Well, we have a few months left before CAT-2024 kicks-off but your prep should have kick-started long time back. We sincerely hope that you are using our CAT test prep plan, and drawing benefits from the tips and tricks we deliver in your inbox daily.

Essentially, the best thing to do right now is to fine tune your prep-strategy and make sure you tick all the boxes when it comes to prep-essentials.

But what are these prep essentials? Well, step one of the process is very simple:

CARRY OUT A SWOT ANALYSIS OF YOUR PREP SO FAR. BUT WHAT DOES SWOT MEAN? ARE WE SWOTTING A FLY? Well, let me spell it out for you:

• S stands for Strengths: These are the areas in which you get most of the questions (more than 80%) correct. You are well prepared for these, just need to brush them-up and stay in touch with the topic.
• W stands for Weakness: These are the areas that you struggle with. You are neither bad nor great in these areas, and generally score anywhere between 30% to 60% in the areas. You feel you can solve these questions but just do not have the knowledge to do so.
• O stands for Opportunities: These are those areas where you use guesswork at times and get away with it. You do not have a theoretical base for these topics yet somehow feel that you could do better with these if you had that knowledge. And trust me, most topics in English would feature in this category (whether you are good in them or not)
• T stands for Threats: This is the danger zone. You just cannot seem to get these topics and always score a zero, or even worse, take negatives for questions from these areas. These are your red herrings, the topics you avoid.

At this stage of your preparation, your W and O areas should be heavily populated. Your target is simple: to populate your strength areas, and you have sufficient time to do so.

Well, how do you go about this SWOT analysis? On a broad level, you to have look into the three CAT areas and then each of the sub-sections. We have outlined the areas and topics in the following table. Take a print out and analyze your performance in every area.

We still leave you with one piece of work: construct a similar table now every topic now and list down all the sub-topics. For example, break down arithmetic into its sub-topics, namely simple and compound interest, percentage, ratio and proportion and so on. Once you have done that, analyze your prep-levels in each area and identify your performance in every area. And one more thing, please be dead honest with yourself. No hanky-panky, no benefit of doubt and do not over-estimate yourself, underestimation is fine for the time being.

What to do with this analysis?

Well, now that you have your analysis report, you have a roadmap for yourself and all you need to do is start acting on it:

• Club all your ‘weak areas’ into one and start working on them immediately. This is the first area that your target.  This would have an immediate impact on your Mock performance, and would lend you confidence for your overall prep.
• Once you are done with the areas above, start working on your ‘OPPURTUNTIIES’. These are the areas that would give you a boost and convert your prep levels from above average to awesome.
• And the last bit is common sense: minimize your threats (in case they are too many) and then forget about them. These are the parts of the exams you don’t care about. Remember, you cannot put RCs in this category; if you do, you might suffer.

The above is a common sense approach to CAT.
What do you take out of this SWOT ANALYSIS?
Well, you need to show awareness with respect to your current learning levels, how much work you require and the areas you need to target first. Make sure you get your order of study right, else you might find yourself under a lot of pressure. Avoid that pressure by planning things right. Hope this approach works for you.

More planning tips to follow. .:)

Happy learning

Wordpandit..:)