Every CAT aspirant has heard the same advice: “Start strong.” It sounds right, build momentum early, ride that wave through the exam. But there’s a hidden danger in that mindset.

For many students, the first 10 questions, the ones meant to set the tone, end up quietly killing their accuracy. Not because they’re too hard, but because you start believing you’re invincible too early.

The Trap of a “Good Start”

You open your paper. The first two Quant questions feel easy. You nail them. The third looks familiar, another hit. You’re flying. The clock’s on your side, your confidence spikes, and you start thinking, “This is my mock. This is my day.”

That’s when the slide begins.

You start rushing. You stop double-checking. You stop reading questions carefully because your brain has decided the paper is “easy.” You make silly errors, misread words, and fall for traps that your calmer self would’ve easily avoided.

And by the time you hit question 11, your accuracy graph is already bleeding.

Why It Happens

This isn’t arrogance. It’s human psychology. When your brain senses early success, it shifts into “flow” mode, fast, intuitive, confident. It feels amazing. But the CAT is designed precisely to punish that speed.

CAT isn’t a sprint. It’s a series of judgment calls. Every question is a decision: attempt, skip, revisit, or leave. The first 10 questions act like bait, they lure you into comfort, then quietly drain your attention to detail.

Your brain stops verifying, starts assuming. You read what you expect to see, not what’s actually written. That’s why toppers often say, “The paper felt easy, but my score didn’t reflect it.”

The Cost of Early Overconfidence

1. Silly Mistakes Spike: Missing negatives, skipping conditions, or ignoring options that change the entire meaning.
2. Time Mismanagement: You blow through 10–12 questions in the first 20 minutes, leaving little bandwidth for the tougher ones that actually decide your percentile.
3. False Comfort: You assume your section is going “great,” so you lose the urgency to calibrate and adapt. When difficulty rises later, you crash hard.

Overconfidence doesn’t feel like overconfidence. It feels like flow, until it isn’t.

How to Stay Sharp

1. Treat the First 10 as a Warm-Up, Not a Scoreboard
2. Your goal is rhythm, not domination. Focus on reading clarity and accuracy rather than speed. A steady start beats a flashy one.
3. Double-Check the Easy Ones
4. Easy questions are dangerous because they hide your carelessness. Use the extra seconds to verify conditions and signs.
5. Use Micro Pauses
6. After every 3–4 questions, take a 5-second pause. Breathe. Reset. Remind yourself: “Next question is new. Forget the last one.” This stops mental momentum from turning into recklessness.
7. Track Early Errors in Mocks
8. When reviewing mocks, note how many of your early errors came from misreads or assumptions. Awareness itself reduces recurrence.
9. Anchor Your Ego
10. A good start doesn’t mean a guaranteed result. Stay humble with every question. Each one deserves full respect, whether it’s question 1 or question 31.

Why This Small Fix Changes Everything

CAT is less about how many questions you can solve, and more about how long you can stay precise. The exam doesn’t punish slowness, it punishes lapses in attention.

If you stay grounded in those first 10 questions, you protect your focus, conserve your energy, and set up consistency for the next 50. Ironically, that’s what makes you truly fast, sustained accuracy, not early adrenaline.