Reading Articles for CAT VARC

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Right at the outset, let me make my intentions clear. This article, as the title suggests, is for CAT aspirants. Having said that, I must remind you, an iota of indomitable curiosity has done no harm to anybody.

CAT 2019 brought its share of ups and downs for me. While I secured a 98.22 percentile overall, I didn’t perform as well in Quants as I would have wanted. The verbal section was my silver lining (~99%ile in CAT and 99.91 %ile in XAT). That’s long gone though. What I am looking at now is CAT 2020, and it is in this aspect that I am writing this.

With less than two months in hand for CAT 2020, I am sure many of you must be going all guns blazing to bell the CAT. If you’re, then you might take a moment to pat yourself on the back. If you’re not, I would still suggest you shower a light pat on yourself. Why? Well, there’s still time I believe. A two-month window for an aptitude exam can do wonders. Self-belief, hard work, and positivity should help.

I have often seen students being puzzled at the Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension(VARC) section. The mock scores fluctuate, and sometimes, for some students there seems no way out of an irreversible rut of mediocre scores. Fellow aspirants have sometimes also reached out to me. Although the exact forms of queries might differ, it boils down to “How does one tackle the VARC section in CAT?”

The answer is simple- Reading. You read copious amounts of a variety of texts and the next thing you know, your scores are improving. A consistent reading habit will help you absorb and comprehend the RCs (70% of VARC) really well. Beyond reading, there is taking mocks/sectional tests and analyzing them thoroughly. There might be other processes too. I am not denying that. This is just something that has worked for me and I have seen some of my friends getting better at VARC with consistent reading. Also, let me give out the caveat in this- reading will definitely take you from ‘x'(current position) to a certain level (~95%ile+), but beyond that, I can’t tell. So, if you’re somebody who’s already scoring 95+ in VARC, you probably can turn a deaf ear to this, as I am sure you must already be possessing a solid base. While for others, I sincerely hope this timely pill might be of some help.

At this point, you must be thinking ‘Reading is fine. But what to read?’. Well, to be your company in kickstarting (or dusting off the rust) your reading habit, I have a list of 16 articles for you. These are on myriad topics and of varying lengths to provide one with the necessary exposure.

1. A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet human? (GPT-3)
2. Why are so many old companies in Japan?
3. Uncanny Parallels: How India in the 2020s resembles Italy in the 1920s?
4. Terminal cancer means I won’t see the other side of lockdown
5. At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here’s what I want to pass on
6. The 32-year-old who wants to bring down the edifice of India’s fintech revolution
7. The art of failure
8. The making of a brand
9. When the magic happens
10. Primetime nonsense
11. The things we can’t control are beautiful
12. The brave new world of chemical romance
13. The real Jadeja
14. Product-Zeitgeist Fit
15. Why good teachers allow a child’s mind to wander and wonder
16. I have been fired. If you value academic freedom that should worry you

This is all I have for now. I will keep on adding more till the CAT 2020 day under the ‘Edit’ sections below. Make sure you check out this space!

In case anybody has any queries about CAT preparation, you may reach out to me on any of my social media handles. Happy to help.

Edit 1: Pending……

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