????How to get 100 Percentile in CAT?
Interview of Jagesh Golwala: Secured 100 percentile in CAT 2018:
Ok hi, we’ve got Jagesh Golwala, he is one of the CAT toppers, by the way, Jagesh, what is your expected raw score right now.
Sir, I’m expecting around 237 just late of 74, 70 and 93, and 93 is in quants, that is amazing guys I’m sure that the results are not out but I’m sure that there will be no one even closer to this so congratulations for this massive score once again did you think that,
I’m going to be one of the toppers I wasn’t really thinking about it, I was just trying to maximize myself my motivation was that I shouldn’t be regretting after exam that I should’ve done better I was trying to cover up my weak areas and focus on the exams rather than after the exam you’ve been killing it, your JEE rank was also good, what was it?
yeah my JEE rank was 242, after that hes just killing it but nevertheless how is the feeling after getting this score are you still down to earth or you’re already getting phone calls from friends and families and saying congratulations, how is it? im still down to earth, i haven’t really told anybody other than my close friends okay that is amazing so what are your options IIM-B, IIM-C, IIM-A? So yeah I’ll be targeting the A,B,C series alphabetically what are your 2 cents for the 2.
5lakh people appearing for this exam, you prepared for how many months? 6months 1 year, what is the ideal time you spent? i started roughly around January but my whole preparation started in May so you got approximately 6months how many mocks did you give? I gave around 35-40 mocks did you focus on the basic or intensive ones? i began with basic, moved to intensive and as the exams came closer i went on with the advanced because intensive was too intensive and the exam paper was more on the advanced side
so i thought to get the hang of the exam feel its better to do advanced when the exam is coming closer so while giving the mocks do you think the intensive ones were 15-20% higher than the whole thing? advanced was the real one and the basic one was around 20% lower than the whole thing yeah precisely lets now talk about various subjects like quants verbals and DI, whats your strength among the 3 your marks says quants but what’s your strength i would say quants.
How was the paper how was the quant examination when you gave it in CAT when I started my quants paper the first question that came to me was quite difficult and the first question that I attempted went quite wrong in the initial 10mins that I used to give my mocks I used to complete about 6-7 questions, picking the easy questions but out here I completed 2-3 questions thats it thats because the paper was quite tough and it was unexpected
to be so tough so even for the toppers the paper was tough so the people who were listening to me and saying we didnt get the desired results in quants even for the best of the kids the paper was really tough what was your strategy for quants, how did you segregate the time my strategy was 10mins 6 questions, 25mins 13 questions, 30mins about 17-18 questions or rather more 20 questions and then towards the last half an hour I would focus on the remaining 14-15 questions and a couple of difficult questions so when you jump into this you pick the easier questions first my strength was arithmetics
so when I would start I would look out for arithmetic questions all the questions were shorter in length and looked to be easier thats how I went about it and I always kept geometry for the end because I was not comfortable with geometry,
I know this guy personally, he’s known for killing and sticking to his strengths first whether its giving interviews in his college so stick to your strengths is what he wants to say so people who are giving CAT who don’t know what arithmetics are, it’s time speed distance, time x work, mixture allegations, in fact, chapter 6-11 of your basic books and stay glued to this topic for sure I think this is the crux of CAT for the past couple of years, even this year they were lot more focused on arithmetics than the other subjects so the majority and difficult questions too were from arithmetics I would say the easier questions were from geometry and other stuff I felt that they were more focused on people forming equations like translating a word problem into an equation is what their focus was their focus area during the CAT exam, and how many questions were there from functions, maxima-minima, graphical representations did you find any questions there? yeah about a couple 2 or 3 questions not more than that so we got Jagesh Golwala here so how was LR here, what’s your expected raw score in LR & DI, I am expecting 70, okay thats a good score so how did you find the paper and prepare for it? so the trend for the last two years, the LR, DI section was very difficult and the questions were more difficult rather than being lengthy,
they’re going to the more trickier side and theyre not focusing on calculations as much they want people to get the logic behind the questions but this year I would say the questions were more lengthier and less trickier and how do you prepare for them? you spent 6months of time how do you prepare for the whole thing? so I focused on LR when i began in may so all the arrangement questions, linear arrangement, circular all selection questions I tried to master in a month and post that I classified the LR-DI section in 3 categories one was typical LR questions, one was general puzzle questions and 3rd would be DI like all the graphs, etc all of that into one type so firstly I picked the typical LR questions and tried to master them later on I came onto the DI and I tried to focus on the calculations and understand the various graphs that are used during the exam and then puzzles are dependent on the more mocks you take the more you will understand those theres no definite strategy for puzzle questions except that you keep revising what mistakes youve done and recall the strategy used for that particular question so in LR-DI you made 3 different parts so when you said the standard basic questions, what were those questions are they blood relations, coding-decoding? Exactly.
Okay so you mastered those, were those your strengths? Exactly so most people do it wrong, they focus on the puzzle piece only so the puzzles are topic number B as per Jagesh who is sitting with us and the third is DI so infact that was my strategy,
when I was preparing for CAT how was VA, i remember seeing you coming for verbal wednesdays so were they helpful? so in terms of inference based questions as we covered in a couple of lectures and then with respect to norman lewis voacbulary questions it was pretty good so when you read a passage its essential that you get the crux of the passage so for that you need a good vocabulary so for that i think the lectures actually helped and with respect to inference based questions you need to understand what the paper setter is thinking so from that
point of view verbal wednesdays were really helpful do you remember any vocabulary word that ive trained or ive said in the verbal wednesdays? that’s a tricky question loquacious, i remember that entire lecture that we were focusing on the words which are related to speaking the verbose the smooth talker and all that I remember that I remember you winning a book also in the contest people who don’t know, I give away books also, Jagesh won a book in fact one of the first few books that was in july I know you’re a very good reader, so whats your two cents, people have 6months approximately 1 year and they’ve to kill and get 99.99%tile so what’s your strength? so firstly you need to get the hang of reading,
I started by reading basic newspaper articles from TOI then I went on to read articles from the guardian and new york times then I went on to opinions and editorials from the hindu which are pretty good why guardian and new york times? because I’ve heard many articles and passages come from them, you are sure right people who’ve been in verbal wednesdays I always say that guardian and NYT are the places where they pick up the RC like this year’s CAT also it was from the guardian what else did you prepare in verbal my emphasis was on improving the reading speed and comprehension part and 2nd emphasis was always cracking the questions,
so I segregated the questions in different types and i found I have a weakness in inference type of questions and main idea central idea type of questions and i focused and developed strategies based on those at the end I racked up all the questions that I went wrong in those were all CR based questions so the inference and central idea questions I think I developed a pretty good strategy for the same so that went pretty well for me CR is one thing that you feel you’ve written the answer pretty well but the answer is pretty wrong this happens in GMAT as well so you’ve been attending sessions with me and anisha at CATKing powai so were those sections helpful? Anisha spent a lot of time with you what were they based on?
so the strategy for inference and central idea questions I developed with her we sat 1 on 1 and solved those questions and secondly from the verbal and summary and para jumbles also she helped me out pretty much.
Source: Youtube
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