How do I start my CAT preparation?

Thankfully, this is no longer left for imagination.

• CAT India online offers you free Diagnostic test on each topic; QA,VA and DI.
• Then, the recommendator analyzes your performance to give you a personalized CAT 2009 preparation plan.
• The prep plan is structured in 2 phases.
• First, it recommends you to study those topics which will ensure that you reach the cut-off in each section.
• Once you achieve this minimum level, you get a second study plan which focuses on the topics where your scoring potential is high.

The question is: how much can I trust this recommendation?
Let me start with a simple usecase ..
Ravi is an engineering graduate with 1 year work experience. He is good in quants and to some extent in DI, but is shaky in VA. What will you recommend this guy?
Well .. in general, you will say "Ravi, improve in VA so that you clear it's cut-off. And then exploit your strength (QA) to the maximum"
Isn't this logically correct?

It is! But the issue is the above recommendation is NOT actionable. You need to tell Ravi what exactly to study in VA (out of all sub-topics).
Now you are in a fix because you don't know if Ravi is comparatively better in RC or in Dictionary Usage.
This is precisely why CAT India Online's prep plan is so valuable and accurate.

First, Ravi is asked to take Diagnostic tests in all the 3 sections (they are short simple test to measure one's aptitude). The system (recommendator) already has the data on which topics have been most frequent in last few years' CAT exams, what was it's difficulty level, etc. It now couples this with Ravi's performance and generates precise recommendation like:

This is indeed an elegant prep plan as it's actionable, reasonable and practical.
Even the 80+ practice tests at CAT India Online are categorized as per the recommendation action items - to make your choice easier :)
Keep exploring! and enjoy your studies ..

Warm Regards,
CAT India Online Team
20th June 2009

A time to look back and a time to look forward!

Dusts have settled down on the format of CAT 2009 after IIMs declared that it is going to be online! With the announcement, we all have our eyes perched on our next goals, next milestones. We are sure that all of you who are willing to work hard will certainly see your dreams come true.

Your support and patronization of CIO is a constant source of motivation for us. Our heartiest thanks to all for that! When we look back and reflect, we have to say that we could not have asked for more in the very first year of our launch (2008). Some of our salient achievements that year were the following:

• more than 21000 registered users, 400,000 page views and 80,000 tests taken
• Only test preparation site to predict a 90 question paper
• Verbal passages in our 8 mock CATs covered all 4 topics of CAT 2008 including various question types
• All 4 other types of Verbal section questions: paragraph completion and usage (correct/incorrect usage of words, fill in the blanks and sentence correction) were administered multiple times in our mock tests.
• Very high degree of similarity in questions in Quantitative section (8 out of 25 questions matched) and DI sections. Judge the order of similarity for yourself below:
  -- CAT 2008 Q19, Set 111: Two circles, both of radii 1 cm, intersect such that the circumference of each one passes through the centre of the circle of the other. What is the area (in sq cm) of the intersecting region?
  -- CIO's Guess Paper Q21: The distance between the centers of two circles is equal to r. The circles have equal radii of r. The overlapping area of the two circles will be ..
• And finally, more than 600 of those going to IIMs and other premier institutes in 2009 have been loyal users of CIO.

With all this we believe we are firmly placed as the best online CAT preparation portal. However, this is not the end, this is just a humble beginning and with your continued support we are sure to go miles.

For CAT 2009 giant leaps have already been taken. Take a look at our comprehensive offerings below:

• Prep Plan: Maximize your performance in CAT 2009 by following 4 phase practice cycle:
  - Phase 1: Build on your strengths
  - Phase 2: Sharpen your areas of improvements
  - Phase 3: Give some time to weak topics
  - Phase 4: Go back to Practice, Practice and a little more practice
• 80+ Practice Tests cover 220+ concepts of all probable question types
• 15 Mock Tests based on deep analysis of last 25 years of CAT patterns
• 8 Prevoius Years CAT Papers
• Analysis framework: Instant percentile, Analyze performance across questions, topics and sections, compare with others. Track improvement over tests.
• Recommendations framework: Precise actionable recommendations will help you improve test and test during your preparation.

  We believe that our single comprehensive offering adds value to aspirants at all proficiency level. However, we know that there is immense scope for improvement. And you, our users, are our best critics and consultants. Your comments/feedback has amply revealed this fact. They also reveal that you have very high expectations from us for CAT 2009 and we are desperate not only to meet these expectations, but in fact, to surpass them. We also have the highest expectations from all of you and we want CIO to be instrumental in realization of these expectations. Therefore, in order to improve upon our offerings for CAT 2009 we request you to send your feedbacks/comments. Please know that every comment/feedback of yours will be tracked and you will be updated with the progress on your suggestions. So, please take some time off and write back to us about anything and everything that ever came to your mind about CIO.

Warm Regards,
CAT India Online Team
13th June 2009