Top Cat The Topper Way!

Here are some tips from toppers that could make that tiny difference in helping you tweak your own CAT preparation strategy to taste success…

- Shruti Garg

Toppers are not born. They become toppers after putting in a lot of hard work, dedication and most importantly, with a will to succeed. Behind every fascinating and motivating topper story are numerous factors like hard work, dedication, diligence and a very good strategy. CAT is one exam that sees stiff competition, doesn’t have a fixed syllabus, and hence requires a good strategy and smart tips to crack it. With CAT 2019 slated for November 24, 2019, it becomes imperative that your preparation gets the edge to help you crack the exam.

Self- study or coaching? One of the biggest dilemmas that crops up is whether to take coaching or not. This is an individual choice and depends upon the time constraints and the preparation done till now.

Jagesh Golwala, one of the CAT 2018 toppers, says, “I registered for the test series provided by the coaching institutes. This was to help me practice. As to self-study, I feel it depends on person to person. For candidates from an engineering background, the QA and logical reasoning sections are all sorted out. For candidates from non-engineering backgrounds, these sections might take up time. So, coaching may be helpful.”

Prateek Garg, who scored 99.66 percentile in CAT 2018, found coaching helpful but feels it all depends upon the candidate. He says “Yes, I did enroll in coaching. It helped me a lot. More than helping me with brushing up my concepts, it helped me in having a routine which I could follow during the course of my preparation.” However, he feels that, “If you are a self-motivated person who can be disciplined enough every day without fail then you do not need coaching. Any competitive exam is all about consistency and discipline.”