How To Analyse CAT Mocks?

Mocks form an essential component of CAT Preparation. They are considered so vital that one can predict your actual CAT percentile based on your past 4-5 mock percentiles/scores. Analysing a mock is as essential as taking a mock tests. Some experts even claim that you should spend more time analysing mocks than giving them. In this article, we will try to demystify how to analyse CAT mocks.

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Analysing a CAT mock tests usually can be divided into two steps –

1. Strengthening unknown or weaker concepts
2. Analysis and strategies

Analyse CAT Mocks – Strengthening unknown/weaker concepts

This part mainly comprises revisiting the unattempted questions or the wrongly answered questions and learning from them. You might miss out on a question for one or more of the following reasons –

1. You’re unfamiliar with the concept being tested.
2.  You might have studied the concept in the past but do not remember it at the moment.
3. You took the wrong approach or wrongly applied a concept.
4. You could proceed to a specific point but could not go ahead further.
5. You’ve committed some calculation mistakes/comprehension mistakes.
6. You had no time left to attempt the question.

Most of the reasons stated here correspond to DILR and QA. In VARC, it is all about comprehension and retention. Hence, there can not be a wrong approach or a possibility of you forgetting a concept. Towards the end of your preparation, you will find that you are caught up mainly among the last three points mentioned above.

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Analyse CAT Mocks – Analysis and Strategies

Have you ever experienced a stagnation of mock scores? No matter how many mocks you give, the scores/percentile seem to have reached a saturation point. If you have experienced this in the past, you will know how much it takes to come out of this situation. The best way to tackle this problem is to analyse your mocks thoroughly. Reduce the frequency at which you are attempting mocks and devote the additional time to analysing and strategising. What does mock tests analysis involve? We will look into this question in a section-wise approach to ease the process.

Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension

1. How many RC sets could you attempt?
2. Did you leave out an easy RC because you were left with no time?
3. Attempts vs Accuracy – You should have a balance of both and not miss out entirely on any of them.
4. Look for how many easy or medium questions you missed or attempted wrongly.
5. If this is your weaker section, special attention is needed in the analysis part, and it is advisable to keep track of all this data over time and look out for any improvement.

Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning

1. Did you attempt the best sets according to your capabilities?
2. Did you miss out on an easy set?
3. How much time, out of the 40 minutes, were spent in sets that you could not crack?
4. Is there a common pattern among the sets(over mocks) that you were not able to attempt?
5. Keep an eye for calculation mistakes as well in Data Interpretation.

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Quantitative Ability

1. Attempts vs accuracy – Never trade accuracy for attempts. This does not mean that you spend too much time ensuring that your answer is right.
2. If this is your weaker section, keep track of the topic-wise performance as well. This way, you will end up strengthening even the weakest of your concepts.
3. Make sure that even if you got an answer right, your approach is not wrong and there is no better way to solve the question.
4. Track down the 40 minutes into 3 parts – T1, T2, T3.
   1. T1 – Time spent answering the questions you got right.
   2. T2 – Time spent answering the questions you got wrong.
   3. T3 – Time spent on questions you could not solve.

The closer T1 is to 40 minutes, the better is your approach in the examination. This simply means that you have spent most of the time answering questions correctly. T3 should be as low as possible. T2 is the tricky part. Observe the distribution of T2 among the individual questions. Also, make sure that you do not spend lower than required time on questions and end up making calculation mistakes.

The time you spend analysing a mock tests should not be a deciding criterion as long as you follow all these steps after giving any mock tests.

Toppers spend most of their preparation time in writing mocks, sectionals and topic tests, and in analyzing those tests.

Make sure you take the Free CAT Mocks and analyse them as mentioned in this article.

Also, check out Previous Year CAT Papers to get acquainted with the pattern and type of questions asked.

Hope you find this article helpful for your preparation. Wish you all the best for CAT 2021.

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