Hello Aspirant,

Common Admission Test ( CAT) is a most popular entrance exam conducted to get admissions into IIMs,  business schools etc.

It is noted as the toughest exam but if you draw a plan and implement your valuable time to study for cat from your 1st year BBA it will be a way to succeed in this examination.

Start planning to read the tough topics from now since they need lots of revision and plan based on your interest and performance.

Hope this will help you. Good Luck.

Dear aspirant

Ofcourse you can start your preparation from now onwards. This is going to be very much helpful for you.

CAT (Common Admission test) is solely based on students concepts and application of these concepts.

The exam contains basic questions that even a 11th class candidate could do with a little bit of help, at the end of the day it all depends on how strong your concepts are and how well you grasp and apply these at the same time.

Some students can get hold of these basics very quickly while some might struggle a lot. Preparation for CAT should be tailor made, not all students require the same time to prepare the same syllabus. It all comes down to how well you know your strengths and weaknesses, Some require a lot help in verbal and Logical reasoning part while some take more time in the Quant and DI section. So to summarize it all, there is no definite time period in which you can put an end to your practice for CAT.

First take a moment and look at what the pattern of CAT exam actually is and we will then break it down section by section on how to ace each of them.

Breaking the paper down into 2 bigger sections we get,

Quant

1.Basic Quant: 12 to 14 questions, This section accounts for Maths that we learn in our 6–9th grades. These contain basic topics like percentages Profit/Loss and what not. Now it depends for person to person on how much time allocation needs to be. Books like Rd Sharma are enough for this section.

2.Data Interpretation: 15 to 17 questions, This section is all about reading charts and graphs and analysing the data given , and hence it does not require much practisce until you are like a year to give your exam

3.Data Sufficiency : 2 to 3 questions

4.Geometry and Algebra : 17 to 18 questions: This is a slightly more tougher topic and you will need some certain professional help in order to master this part of the paper. I would highly recommend you buy correspondence packs of institutions like TIME etc.

Verbal

1.Reading Comprehensions: 15 to 17 questions: To improve this part one must read read an dread. There is no shortcut to master RC’s. It is preferable that you read 500–600 passages as part of the preparation as that is the idle size of an RC expected in the paper itself. As you will read for days you will notice that your reading time per passage is decreasing and you will slowly learn the way of speed reading.

2. Logical Reasoning: 15 to 17 Questions: These questions are very basic conceptual based algorithms which you have already prbably done in many Olympiads and stuff, no extra practice must go into it if you have a high aptitude.

3. Paragraph Completion/Sentence Rearrangement/ Sentence elimination: 3 questions: This involves deep knowledge of grammar and hence I would recommend you to go through the book called Wren and Martin. Grammar will take time to improve and dont stop your practice once you think that you are thorough enough instead keep practicing this till the last day.

4.Text Completion/Word Usage:3 questions: For this high vocab skill set is required and I would recommend you to use Word Power Made easy by Norman Lewis, which has application and roots of many words which will not only help you in your CAT but also in GRE GMAT and what not. An app called VoLT (Vocabulary Learning Technique) is also there which is really helpful as it has pictorial representation of words and really large word list for that matter . Do check it out I found it very helpful.It is very important for a candidate to practice regularly, its OK if you dont give the same amount of time daily, but doing something everyday is very important.

Good luck!!