The CAT RC Myth: Why Tricks Don’t Beat Real Reading Skills

The Myth

If you’ve spent any time in CAT preparation communities, you’ve encountered the promise: master a few CAT RC myths disguised as “tricks,” and you’ll crack reading comprehension without actually reading. Skip to the questions first. Scan for keywords. Read only the first and last sentences of each paragraph. Don’t waste time understanding—just find patterns.

The appeal is obvious. Reading comprehension takes time. Building genuine comprehension skills takes months. Who wouldn’t prefer a shortcut that delivers results in days?

These exam tricks and reading shortcuts spread because they occasionally work—on poorly designed practice materials. When you encounter carefully crafted CAT passages, they collapse completely.

Why People Believe It

The myth persists for several interconnected reasons, each reinforcing the others.

Surface-level success stories. Students who use tricks on easy practice sets score well initially. They share their methods. Others adopt them. By the time these strategies fail on actual CAT-level passages, the believers have already spread the gospel.

Confirmation bias at work. When tricks work, believers attribute success to the method. When tricks fail, they blame execution—”I didn’t scan efficiently enough”—rather than questioning the approach itself.

The illusion of productivity. Learning tricks feels like progress. You’re “doing something” for CAT preparation. Building genuine reading skills feels slower, less tangible, harder to measure day-to-day.

Marketing pressure. Coaching institutes need differentiation. “Our unique technique” sells better than “read widely and think carefully.” The market rewards novelty, not truth.

What Research Actually Shows

Cognitive science has extensively studied reading comprehension. The findings directly contradict the shortcut mythology.

Comprehension requires building mental models. Understanding a passage means constructing a coherent representation of its meaning in your mind. This cannot be bypassed by keyword matching. Questions that test inference, tone, or argument structure require this mental model to exist.

Working memory limits constrain shortcuts. Your brain can only hold 4-7 items in working memory simultaneously. If you try to remember question content while scanning a passage, you sacrifice either question recall or passage processing. The cognitive load exceeds capacity.

The science behind effective reading strategies demonstrates that comprehension emerges from active engagement with text—not passive scanning.

CAT questions are designed against tricks. The IIMs hire expert item writers who specifically craft questions to defeat surface-level approaches. Answer choices include tempting keyword matches that are factually present in the passage but don’t answer the question asked. Inference questions require understanding relationships between ideas, not locating specific words.

Transfer fails when understanding is shallow. Even if a trick works on one passage, the underlying strategy doesn’t transfer to different passage types, topics, or question styles. Genuine comprehension skills transfer automatically.

The Truth

Here’s what actually works for CAT RC, supported by evidence and the experience of consistent high scorers.

Read the passage thoroughly first. Yes, it takes time. That investment pays compound returns. A solid first read lets you answer most questions in seconds because you already understand the material. Students who scan first and re-read constantly waste more total time.

Build genuine reading skills before test day. This means months of reading challenging material across diverse topics—economics, philosophy, science, history, literature. Reading widely isn’t optional preparation; it’s the core preparation. Connect this with insights from the broader Reading Concepts framework.

Practice active reading habits. Ask questions while reading: What’s the author’s main argument? What evidence supports it? What’s the tone? Where does the reasoning have gaps? These questions become automatic with practice and directly prepare you for RC question types.

Time yourself, but not at the cost of comprehension. Speed without understanding is useless. Build comprehension first. Speed emerges naturally as reading becomes more efficient through practice.

What This Means for Your Reading

Abandoning the myth of CAT RC myths means accepting a harder truth: real reading skills take time to build. There’s no way around the work.

But here’s the good news. Once you build genuine comprehension skills, they serve you everywhere—not just in CAT. Professional reading, academic texts, complex arguments—everything becomes more accessible. You’re not learning a trick that works on one test. You’re developing a capability that compounds over your career.

Start today. Read one challenging article. Summarize its argument in your own words. Note what you found difficult. Tomorrow, read another. The path isn’t glamorous, but it leads somewhere real.

The test rewards readers. Become one.