While giving the online test on your exam day, please keep in mind that all your preparations and efforts culminate with your performance on this day. However, do not panic or be scared. Instead be calm and concentrate on raising your performance level.

Keep the following things in mind:

1. Ensure that your mind is free of any psychological burden on the day of the exam. Thinking about things like “Today is a make or break day for me” or “What will I do in case I do not perform to the standards I have set” or “If I do not make it today, I’m not going to make it in life,” etc. can motivate you if used positively. However, these thoughts can also pull you down psychologically and can drastically affect your performance if taken too seriously.

2. Managing your performance on the day of the exam is one of the critical things you should focus on.

Keep the following components and variables in mind while taking the exam:

a. With 30 questions to be attempted in 70 minutes in each section, make sure that you stick broadly with the two minute 20 second benchmark with each question. The idea is that you should process all the 30 questions in each section – try to not leave out any. Hence, make sure that you do not get unnecessarily stuck on an individual question and keep going ahead. In case you are unsure of how to do a question, move on immediately – because it is unlikely that you would be able to think through a new solution given the pressure of the exam.

b. Do not guess. Mark answers you are sure about since guessing would lead to unnecessary negatives. Remember that the CAT follows a progressive negative marking process and hence, you get penalized heavily for your errors.

c. Have a clear initial target about how many attempts you want to make in each section. Once you start solving the test, keep adjusting your target based on how easy/tough the questions are for you. Please remember that in case you are finding the questions tough, it is most likely to be the same for your fellow test takers.

3. Do not think too far ahead about your test performance. Live in the moment and focus on reacting to what comes in front of you. Only think about your test performance in order to adjust your target. Remember, even a couple of correct answers in the last two minutes can make your percentile jump by as much as +10 percentile.

By Arun Sharma

The author, an IIM Bangalore alumnus, is a well-known CAT guru and has written books on CAT and other aptitude tests published by McGraw Hill. He is also the CEO of Mindworkzz, a CAT coaching brand.

Source: HT Education

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