Sometime during my third year of college, I decided to give the CAT a shot.

So, I began by asking friends and seniors about how to prepare for the CAT. I was advised to join a test series but whether I wanted to join a classroom coaching programme or a correspondence course for the preparation was really a matter of personal choice.

The first thing I did was to go through some old CAT papers and took a free mock test at one of the coaching institutes. The idea behind this was to 'get to know the CAT'. After the mock tests I decided I need the regularity and discipline of a classroom contact programme.

• CAT 2007: 4 great stress-busters

So, I checked out the various CAT coaching centers, their faculty, feedback from seniors, the material provided, the quality of the test series, the price and so on. I chose Career Launcher (CL). For the next few months after the classes started I followed instructions and stuck to the material provided by CL.

The regular feedback from the faculty at CL and the sectional tests every few classes told me how well I was progressing. Thanks to a good reading habit since a young age, I was quite proficient at the verbal section (RC & grammar). This helped me target my preparation towards my weaker sections i.e., quant and DI. With help from the faculty, I was able to figure out where I was going wrong and improve my performance in these two sections.

After the first few months of classroom coaching came the most important phase of CAT preparation, the dreaded Test Series. Most coaching centres' test series start 2-3 months before the CAT and go on right until a week before the CAT. Now that I had spent the last 5-6 months building my fundamentals and working on the sections, I felt ready for the test series.

Boy was I wrong!

The first two Mock CATs were a disaster; I failed to clear the sectional cut-offs in any section of the paper. After analysing my performance in the papers and solving a few more take-home mock tests I figured out where I was going wrong. I realised that every test must be followed by extensive analysis of the paper and the solutions provided. 

Through practice and analysis I learnt to pick the easiest questions which could be solved with the least effort and avoid the 'speed bumps'. We all know that the IIMs are notorious for changing the exam pattern almost every year. The mock test prepared me for this by exposing me to various patterns. I also tried out different test taking strategies to find out what worked best for me.

• CAT 2007: Surviving exam week

Although mock tests are important, one must remember that quality is more important than quantity. By this I mean one should aim to get the most out of every paper by thoroughly analysing one's performance rather than just solving more papers without analysing them.

I stopped my preparation totally on the Friday before the CAT. I wanted to spend the next two days relaxing so that I could be in a good mood on Sunday morning. I guess it worked as I got calls from 5 IIMs (all except Bangalore).

I got final offers from IIM Lucknow, Indore and Kozhikode thanks to the rigorous GD/PI preparation at CL and joined Lucknow.

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