CMAT Preparation Strategy by Anmol Gilra

My rank was 3996 out of 52,000 who appeared this year. This was my 2nd attempt at CMAT and I was fairly acquainted with the syllabus. I had given ATMA also for Welingkar and scored 95.8 percentile and both the exams stand on a same difficulty level. So, this exam also helped me in preparing for CMAT.

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Section – Wise CMAT Preparation

1. Quants & VARC

For Quants and VARC your OMETS preparation will come in handy. I had prepared for Quants from certain books last year and that really helped in setting the basics intact. I was fairly comfortable with Quants and VARC and always tried to maximise my marks in either of these sections. I got 18 correct out of 20 questions in CMAT Quants but messed up VARC section because of which my overall score went down. For VARC, I read a lot of novels of my choice, initially it would take time to find the right genre but eventually you would find your place and then accordingly you can set your pace. Apart from this, giving mocks and analysing them thoroughly helped me understand my mistakes and gave me insights as to what I should not be doing the next time.  thrust areas in this section

Topics that require major attention: Numbers, Percentage, Profit & Loss, Mixtures, Averages, Ratios, Interest, Equations, Time & Work, Time, Speed & Distance, Geometry.

2. LRDI

For Logical Reasoning section, prepare from the Official NMAT Guide, as this has the best set of questions to prepare for all OMETS including SNAP, IIFT, etc. The variety of sets I practiced available for both DI and LR helped me really in setting the flow. Eventually after preparing and practising a lot of sets of DI and LR, you would understand which part you are comfortable with, Mostly people find LR more easy than the DI, but the possible outcomes in LR is more and that is what makes it the slightly trickier one.

Topics that require major attention: Assertion-Reasoning, Inferences, Critical reasoning, Assumption-Premise-Conclusion, True and False Statements, Linear arrangements, Sequences and series, Strong – Weak arguments, Statements and assumptions, Series, Coding and decoding, Cause and effect, Symbol-based problems.

3. GK

I was already preparing for TISSNET, so mostly everything was covered and did not have to study something extra. As well as the mock tests GK section questions also came in real handy while preparing in order to gauge your current situation and proceed accordingly. My top advice would be to prepare for GK from the beginning only, as in the later months it would de difficult to cover month on month current affairs along with General Knowledge syllabus. Read regularly the newspapers and create your own CMAT GK question bank.

4. Innovation & Entrepreneurship

For innovation and entrepreneurship, I decided to give mocks only. I took up 2 test series and I was fairly comfortable with this section. I attempted 20 questions in Innovation in the exam and got 18 correct. Mocks and logical reasoning were only needed to ace the same. Do not neglect this section as this could be the game changer as well as this was one of the easiest section in the paper. This section just requires one’s creativity to identify a unique solution to the problem. Entrepreneurship meaning is to apply innovation, to bring the idea to life and that is why this section came into picture from last year. As it is a compulsory section, try to prepare well.

I even solved previous year papers of last 5 years and total 15 mocks, which would be an ideal number of mocks you should give before exam. CMAT is not a speed-based exam like SNAP, NMAT so you would have ample amount of time to solve each and every question. Pick your favourite section first and start solving in order to boost your confidence in the beginning. Try picking out different sections in mocks and gauge your performance accordingly. CMAT always tries to bring some element of surprise, so watch out for that. After preparing for CAT/XAT, it might seem that these OMETs are easy to crack, but a lot of preparation is needed as these have different sets of questions from the regular CAT exam. CMAT test does not require you to attempt all the questions but the need is to maximise your correct attempts and minimize the wrong attempts.

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