The Road to XL … Part 2
Posted July 17, 2009 – 10:15 pm in: BedTime StoriesContinued from http://blog.raviunravels.com/?p=16
This is where I stood when I started off :
English - very poor in vocabulary, poor in comprehending,poor reading speed, disastrous grammar …
Quant and Math - better off in this section, but had to cope up with a bad habit of performing tons of silly mistakes
Reasoning and Data Interpretation - reasonably good in this one(i always loved reasoning)
I was fortunate enough to realise my strengths and weakness early during preparation. I exactly knew what i had to work hard on and what i had to just sharpen up. For the next 2-3 months, i was really diligent in attending each Sunday of the training. I then realised that the trainers were doing nothing but take up simple, and were going no further in rising to the next level. What training institutions cannot afford to do is to customize the course according to each student’s strengths and weaknesses. But this is precisely what i needed to effectively utilize my time. The lectures were only wasting my time by covering what i didn’t need to know. I decided to attend the most important topics and then go my own way.
The fundamental area which i had to improve on was vocabulary. I was fortunate enough to get hold of a great book “Word Power Made Easy- Norman Lewis”. Although it didnt teach me every word present in English Dictionary, but it certainly instilled in me a tremendous interest towards learning new words. It took me less than 40-45 days to build a strong foundation of vocabulary. Then came Semester 5 exams.
Mistake #1 : I didn’t realise how bad reader i was and how important it is to be a good reader.
The vacation passed by without making significant progress. I spent the spare time of Semester 6 flipping through the BRMs, brushing up basic Maths formulae, flash cards occasionally, solving puzzles … Maths especially seemed really simple(i thought it’s after all secondary school level) and i was complacent towards it most of the time. I was content with the kind of effort i was putting in(i dont think i could have put in more time given that i also had to manage my Engineering studies well).
Mistake #2 : I was confident that i could manage Maths quite well and was always complacent(i later realised that my basics were very weak).
Mistake #3 : I didn’t realise the first mistake.
Semester 6 exams passed by and it was vacation time again. The epic season of Mocks began. For the sake of variety, i also enrolled Time test series along with my existing SimCat series. Mocks passed by; sometimes 2 on a Sunday, and sometimes on a Sunday and Monday early mornings. Mocks became a routine. No matter how badly i fared, i just knew that I had to keep taking them. I could never get rid of disastrous scores. My average score in Time remained around 90 %ile, and a little over that in IMS. With also the final year project work to manage, i just had enough time in a week to take 2 mocks and analyse them.
Mistake #4 : I didnt take the Mocks with CAT attitude. I just knew that i fared badly and that i needed to improve.
Mistake #5 : I still didn’t realise my previous mistakes.
During October, Baijulara(a former CAT 100 %iler, and a full time CAT trainer) came to our college and started conducting Quant sessions. Ours was the first batch that he started in Mumbai. And, the best part was that it was held in our own college. He started it off with a complementary lecture on Numbers. It was a blessing in disguise that i attended it. I was fascinated by his approach and decided that it was worth investing any amount of money and time to attend this. He had a revolutionary methodology of teaching, and it was best suited for me… with not much emphasis on simple and stupid problems(like the ones taken up by coaching institutes) … shortcuts and shortcuts … geometry by imagining … and much more. I gained an unusual interest and zeal towards solving Quants.
I also felt the importance of taking up some GMAT Verbal stuff. They have some excellent reasoning based questions in the form of RCs and Critical Reasoning questions. I practised a sizable number of each of them.
This reasonably took care of one of the mentioned mistakes. I practised Quants hard … soved a few chapters of Arun Sharma … revised all the stuff covered by Baiju … analysed each paper as it went by(it was a different issue that the scores were still not improving) … solved good number of DI sets … took the MCTs and the FCTs occassionally … and at the same time not neglecting Engineering. However, i always felt that i was missing out on basics in Quant, though i could pull off tougher ones. I still didn’t have powerful basics.
There were 10 days left for CAT ‘06 and 11 days for Engineering exams. I decided to set aside my Engineering preparation no matter what. I knew i couldn’t get back to learning mode. The next 10 days, i spent working on RCs & CRs, quant practice and formulae revision, vocabulary brush up, and some occasional rest. It was the D Day finally. I was nervous and cold. It appeared that all my passion, zeal, and energy went into hibernation. I was trying hard to pump up myself, “I know I can do it … come on“. I took a cold stare at the question paper, and was praying that the number of questions were fewer that last year (i’m most comfortable with fewer but tougher questions). The number indeed reduced, to 75. And, there was another slice of surprise - no differential marking. So, its just the number of questions attempted that mattered. I gathered some confidence and started off.
I was taken by surprise by the radical pattern change in Verbal section… attempted a few FIJ and Para completion questions… took up DI and solved around 15 questions … got back to Verbal ahead. I was terrified looking at the kind of passages. They were the most abstract type that could have ever been asked. I realised immediately that taking up at most 2 passages and solving them thoroughly would be the best bet. And phew, it took me almost a day’s worth brain power to concentrate and relate what was given in the passage. I took around 25 minutes and managed to solve 2 passages. I went ahead to Quants … and attempted around 14 questions (though it was a simple section i didnt know why i didn’t attempt more). At the end, i knew i could have done much better … more attempts in Quant, and another set in DI would have done well.
I had decided earlier that i was not going to immediately compare my answer keys with those provided by coaching institutes. I had more important things to work on. I prepared the best i could do for the next 1.5 days and appeared for the first of my 7th Semester exams. The rest of the papers went not as bad as i had expected them to be.
It was over. All exams DONE. I was somewhat proud of myself to have pulled off all this decently well. It was now the time to check my answer keys. I presumed it was enough time for all the coaching institutes to make up their minds and arrive at the correct answers. After i compared it, i was shocked and devestated. I didn’t know what went wrong, but the bottomline was that i got only 8 correct out of the 14 questions in Quant. It was all over. A score of 26 in the simplest section would fetch me nothing. To my surprise, i did decently well in my nightmare section Verbal.
To be continuted …
Tags: XLRI CAT experience