Tips N Tricks

1. Where are you reading from?
  1. Do you believe on everything that you find on internet, or everything you find is as per your required knowledge level? No, right!
  2. Same thing applies in Quant preparation. Where are you reading from is of same importance as what are you reading. Choose books which have simple language or a language that you can understand. 
  3. Don’t Buy books just because some other CAT aspirants has bought it. Remember, everyone is running their own race and hence you have to run as per your strengths.
  4. Getting the right study material for Quant preparation of CAT exam is a basic requirement. Also choose a book with more examples on a topic and practice every example. 
  5. One can start with the Class 12th R.S. Agarwal maths book and then gradually moving on to Quantitative Reasoning for CAT – Arun Sharma or Quantitative Reasoning – R.S. Agarwal.

My Recommendation is Fast Track Arithmetic by Arihant Publishers

2. Learn tables till 20
  1. Yes, learning tables in very important and if you have not yet learnt, and then start doing it from today. This is very handy. Not only this, you should also try to learn squares up to 30 and cubes up to 20.
  2. You will have to multiply almost everywhere in the quant section. The time spent by a student in Quant and DI section on calculation is about 20 per cent and the rest is spent on comprehending the concept of the question. So beside your basic concepts you should have to work more on your calculations.

For ex.,  you spend 4 seconds on carrying out a multiplication on the onscreen calculator, then say for 12 -14 questions you will spend about 48-56 seconds on just multiplication. By knowing tables by heart, you can save those precious one minute and use them to solve 2-3 problems or revise the answers to questions which you are unsure about.
3. Don’t leave any questions
  1. Students tend to get irritated or bored after few minutes if they don’t get the solution of the problem. Don’t get frustrated, be calm and apply your mind or take help of the book. 
  2. But don’t leave the question un-attempted during practice. Remember, if you don’t solve that question during practice it will always haunt you and you will always be afraid of this type or topic of the question.
  3. Every type of question is important as you don’t know which one might appear in your set of paper on your exam day. Also try to solve as many different types of examples as possible. As everyone says, Practice is the key to success.


4. Your own personal Formulas book
  1. Remember those half-yearly or sessional exams in schools. You could always find a classmate who used to right down all the key formulas on the last page of the answer sheet (Rough page) as soon as he got the answer sheet form the teacher. Why he do that? Just to remember the formulas in case it is needed in any question, as he might forgot it during exam tension.
  2. Well, that was school exam and this Common Admission Test (CAT). You can’t repeat the school’s trick in CAT but what you can do is make your own formula notebook.
  3. You may write down all the formulas in a book, all the key formulas from topics which are important and also those formulas which basically form the part of many solutions. This will make formula revision very easy and convenient.


5. Practice daily
  1. You have to practice maths daily; you have to be in touch with solving quant problems daily even if it is only for an hour. That will do. But, make the full utilization of that one hour can focus on solving as many problems as possible.
  2. Setting a routine, a time table for Quant preparation of CAT 2014 will help you reap benefits in the end. Choose a time where you are most comfortable too practice, it may be early morning or late night depends on your schedule.


6. Quant is not Tough, It Tricky
  • Don’t pre-assume any Quant question to be tough or very difficult. Quant questions are not tough, they are tricky. If you know the small tricks to solve various types of questions, you will be able to save ample amount of time in your CAT exam.
  • And these tricks are very easy to learn. For example,

  1.  Eliminating the options or going with the options. This is always the best and quicker way to reach the required answer.
  2. Substitution of some values in the question. This method is very much useful for algebra problems
  3. Also remember, that the options given in a MSQ (Multiple Choice questions) are there to help them out.


7. Shortcuts- It’s always there
  1. A shortcut does not mean any erratic method which can be applied to any one or two problems only. Shortcut means a set pattern or method which can be used again and again to solve a particular type of question in a very quick period of time.
  2. When you apply a shortcut, you will get the answer fast and in an easier way than by actually solving the problem.

For example:
When a person covers a distance between his house and office at 50 km/hr , he is late by 20 min. But when he travels at 60km/hr, he reaches 10 min early. What is the difference between his house and office?
Solution:
Let the distance be x km
Time taken to cover x km at 50km/hr is = x/50 hrs
Time taken to cover x km at 60km/hr is = x/60 hrs
Difference between time taken = 30 min
∴x/50-x/60 = 30/60 
=> 6x-5x/300 = 1/2
=> x = 150 km

Shortcut:
Required Distance = Product of two speeds / Difference of two speeds * Difference between arrival time.
Short cut should written after solving every type of problem in a separate notebook, and remember it well. This kind of shortcuts saves a lot of time while solving problems. By following shortcut methods one can solve problems in time with high degree of accuracy.


Following are shortnotes for each section


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