A lot of CAT prep discussions revolve around which coaching to join, which books to follow, or which resources are the best.

Honestly, that wasn’t the problem for me.

I was already studying 5–6 hours a day, solving questions regularly, and giving mocks consistently.
Yet my scores were stuck in the 70–72 percentile range in almost every mock.

I assumed I needed: more practice, more concepts and more material

Turns out, I needed none of that.

The Real Shift: Mock Analysis > Mock Attempt

The only thing that changed my trajectory was this:

I stopped treating mocks as checkpoints and started treating them as learning tools.

Instead of finishing a mock and moving on, I began spending 2x the time analyzing it.

And not just checking answers actually breaking down my thinking.

For every wrong question, I asked:

• Was this a concept gap?

• A silly mistake?

• A time pressure decision?

• Or did I fall into a question trap?

Writing this down changed everything.

Within 5-6 weeks, patterns started to appear and once you see patterns, you can actually fix them.

What Improved (and Why)

Quant: Accuracy > More Questions

My accuracy went from ~60% to ~82%.

Not because I learned a lot of new concepts but because I stopped making the same mistakes repeatedly.

I realised:

• I rushed easy questions

• I over-attempted under pressure

• I ignored small calculation errors

Fixing these gave more returns than solving 100 extra questions.

VARC: Slowing Down Helped More Than Speeding Up

Earlier, I used to read fast thinking it would save time.

In reality, I was:

• missing tone

• misinterpreting arguments

• guessing inference questions

I slowed my reading by ~20%.

That one change improved:

• comprehension

• accuracy in inference-based questions

• overall confidence in RCs

DILR: Depth Over Volume

Instead of doing 5-10 sets randomly, I did:

1 set per day  properly

• Timed attempt

• Full solution review

• Understanding why each step works

What Didn’t Matter as Much as I Thought

• Switching resources constantly

• Collecting more notes

• Comparing mock scores daily

• Chasing “perfect strategy” videos

None of these fixed the core issue.

Simple Rule That Worked

Attempt → Analyze deeply → Fix patterns → Repeat

That’s it.