This is one of the questions that really bothers aspirants the most. What should be their mode of preparation? Whether this book is enough, or whether that course would suffice? These are the questions which I shall try to answer in this blog.
There is no doubt that online preparation needs greater self-discipline and motivation. But whether online coaching is enough to crack depends on many other factors.
The first is are you preparing for cat for the first time; the second is how good you are in doing things on your own, without much spoon-feeding; the third is how good you are inherently in general aptitude; the fourth is the availability of time, and the availability of better substitute for online cat coaching.
I will discuss these things, and from these we will arrive at the answer of whether online coaching is enough for cat preparation.
Online CAT coaching is enough for you to crack CAT if:
1You are disciplined and self-motivated:
This is the most important requirement for CAT online coaching. When you join an offline-coaching, there are reasons to attend the classes. There is a peer group to motivate, there is fear of missing sessions and not being able to compensate for that later, but the biggest reason is that for classroom coaching you would have spent at least 40k, which in itself becomes the motivation to attend the sessions and to be regular.
In online coaching unless you enrol for some course or coaching program, you will not have the motivation. You have neither spent substantial money, nor there is any fear of missing the sessions and not being able to make up for that later. Though you have collected a good quantity of material in the form of videos and PDFs, you must have the discipline and the sagacity to use that material in the right way.
2You don’t have good classroom coaching near you:
This is the primary reason why students opt for online cat coaching. You should never compromise on quality. A good online coaching is better than ordinary offline coaching, which, when not up to the mark, results in loss to time and money. Online coaching has a lot to offer; there is better quality, better material, and there are plenty of options to choose from.
3You don’t need spoon feeding:
There are students who like to study at coaching centres where they have access to full-time teachers. For every minor doubt, they want a teacher. If that is the case with you, then online coaching is not for you. In online coaching, you are expected to do plenty of things on your own. You might have doubts, but online teachers will not solve your doubts if they are too trivial and too many in number.
It is not that online teachers are not keen to take doubts. The problem is that in classroom environment it easier to take doubts one to one, but in online mode, it is not convenient; teachers have difficulty answering questions on WhatsApp and on phone. In addition to that, there are so many students that it is difficult to answer all queries instantly.
4If you are good at segregating relevant content from irrelevant content:
Since I am quite active online, I often get questions from students, as doubts. Many a time I find these questions to be totally irrelevant to CAT. Though there is plenty of free online content, not all of that content is relevant to CAT.
You must learn to distinguish between what is good and what is not. In classroom coaching, the teachers are there to guide you on this, but in online cat preparation, you have to rely on teachers who are active online.
In other words, in online mode, you will never know who is good and who is not. Everyone claims to be a CAT pundit, but you will never know the reality unless you yourself are good enough to judge things critically. In cat online coaching, content is the best judge. If the content appeals to you and the teaching is good, then study from such resources whether they are free or paid.
If the answer to the above four points are yes, then CAT online coaching is enough for you to crack CAT. You don’t need anything else. A few books, a test series, a few courses and I think you are all set to start your CAT prep online.
