Learn from the mistakes of previous MBA aspirants and avoid them during your preparation.
During MBA or CAT preparation, students commit the same set of mistakes that are repetitive in nature. The journey to your final destination, getting admission in IIMs or other reputed MBA colleges, will be filled with many hours of toil and burdensome work. But the right way to crack MBA entrance exam is to work up a smart strategy and improvise it as you progress through your preparation journey. At the same time, you must be aware of the common blunders committed by MBA aspirants. To ease your MBA preparation, we bring you a list of some mistakes which you should avoid to crack the MBA entrance exam.
- Not having a daily time table : While most students work hard, but many of them do not prepare a daily/weekly time table. It is advisable to every aspirant to plan her/his daily preparation by making a schedule and stick to it religiously. This time table should be prepared in such a manner that it can be practically followed i.e., “promise more, deliver less’ kind of situation should not arise because of your over ambition, else this might lead to demotivation.
- Not going thought syllabus : The first and foremost thing which the CAT aspirant should do is to study the syllabus minutely. Many a time, it has come to our notice that the students have just a vague idea of the topics that need to be covered. For instance, it is imperative for you to know that reading comprehension is a major component in the Verbal ability section of CAT. It is essential for you to make a list of topics which fall under different areas namely – (Quantitative Aptitude (QA), Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DILR) and Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC). Enhance your understanding by going through the MBA exam pattern as well.
- Not gaining conceptual clarity- Quite a few MBA aspirants wrongly believe that they can master MBA subjects by memorizing formulae and short cuts. They need to remember that the only way to cracking the MBA exam is by gaining conceptual clarity. In this regard, it would be advisable to understand all the underlying principles while solving questions If needed, you should collect your doubts and discuss them with a faculty member on a regular basis. One should remember that no doubt is worthless – do not hesitate in airing your doubts and queries.
- Not devoting enough time to each topic : Another area of concern is when students do not devote ample time to understand the concepts and jump to another topic. Instead of rushing to complete the course, you should first focus on understanding the basic concepts of each area. When the concept knowledge is incomplete, you cannot perform well in the exam. For instance, in critical reasoning questions, you should have a proper understanding of the terms like inference, assumptions etc. In other words, you need to learn about different question types for individual sections.
- Not attempting enough mocks or over attempting them : The intention behind creating MBA mocks or MBA test series is to provide a guideline to the MBA aspirant. The type of questions which come from different sections of the MBA exam gives an idea to the student about the level of preparation which they have to put in. After attempting a mock exam, you can gauge your strengths and weaknesses with respect to various topics. But on the other hand, you should be careful not to over attempt the mocks. Some students sit for the actual MBA exam with certain preconceived notions based on the mock tests, which in turn can hamper their performance. Although the mock tests imitate the actual exam in many ways, it can never be exactly the same. So, it is always better to be ready for a few surprises in the MBA.
- Not analyzing the mocks : Students who do not analyze mocks are not able to find out the areas of improvement. Test Analysis gives you insights into the the factors such as correlation between number of attempts and accuracy, time spent on each question, selection of right questions in terms of difficulty level etc. All these parameters are crucial to estimate and predetermine so as to attain a good score. Therefore analyzing the mocks forms a critical component in your MBA preparation journey
- Not setting targets : Students who do not set targets end up spending a lot of time on the topics which otherwise might require less time to prepare. Therefore it is advisable that have a target set for each day and study accordingly. This is essential because some topics carry more weightage in exam than others.
- Not having a balanced approach : The difficulty level of the MBA paper varies every year. The projected number of attempts and the expected percentile for a particular year could be different for the next year. Students should have a balanced approach while emphasizing on increasing their number of attempts and nailing a high accuracy. MBA is more a test of complex decision-making rather than speed.
- Spending too much time on one’s area of interest : It is quite natural for anyone to prefer to spending more time on topics and subjects that seem interesting and fetch good score easily. But in MBA Entrance exam or CAT, you need to clear the individual cut offs of all the three sections namely (Quantitative Aptitude (QA), Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DILR) and Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC). So, an ideal way is to learn and master the whole lot of important topics and practice frequently asked questions.
- “Giving up” in the middle of the journey : One should bear in mind that preparing for CAT exam is like running a marathon, and not like participating in a 100 meter race. There will be moments ( esp when you do not perform well in the AIMCATs ) when you feel like giving up on your preparation for the CAT exam. It is precisely the time when you need to self-motivate yourself and push towards working even harder. We need to learn from our mock performance, figure out areas which need improvement, and work towards it.
Finally, keep in mind that you still have a few months to go for CAT exam. Prepare hard, and you can make a world of difference in this time.
