How to get 99 + percentile in CAT

If you are willing to take admission in one of the IIMs or some other top MBA colleges in India ,your target percentile should definitely be in the range of 99. For those who are not aware of the term percentile let me explain: Percentile means the percentage of students who appeared in the exam and got less score in the exam than that particular student . So a student with 99 percentile score means he is ahead of 99 percentage of those who appeared in the exam. 

But the main issues are  that:-- 

 How to achieve that 99 + percentile range?

What are the important factors that decide a good score in CAT?

How many questions should be attempted to score 99 percentile in CAT?

How much time should be devoted to score a 99 percentile in CAT?

and there are numerous such questions that students ask while they prepare for CAT. 

In this post I am going to answer many such questions related to CAT and its score.

Let's understand the CAT exam first . It is an exam in which our scores are compared with scores of other test takers . There are two types of scores that we can see on our score card- Raw score and Scaled score. Raw score is the absolute value and it is calculated after considering the number of correct attempts, number of wrong attempts, marks per question and the negative marking scheme. Whereas scaled score is calculated considering the difficulty level of the paper .  That means a student scoring a 60 marks in QA in the morning slot may be in a better position than someone scoring 60 marks in QA in the afternoon slot if the difficulty level of QA is higher in the morning slot. 

So the important factors to score well in CAT are selection of questions, accuracy, speed and concept clarity of every topic. If you really want to score good then start writing mock tests on a regular basis. In my opinion every student should write 25-30 mock tests of national level , preferably of two different coaching institutions. Since the exam has heavy negative marking ,one should focus on having high accuracy in the paper. 

We can not say the number of correct attempts needed to score 99 percentile before the actual paper. The cut off will always depend on the difficulty level of the paper. But based on the recent trends we can suggest that the attempt in every section should be in the range of 20-25 questions correctly to reach 99 percentile range. (considering that difficulty level is similar to those of  recent year papers).

 Similarly amount of time needed to score well will depend on the level of preparedness of the student. I have taught students who scored 99+ percentile even in three months preparation , but there are only a few of them in this category. In general students may take 6 months (or even more) of sincere efforts . If our aim is higher percentile in CAT then we should start our preparation early. The rule is very simple - the earlier you start the better you perform. 

I always suggest that accuracy should always be very high. Something close to 100 %  especially in QA & LRDI sections. But we should also focus on our speed. And that can be done with a lot of practice. Speed enhancement is a matter of consistent effort and we have to work on this regularly. For this you should learn and apply the smart methods of solving questions. Most of the questions in CAT exam can be solved in various different ways. So we need to understand both the traditional (basic) method and the smart method. Vedic Maths will definitely help us in our calculations. Vedic Maths techniques are very powerful to save our time dramatically. And for RC if you want to improve your reading speed then you must start reading a lot of serious articles and books on a daily basis.

Remember one thing : You have to perform better than most others to get a call from IIM.  Exhaustive study with focus on each concept will surely help you to reach your target score.

Stay focused, stay consistent in your efforts and result will surely come as per your expectations. 

If you want me to write on some more topics please do suggest so in the comment below. I will try to make similar posts for you based on your needs.

Thank you so much!

All the best for your preparation.

Happy Learning !!!