CAT

While it is advised to dedicate at least 9 months to CAT preparation, six months of dedicated study can also help you crack the exam. You will need daily, weekly and monthly plan for syllabus coverage. Practice a good number of mock tests and study for about 8 hours daily.

Overall difficulty level of CAT exam has always been moderate to high. CAT is of higher difficulty level than all other MBA entrance exams in India.

As per the latest CAT exam pattern, there will be 68 questions. The format will be MCQ and non-MCQ. VARC will have 24 questions, DILR will have 22 questions and QA will have 22 questions. Each question will carry 3 marks and there will be negative marking of -1 for incorrect answer. Sectional time l

While it is not mandatory to attempt all sections in CAT, the IIMs and all top B School consider sectional percentiles too for selecting candidates for admission. Thus, you cannot afford to skip a CAT section all together. You can skip some questions though.

CAT books by Arun Sharma, Nishit Sinha, RS Agarwal and Abhijit Guha are good and exhaustive, but you should refer to more study material like sample test papers and mock tests for a complete preparation.

Yes, you can crack CAT exam even if you haven't studied Maths in class 12. CAT Quant and DI have Mathematical questions of advance level, from the topics studied in Class 9 and 10. You will only need to brush up the basic and practice advance level questions.

CAT 2026 will be conducted by IIM Indore. The institute had last conducted the exam in 2020.

Six of the older IIMs, including Ahemdabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Khozikode, and Indore, conducts CAT exam on a rotational basis.

Yes, CAT 2026 exam will be conducted in three shifts. Exam timing of each slot will be:

• First shift: 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM
• Second shift: 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM and 
• Third shift: 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM

In CAT Quantitative Aptitude, Arithmetic has the highest weightage with 7-8 questions in every shift. In VARC, Reading Comprehension has the maximum weightage with about 16 questions. In DILR, the number of questions are equally distributed.

In CAT 2025, the number of 100 percentilers was 12. Check state wise data: