Taming the lion in the CAT

POINTS TO PONDER: An examination paper has set these students thinking.

As the saying goes, there's a lion within every cat. The first step to domesticate a cat is to recognise and tame this lion. The Common Admission Test (CAT) is also not devoid of this feline characteristic and the technique to crack it is to identify the crucial section in the test and master it.

Where is the lion?
A closer look at the CAT papers since 1999 till the 2003 re-test reveals that the constituent sections, namely, the Quantitative Ability, Verbal Ability and the Logical Reasoning had equal weightage, that is, each of the sections had exactly the same number of questions and thus constituted one third of the entire paper. The total number of questions was reduced from 165 to 150 in the year 2001. The four tests in the next three years consistently had 150 questions each.
The year 2004 saw a major reshuffling in the question paper with the reduction in the total number of questions to 123 which further came down to 90 in 2005. A section-wise inspection of the 2004 and 2005 papers would reveal that the Verbal Ability gained importance in weight in 2004 but stabilised to one third of the paper again in 2005 though the expected cut-off scores were determined at a much higher level than the other sections.
Although one may run the risk of sharing the reputation of a weatherman in predicting a CAT question paper, it can be safely inferred from the above discussion that the lion or the crucial section in CAT 2006 would the one on Verbal Ability.

Importance of Verbal Ability
The importance of Verbal Ability in the context of CAT 2006 being established, it is probably time to address a pertinent question that bothers every test taker: how on earth does verbal ability feature in a management entrance examination? Well, testing verbal ability is one of the direct and few ways of testing the development of the left side of the human brain which controls attention to detail, sense of time and sequence and reasoning ability other than verbal ability — skills that are undoubtedly essential to a manager. Moreover, it is this side of the brain that sets us apart from animals and the best part about it is that the left-brain abilities can be developed with effort and practice.

Excelling in Verbal Ability
Before we move on to the techniques to master verbal ability let us look into the different types of questions that appear under this section. Verbal ability broadly tests for knowledge of English usage and Reading Comprehension. English usage covers knowledge and application of grammar and vocabulary. The Reading Comprehension section tests reading speed as well as accuracy. The best way to excel in the Verbal Ability section is to read a lot and read across genres. For the sentence correction type of questions designed to test the knowledge of application of grammar, it is important to clear one's fundamentals well. It is not advisable in this case to trust one's gut feeling that a particular option sounds correct. Consider this everyday conversation between two youngsters. "Hey! I went to Tito's when I was in Goa!" "Yeah me too!" Even though `me' sounds absolutely impeccable, it is grammatically incorrect.
The verbal section has lately seen a shift from direct questions to inferential questions like paragraph completion. Although the number of passages as well as the average words per passage were at an all-time low last year, the importance of Reading Comprehension compared to the Verbal Ability section was the highest. This is a trend that has to be kept in mind in preparing for CAT 2006. Care should be taken to build both an active and a passive vocabulary to answer usage-based questions. Thus, it is important not only to learn word lists but also to start using them during the preparation time.

Making an Educated Guess
A couple of clear indications are emerging from the pattern of the CAT paper over the years. It is possible that the focus of CAT is shifting from speed to accuracy. This was apparent in the reducing number of questions in the past two years. It is probable that CAT 2006 will see a marginal increase in the number of questions (probably will come closer to the previous 150 in number) with respect to the extra half-an-hour allotted test time. Another aspect that is becoming very apparent from the pattern of the test is the shift from testing knowledge (grammar or vocabulary directly) to testing understanding (inference/usage). The next CAT paper is likely to see fewer direct questions.

Finally, it should be always kept in mind that CAT becomes difficult because of the preconceived notions about the test and the test environment and not because of the content of the test. It is important to take it just as any other test keeping in mind that the lion is also just a cat.
The author is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore and managing director of Career Launcher, a trainer for competitive and entrance examinations.

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