Studying/working from home is the new normal now, but we all agree that it gets to us sometimes. It is more difficult to maintain focus and productivity for long hours, and motivation starts on a downward spiral. And that’s when you really need to pull yourself up, remind yourself of your goal and work towards it.
COVID has brought in a few key changes in the lives of aspirants. First of all, coaching is now online.
So is it worth joining coaching or should you just study on your own?
Well, from my personal experience, the quality of virtual classes was definitely not at par with the scenario otherwise, but one advantage was that all the material and lectures were readily available on the portal, which is really helpful as it lets you take control of when to study what. Plus, coaching gives you a certain pattern or schedule to follow with respect to learning, practicing and taking mocks, which is often difficult to achieve all by yourself.
Barring this, whether or not to enroll for coaching depends on where you currently stand. So, when you make up your mind about taking the CAT, understand the pattern and take a mock test first to check your level; and what goes in your mind during that mock will help you decide what to do. It’s like how when you’re in a dilemma and you flip a coin, while it’s in the air, you start hoping that it lands on a certain side – that’s your decision.
You will understand how prepared you are on Day-1, and depending on the gap between your level today and your target scores, decide for yourself what kind of study pattern you require. Coaching is not a cheap affair mostly, so you may also want to consider that factor while making your decision.
Whether you take coaching or not, be sure to enroll for mock test series – from multiple institutes if possible.
Taking mocks is a solution to 99% of your issues during preparation.
This is because they expose you to questions from all topics and all level of difficulties, acquaint you to the pattern of the test, and force you to work under gruesome time pressure.
However, simply taking a mock isn’t worth a nickel. It will bear fruit only if it is followed by a detailed analysis, where you understand your areas of strengths and weaknesses. Identify questions which you left, and ask yourself why. The most dangerous category of questions is those which you attempted, spent precious minutes on, but still got them wrong and ended up losing marks instead. Practice more of such question types. Either add them to your strength areas for the next mock, or if the difficulty persists, feed into your brain that such a question has to be left at the first glance. For me, Games and Tournaments in Logical Reasoning belonged to this category.
Finally, coaching or no coaching – nothing’s going to help until you work hard with consistency and determination. Keep at it, and you will surely achieve it! All the best!