. Many times marks were stagnant or even decreased, but keep calm, and work hard on it till you ace it.
• The biggest mistake that I and many other aspirants usually did was to select the option rather than the elimination of other options. Learn that skill. Initially, it took me approx 2–3 minutes per question to do this, but as I started learning it decreased to about 1–1.5 minutes and sometimes even lesser. To learn this, I would redo the entire passage while analysing, debate with myself ‘why one option is better than other’, choose one option, pray that I am right, read the text solution and see whether my reasoning was actually right, and then watch video solutions. It didn’t matter whether my answer was right or wrong at that time, but more about whether my reasoning was right and becoming better day by day.
• Had a study partner (in a far off city, met online through a group). We would compete and help each other in VA, discuss the strategy applied in Mock like the order of RC passages, or how we eliminate something so quickly in some question which is different from the solutions given.
• I attended a webinar and the prof said that the real difference between 99%iler and others is VA. So it always revolved in my mind that I needed to ace this. I learnt a few techniques for the same set of questions, applied each for a month and then saw which worked better for me.
• Asked every other person who scored well in VA (96%ile+) to help me and share their strategy (sometimes in favour of helping them with DILR and/or QA), applied them for at least 15 days, and then saw what worked best for me.
• Did a live mock solving with my mentor, understood what went on his mind while solving and tried to copy some of them in further mocks and actual CAT.

Slowly my scores increased for a mere 9 (on 2nd May 2019) to a stagnant 30s (between August and September) to finally 81 (on 23rd November 2019).

The D-Day:

• Reached 1.5 hours early so as to complete the process early and keep my mind relaxed.
• After the biometrics, revised all the formulas and meditated. The center was too chilled, I was sitting in the middle of two huge ACs. Almost sleepy for which I was almost afraid of.
• Since I decided that I have to be 99%ile+ and for that, I have to attempt everything, I just started off with whatever came on the screen (I think I should have actually screened). Honestly, I became a bit overconfident after seeing 81 in VA the previous day and thought I could now easily achieve (because I didn’t know that VA is going to be a nightmare for all the CAT aspirants :P).
• Unfortunately, I got the worst passage of the CAT as the first passage. I started reading, reached the second paragraph and forgot what was written in the first (thought it was because of the boredom of 1.5 hours also cold), re-read that passage three times actually (but bagged 8 marks out of it, so not so much of an issue).
• After that, the passages went smoothly, taking on an average 4–5 minutes per passage.
• I could do better in VA better than I did before because of all the lessons learnt throughout these months.
• I had approximately 7 minutes remaining before it switched to DILR, so went back to the questions and again thought about the answers (and I changed a few correct answers to wrong in stress, but that’s okay).
• And forgot about the section completely when the DILR section started! (And that was the best thing that could happen to me!)

What worked well for me in CAT:

• Since I never understood the level of difficulty, I did not panic after a tough VA (because I thought VA was always difficult only) and it did not affect my other sections.
• My accuracy was always 66.67% so it is better to attempt more, and somehow it was again the same in CAT 2019 (so more attempts helped).
• I had taken mocks in various extreme conditions like cold, heat, no electricity, too much traffic and managed to maintain my scores, so I could tell my mind to calm down even in the extreme cold situation.
• I scored at my peak in the last week, hence I was so happy and motivated that nobody could have stopped me from achieving my dreams. (Too risky to take tests last week, but I don’t take anything as demotivating so I took it and somehow it went in my favour).
• The passion and determination to achieve.

You can read my article on ‘My Strategy to score 99%ile in DILR of CAT 2019’, ‘My Strategy to score 98.81%ile in QA of CAT 2019’ and ‘My Journey to IIM Ahmedabad’

You can connect with me on LinkedIn for any other help related to CAT and IIM Ahmedabad: Isha Nisar