Online CAT: From the QA Perspective - How to Prepare for Quantitative Aptitude for CAT

How to Prepare for Quantitative Aptitude for CAT (2014)

Online CAT: From the QA Perspective

Welcome to the world of online CAT!

The advent of the online version of the Common Admission Test (CAT) in 2009 and beyond brought with it a whole lot of opinions and views about what has changed in the examination and what should be the ideal preparation pattern. Therefore, one objective in this revised edition of this widely read book is to look at the issues that an aspirant needs to consider while preparing for the online CAT. I would like to discuss this issue in the following parts:

1.What has changed? A comprehensive analysis of what are the critical dimensions of the changes that have taken place in the CAT in its online avatar and what it means for the aspirant, both in respect of positive and negative factors, taking into account the following:

(a)Changes in the Test-Taking Experience

(b)Changes in the Exam pattern

(c)Changes in the Marking process

2.What does all this mean for the Preparation Process? How it should change in the context of an online examination and how has it remained constant- whether online or paper-and-pen?

While doing so I have taken the help of a varied experiential sample of test-takers from across India and also my own personal experience of taking (and may I add dominating) the CAT. Given below are some of the implications of the online version of the CAT in the context of the Quantitative Aptitude section (which this book is all about).

Note: In this book, whenever I refer to preparation for the Quantitative Aptitude Section, I am referring to the preparation for the approximately 20 questions on Quantitative Aptitude, that are being asked under the Quantitative Aptitude and Data Interpretation sections of the CAT.

  1. WHAT HAS CHANGED?

The ‘experience’ of taking the test

  1. Cleaner & More Efficient:Compared to the paper-and-pen based CAT, the online version is much cleaner as the clarity of questions, their visibility, as well as the overall feel of the question solving experience is much better. Consequently, the efficiency (of the thought processes) is much higher, leading to a much superior test-solving experience.
  2. Space Management on the Table:In the paper-and-pen version, the aspirant had to typically manage the test paper, admit card, watch, pencils (at least 2), eraser, sharpener as well as the answer sheet on the table. To add to their woes, the paper-and-pen versions of the exam were mostly conducted in schools. Very often the aspirants had to contend with the additional challenge of managing all this paraphernalia on a school boy’s small table. In addition, if luck did not run your way and you were made to sit in a classroom meant for juniors, (between classes 3 to 6) you really had a challenge.

Most of these problems have disappeared in the new version. The fact that computer terminals at most colleges and universities are of standard shape and size eliminates the imbalance created due to non-uniformity. Besides, while writing the online version of the CAT, all you need to manage on the table are the mouse, the key board, a pencil and a sheet of paper for rough work; no watches, erasers, sharpeners and most importantly, no test paper and no answer sheet.

  1. Moving Questions in the Test: Unlike the paper-and-pen version, where test-takers could scan the whole question paper in one look, in the online CAT, aspirants had to move one question at a time. This had both its advantages and disadvantages in terms of the overall test experience. The obvious disadvantage that most aspirants faced was the fact that since you could not really see the whole paper in one look, you could not make a judgment about the balance, the difficulty level or the portion wise question distribution in the paper. (Although I am referring to the quantitative aptitude section here, this was also true for all the sections in the exam)

Ironically, the biggest advantage for the examinee in terms of the online CAT was exactly the same i.e. since you could not see the paper entirely at one go, the only option while taking the test was to look at the questions one by one.

This turned out to be a huge advantage because of two main reasons mentioned below:

Higher Focus while Solving an Individual Question: Not knowing the exact number of questions from various areas and not being able to estimate the difficulty level of the paper, left individuals with no choice but to focus on the one question that was visible to them on the screen. The result was that achieving the all important ‘tunnel vision’ while solving a question was much easier. The immediate result of this was that the focus on the `problem at hand’ was infinitely more in the online version than in the conventional paper-and-pen format. Thus, ironically, not knowing the pattern of the paper resulted in giving examinees their best chance to solve a question.

The main reason for this was that while solving the question in front of the computer screen the experience of the previous question was totally blanked out. In the paper-and-pen version, students who had a negative experience while solving a question or two carried that negativity to the next question.

Thus the specific advantage of the online version was that “forgetting” a bad experience was relatively easier. The moment you navigated away from the question in front of you, it went away from your mind as well. So much so, that remembering a question that was just two questions back was close to impossible. Naturally the ‘carry over’ emotions from a previous negative experience were significantly reduced.

The Imperative for Faster Navigation (less time wasted on unsolvable questions): Since the examinees had not seen the full question paper right at the beginning, the imperative to move to the next question was extremely strong. This resulted in students seeing a higher percentage of the questions in the online test than in the paper-and-pen version.

Author’s Note: One of the problems I had noticed in the paper-and-pen version was that most examinees were not able to ‘see’ the entire paper. i.e. the fraction of the quantitative aptitude section that they were able to process was a fraction of the entire test paper. As a result they used to miss out on a large number of sitters! On an average, out of a 5-page question paper in quantitative aptitude, students were able to process at most upto 2–3 pages. So they would naturally miss out on all easy ones on the pages they did not process. A lot of time would get wasted in questions that they tried and were unable to solve or even if they solved, they were unable to get them correct.

Part of this time mismanagement also occurred due to the fact that they did not have the clock ticking on the screen in front of them. Therefore, they naturally lost track of how much time they had spent in attempting to solve a question. A good percentage of the time the aspirants used to spend in the QA section was spent in trying to solve a question which they were eventually unable to solve.

All this changed for the better in the online version. There was a greater imperative to move to the next question due to the twin facts that you had not seen the entire paper as you were moving from one question to the other, and that the ticking clock was omnipresent in front of your eyes on the screen. As a result, you were aware of the exact amount of time you had spent on a particular question. The net result was that after trying a question for maybe 60 to 90 seconds, in case you did not have a clue about what to do in the same, you moved to the next question. Thus time management improved drastically for the examinee.

I believe this is one of the main reasons why a lot of students who were trying to compare the two versions of the CAT said that the online version was easier. Since the amount of time spent in questions which they were eventually not able to solve, reduced drastically, they got a feeling that they were solving questions all the time as opposed to the paper-and-pen version where aspirants used to have an overall negative experience of the test (as they would end up spending a lot of time in attempting “unsolvable” questions.

  1. Mark/Unmark Button & the Review Button: A very important feature in the online version was the introduction of the REVIEWbutton. In the paper-and-pen version, it was extremely difficult to track the number of your attempts and especially so in the context of questions that you were unsure about and/or questions which you wanted to come back to. There was simply no way in which you could keep a track of those and as a result there was effectively ‘no second chance’ at a question.

This too changed in the online CAT. For every question, apart from the facility to answer it, you also had a MARK button, which would give you easy access to the question at the end of the paper. When you have completed the paper (reached the last question in the paper), you also got access to a review screen that in one visual showed you all the questions you had solved as well as all the questions you had marked with the MARK button. So going back to a specific question in the paper was just the click of the mouse away.

To sum up, the net effect of the online CAT was a superior test-taking experience — something that gives you a chance to be more in control of your test— and thus aim for a higher score assuming that the same set of questions would have been asked in the paper-and-pen version.

What has changed in terms of the exam pattern?

Having seen the specific changes that have occurred in terms of the test-taking experience, let us now examine another crucial aspect.

Changes in Exam Pattern: Obviously for the purpose of this book, the analysis will pertain to the QA portion only. In order to read a similar analysis with respect to the other sections namely, Verbal Ability & Logical Reasoningyou can refer to my book on these subjects, also published by McGraw Hill. The major changes in the pattern of the Quantitative Aptitude paper can be summarised through the following points:

1.More balanced portion coverage

2.Reduction in number of questions

3.Lack of uniformity

4.Higher percentage cutoffs

  1. More Balanced Portion Coverage: As per the scheme followed in this book, the QA portion can be divided into 6 major parts (or blocks as I call them in this book).

The underlying constant that used to exist in the paper-and-pen version (through the entire decade prior to the first online CAT) was the prominence of Block I and Block V. (Block I comprising Number Systems and Progressions and Block V comprising the chapters on Functions, Inequalities, Quadratic and other Equations and Logarithms.)

In each of the years from 1999 to 2008, the QA section required you to get a net score of approximately 30 – 40% of the total marks in order to score a high 90 percentile in this section.

In the light of this fact, the importance of Block I and Block V can be gauged from the table below:

Block

Weightage (as a % of total marks)

Block I

30 – 50%

Block V

15 – 50%

Combined weightage of Blocks I & V

60 – 80%

Add to this, the chapter on Time, Speed and Distance with a minimum weightage of 5–10% and you pretty much had the QA section well covered. In a nutshell, QA for CAT preparation had become “do 10 chapters well”.

However, this scenario has changed in the context of the online version of the exam.

The balance of weightage of questions shifted and each of the six blocks have become important. The aspirant of CAT online version saw a weightage distribution of the kind illustrated below.

Block

Total Out of 20 Questions

Block I

3 – 4 questions

Blocks II & III

3 – 5 questions

Block IV

3 – 6 questions

Block V

4 – 5 questions

Block VI

1 – 3 questions

  1. Reduction in number of Questions: The second major change in the QA section is the reduction of questions to 20.From 55 questions in the late nineties to 50 between 2000 to 2003 to 30 & then 25 in the last years of the paper-and-pen version, the number of questions has further gone down to 20 in the online version. Naturally, this reduced the amount of choice the aspirant had for leaving out a question.

For instance in CAT 2003 out of 50 questions, you needed to solve 15 to get to the cut off. This meant that at 100% accuracy you could afford to leave 35 questions. This scenario has now changed drastically as in evident from the following table.

Year

No. of Questions in QA

Number of Marks

Cut off at (approx number of marks)

No. of Questions you could leave @ 100% accuracy

No. of Questions you could leave @ 90% accuracy

CAT 1999

55

55

16-18

37+

32+

CAT 2000–04

50

50

12-14

36+

32+

CAT 2005

30

50

12-14

20+

16+

2006–08

25

100

28–32

17+

14+

Online CAT 2009 & 2010

20

80

40–48

8+

5+

Online CAT 2011–2013

QA & DI Section

20 (QA) + 10 (DI)

80 (QA) + 40 (DI)

68–72

12+

8+

  • Asyou can see, there is very little elbowroom available in the online version now to leave out questions and expect a good percentile score.
  • The expectation in the future is that students taking the CAT would have to really use their mathematical intelligence and attempt as many questions as possible in order to get a top percentile in the test.
  1. Lack of uniformity: The third major factor in terms of paper pattern was the lack of uniformity of the test paper. Different students got tests with differing difficulty levels. The papers on the first few days of CAT 2009 were quite simple, but after the third day most papers had a pretty good difficulty level.

An issue that is being discussed widely on the Net is fairness. A lot of voices rose against the CAT committee and the online version of the exam questioning the fairness of the testing process.

The key criticism was: In the context of multiple papers with varying difficulty levels, how would the IIMs judge fairly between students who solved a high percentage of the questions in an easy test versus students who were able to solve a lower number of questions in a more difficult paper? The answer to this is really simple. Since the population size of each paper was significantly large, the IIMs could easily define individual percentiles in each test and ensure fairness to all.

The key point to be noted here is that there are infinite statistical ways through which processes like this can be made fair to everyone. As a future CAT aspirant, however, what you need to worry about is preparing diligently and facing the exam with a positive attitude.

  1. Higher percentage cutoffs: In the online version, aspirants wasted less time in questions which they thought was unsolvable and moved on to those they could solve. The result— most students were able to raise their scores in this section significantly.

Consequently sectional cut offs which used to be in the range of 30% of the net marks rose to around 40 – 45% of the marks.

Changes in the Marking process

The key change that an analysis of CAT 2009 results showed was that there was an increased emphasis on accuracy. Mistakes were heavily penalised. This was evident from the fact that two students solving the same test paper (December 3 evening slot) scored:

(a)14 attempts 1 incorrect – score 98.23 percentile

(b)19 attempts 3 incorrect – score 92.6 percentile

There were innumerable such examples where students solving more questions with higher errors scored significantly lower than students who attempted much less but got most correct.

Hence, the key learning for you while preparing is to focus on improving your accuracy as well as the belief in your process of solving. This is especially true while preparing for the QA section. While solving a QA question, you should be able to know that if your process is correct then so would your answer would also be correct. The need to check the answer to a QA question is something that is only required for minds weak in Quantitative Aptitude. This is where an under-prepared aspirant loses out to the best—in the knowledge of whether what they are solving is correct or not.

Unfortunately, most students I see are more interested in seeing the answer to the question as soon as they solve the same. This is a habit I would strongly discourage you from. The ideal preparation process for you should be:

(a)solve the question,

(b)review your process and tell yourself, “if your process is correct, so is your answer”, and

(c)only check your answer after you have reviewed your process.

This is important, because when you are solving a QA question inside the CAT, you would not have the cushion to ‘look’ at the answer. The only thing you have is the question and the process you use in solving the same. Your mind should be able to tell you whether the answer you have got is correct or not. This is a key difference in solving questions in practice and solving them under exam pressure.

Hence, developing more confidence in your QA problem-solving processes becomes a key ingredient and objective of your preparation process for this section.

  1. WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN FOR THE PREPARATION PROCESS? HOW HAS IT CHANGED AND HOW HAS IT REMAINED CONSTANT?

Let us look at this aspect in two broad parts:

1.What are the changes that need to happen in the preparation processes for the online CAT vis-a-vis the preparation process for the traditional paper-and-pen version?

2.What are the things and issues that remain constant in the preparation process?

1.For the first question, the specific things that come to my mind are:

(a)More Balanced portion coverage needed: As explained above, in the paper-and-pen version the best approach for Quantitative Aptitude preparation was “do 10 chapters well — really well”. In fact, even 4 chapters done well were mostly sufficient to crack this section. However, in the new online version, since the weightage of distribution of questions is much more even, this approach is no longer going to work. Hence, the need to cover all aspects of the portion well and not ignore any particular portion is perhaps the first and the biggest change that needs to be done in the preparation process.

(b)Need to cover the basics well, namely, speedily solving LOD I questions and the ability to think through LOD II and LOD III questions: In the early years (1980s and upto the late 1990s), the CAT used to be essentially a speed test (including the QA section). There were times when the paper used to consist of upto 225+ questions to be solved in 120 minutes. Questions used to be one-liners and could be solved in 1–2 steps. The key differentiation used to be the speed at which the aspirants could solve questions. However, from late 1990s onwards the QA section of the CAT had become a real test of quantitative intelligence. Questions ceased to be one-liners unless you had a very high degree of mathematical understanding and intelligence. The online CAT in its first year tended to be a mix of both these extremes. Papers consisted of between 4–6 one-liners topped up by LOD II and LOD III questions. So while most aspirants found 4–6 very easy questions in each paper, they also had to really use their mathematical strengths to cross 10–12 attempts. In the future, as the IIMs improve the quality of the database of quantitative questions, one can expect the quality of the questions to improve drastically and hence the LOD II and LOD III questions contained in this book would be an extremely important resource to solve for maximising your score in this section in the exam. [In fact after the first 3–4 days of the exam in 2009, examinees taking the test on the subsequent days found the paper to be of really good quality].

For the future CAT aspirants and the readers of my books, my advice is short and simple. Cover both the flanks—the short cuts and quicker methods to solve the easier LOD I questions and improving your mathematical and logical intelligence to cover the higher end questions of LOD II and LOD III level.

(c)The need to take computer based tests in order to be able to think on the computer: Thinking and solving questions from the computer screen is a slightly different experience than solving from a physical book. Thus students and aspirants are advised to experience this change by going for online solving experience. It is in this context that we have tied up with www.mindworkzz.in to give our readers a feel of the online problem solving experience. However, in spite of these seemingly big external changes, my personal opinion is that the changes are mostly external in nature.

2.The essence of preparation of the Quantitative Aptitude section remains the same in a lot many fundamental ways. Some of these that come readily to mind are:

(a)The need to develop mental structures for the CAT: QA preparation has always been associated with the development of the mathematical thinking processes and thought structures for specific mathematical situations. The smart CAT aspirant is able to create mathematical thoughts in his mind to situations that he would encounter in the exam.

The whole battle for QA preparation in the CAT can be essentially summarised in terms of the quality of pre formed logic that you have to the specific questions that you are going to face in the exam. In other words, your battle in QA section is won if you have during your preparation process, encountered the logic to the question which is in front of you. Hence, the focus of your QA preparation process has to be on creating the logics for as many questions and mathematical situations as possible. You would have well and truly won your battle at the CAT in case you encounter 15 ‘known’ mathematical situations out of the 20 questions in your set. Hence, the imperative to form “thought algorithms” for standard and non-standard mathematical situations related to various chapters and concepts in the portion remains as strong as ever. In fact, if anything this imperative is expanded to the entire portion base due to the wider and more balanced portion coverage in the exam.

(b)The need for thoroughness in your preparation: This is again something that does not change.

The key point you need to remember is that the CAT still remains a test of your intelligence and an aspirant should focus on this aspect. This book provides plenty of mathematical thinking situations and alternatives related to each and every part of this section that help you hone your skills in the QA section of the examination.