MBA Entrance Exam

he CAT itself should ideally be given with 6 months preparation, as then a student has enough time to space out his preparation and work at a comfortable pace. Also, for working professionals who dont have as much time on their hands as the college students, and who perhaps have to devote more time to preparation than college students, it is essential to start early. Several steps which are key to giving a good CAT cannot be taken overnight or crammed into a couple of weeks time. Starting early enables a student to work out the best possible strategy and implement it effectively. Some measures I believe students should take to enhance their level of preparation are:1. Identify the time of day when you study the best: If you are starting 6 months before the CAT, you have enough time to plan out your preparation, and dont need to study for more than two hours a day at this stage. Now is a good time to experiment by studying at different times in the day (whenever possible) to find what time suits you best. When you need to crank up the hours you put in later on, youll know exactly when you feel at your freshest and concentrate best. As far as possible, try giving tests on Sundays (or other holidays) at the CAT time (10 in the morning). Try making this a sort of ritual so you get used to giving a CAT-type test every Sunday morning.2. Subscribe to a daily newspaper and/or a weekly news magazine: 60% of the Verbal Ability section in a typical CAT paper comprises of Reading Comprehension passages. Cultivating the reading habit is therefore essential to your CAT preparation. Indeed, even if you solve only RC with an accuracy of 70% (very achievable), you will comfortably clear your VA cut-offs without even having to touch the dreaded grammar section. Reading a daily newspaper and a weekly news magazine has several purposes. It increases your speed of reading. It also ensures that you are quickly able to pick up the salient points in even abstract passages. Finally, it also broadens your horizons and gives you something to talk about in the Group Discussions and Personal Interviews that come later.3. Study in bursts: If you are one of those that need to warm-up for an hour before beginning to be able to concentrate and study productively, now is the time to break that habit. The entire CAT evaluation (including GD/PI) is designed for people who can switch on and switch off for short periods of time. You need to be able to start concentrating almost immediately.,.,

First, I am going to mention all the IIMs. IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Indore, Shillong I. e ABCLIKS (these form the old IIMs). These are the IIMs that are performing the best at present. IIM Rohtak, Ranchi, Raipur, Trichy, Kashipur, Udaipur (these form the new IIMs). These are relatively new as compared to the older IIMs, but are catching up fast under their guidance. IIM Nagpur, Visakhapatnam, Bodh Gaya, Amritsar, Sambhalpur, Sirmaur, Jammu (these form the baby IIMs). These are the newest IIMs (just 12 years old) and will need a lot of time to catch up with the other IIMs. Apart from the IIMs, there are a lot of other colleges that are equally good. These are:
FMS, Delhi
MDI, Gurgaon
SPJIMR, Mumbai
NITIE, Mumbai
JBIMS, Mumbai
IITs
These are the colleges that are good and should be targeted while preparing for CAT. Hope it helps.

Few pointers which the B Schools take into account -
Academic Record - School, Graduation etc. CAT Score - While there is no cut off for CAT score, but there are sectional cut offs which are never public knowledge. Typically a CAT percentile above 95 is typically a pretty good one. Extra - Curricular - What extra curricular activity were pursued by the individual. There is no bucket list for activities that they look for. They just look for what things are you passionate about and how they have been pursued by the candidate. Work Experience - Candidates prior work experience also has some part in the final selection. How much has the candidate learnt from his previous job, what is it that he did and wants to do in future. Other than that the interviews are pretty generic in nature which generally tests the thought process of the candidate. The weightage of all these points varies from institute to institute. You need to check the websites of all the colleges to check what is the weightage assigned by the colleges for all these points.

Concept Building
Make sure that you have the understanding of all the basic concepts of the topics included in CAT. You should try to connect different topics and then work to simplify the connections using lateral thinking and common sense. You can refer the material to get an idea of the understanding required. Please note that you must focus on Concepts first rather than problem solving. Suggested Books For Concept Building:
Quaint:
How many of these are you genuinely comfortable with? How many of these were you good at in school? If the answer is most, you don't need to worry. Pick the one you are not comfortable with and attack that topic. If the answer is one or zero, well the alarm bells should be ringing. A simple scheduling tip for you: depending on the breadth and depth of topic, assign 3 to 5 weeks per topic from now onwards. Number System
Arithmetic
Algebra
Geometry
Permutation and Combinations + Probability
Set theory and some other miscellaneous topics
Which are the books you should refer to? This list of books is created by Gocareer experts. How to Prepare for Quantitative Aptitude for CAT by Arun Sharma
Quantitative Aptitude Quantum CAT Common Admission Tests For Admission into Iims by Sarvesh K Verma (New Edition)
Quantitative Aptitude For Competitive Examinations by Guha Abhijit
Download full Mathematics study material for CAT
Data Interpretation:
As far as our thinking is concerned, we view data interpretation as a combination of two skills: raw mathematical ability and calculation skills. For the first, if you honestly start your work on Qunatative, you are sorted. For the second, you should Learn tables for numbers 1 to 30 (at least from 1 to 30, remember we said at least)
Suggested Book:
Data Interpretation for the CAT by Arun Sharma- Buy (Amazon) - Buy (Flipkart)
Logical Reasoning
Dig into some puzzle books. Famous ones are those by George J Summers, Ravi Narula and Shakuntala Devi. Play some reasoning games. For example: Soduko
Suggested Books:
Logical Reasoning for the CAT by Nishit K. Sinha
Logical Reasoning for the CAT by Arun Sharma
A Modern Approach to Verbal & Non-Verbal Reasoning By RS Aggarwal
Verbal Ability
Ah, at last our favorite area: Verbal Ability
What should be you be doing for improving in this area? Our one word answer: READ. Suggested Books:
Word Power Made Easy Book by Norman Lewis (Must Have)
High School English Grammar & Composition by Wren, Martin
30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary by will.

Concept Building
Make sure that you have the understanding of all the basic concepts of the topics included in CAT. You should try to connect different topics and then work to simplify the connections using lateral thinking and common sense. You can refer the material to get an idea of the understanding required. Please note that you must focus on Concepts first rather than problem solving. Suggested Books For Concept Building:
Quaint:
How many of these are you genuinely comfortable with? How many of these were you good at in school? If the answer is most, you don't need to worry. Pick the one you are not comfortable with and attack that topic. If the answer is one or zero, well the alarm bells should be ringing. A simple scheduling tip for you: depending on the breadth and depth of topic, assign 3 to 5 weeks per topic from now onwards. Number System
Arithmetic
Algebra
Geometry
Permutation and Combinations + Probability
Set theory and some other miscellaneous topics
Which are the books you should refer to? This list of books is created by Gocareer experts. How to Prepare for Quantitative Aptitude for CAT by Arun Sharma
Quantitative Aptitude Quantum CAT Common Admission Tests For Admission into Iims by Sarvesh K Verma (New Edition)
Quantitative Aptitude For Competitive Examinations by Guha Abhijit
Download full Mathematics study material for CAT
Data Interpretation:
As far as our thinking is concerned, we view data interpretation as a combination of two skills: raw mathematical ability and calculation skills. For the first, if you honestly start your work on Qunatative, you are sorted. For the second, you should Learn tables for numbers 1 to 30 (at least from 1 to 30, remember we said at least)
Suggested Book:
Data Interpretation for the CAT by Arun Sharma- Buy (Amazon) - Buy (Flipkart)
Logical Reasoning
Dig into some puzzle books. Famous ones are those by George J Summers, Ravi Narula and Shakuntala Devi. Play some reasoning games. For example: Soduko
Suggested Books:
Logical Reasoning for the CAT by Nishit K. Sinha
Logical Reasoning for the CAT by Arun Sharma
A Modern Approach to Verbal & Non-Verbal Reasoning By RS Aggarwal
Verbal Ability
Ah, at last our favorite area: Verbal Ability
What should be you be doing for improving in this area? Our one word answer: READ. Suggested Books:
Word Power Made Easy Book by Norman Lewis (Must Have)
High School English Grammar & Composition by Wren, Martin
30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary by will.

Concept Building
Make sure that you have the understanding of all the basic concepts of the topics included in CAT. You should try to connect different topics and then work to simplify the connections using lateral thinking and common sense. You can refer the material to get an idea of the understanding required. Please note that you must focus on Concepts first rather than problem solving. Suggested Books For Concept Building:
Quaint:
How many of these are you genuinely comfortable with? How many of these were you good at in school? If the answer is most, you don't need to worry. Pick the one you are not comfortable with and attack that topic. If the answer is one or zero, well the alarm bells should be ringing. A simple scheduling tip for you: depending on the breadth and depth of topic, assign 3 to 5 weeks per topic from now onwards. Number System
Arithmetic
Algebra
Geometry
Permutation and Combinations + Probability
Set theory and some other miscellaneous topics
Which are the books you should refer to? This list of books is created by Gocareer experts. How to Prepare for Quantitative Aptitude for CAT by Arun Sharma
Quantitative Aptitude Quantum CAT Common Admission Tests For Admission into Iims by Sarvesh K Verma (New Edition)
Quantitative Aptitude For Competitive Examinations by Guha Abhijit
Download full Mathematics study material for CAT
Data Interpretation:
As far as our thinking is concerned, we view data interpretation as a combination of two skills: raw mathematical ability and calculation skills. For the first, if you honestly start your work on Qunatative, you are sorted. For the second, you should Learn tables for numbers 1 to 30 (at least from 1 to 30, remember we said at least)
Suggested Book:
Data Interpretation for the CAT by Arun Sharma- Buy (Amazon) - Buy (Flipkart)
Logical Reasoning
Dig into some puzzle books. Famous ones are those by George J Summers, Ravi Narula and Shakuntala Devi. Play some reasoning games. For example: Soduko
Suggested Books:
Logical Reasoning for the CAT by Nishit K. Sinha
Logical Reasoning for the CAT by Arun Sharma
A Modern Approach to Verbal & Non-Verbal Reasoning By RS Aggarwal
Verbal Ability
Ah, at last our favorite area: Verbal Ability
What should be you be doing for improving in this area? Our one word answer: READ. Suggested Books:
Word Power Made Easy Book by Norman Lewis (Must Have)
High School English Grammar & Composition by Wren, Martin
30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary by will.

Concept Building
Make sure that you have the understanding of all the basic concepts of the topics included in CAT. You should try to connect different topics and then work to simplify the connections using lateral thinking and common sense. You can refer the material to get an idea of the understanding required. Please note that you must focus on Concepts first rather than problem solving. Suggested Books For Concept Building:
Quaint:
How many of these are you genuinely comfortable with? How many of these were you good at in school? If the answer is most, you don't need to worry. Pick the one you are not comfortable with and attack that topic. If the answer is one or zero, well the alarm bells should be ringing. A simple scheduling tip for you: depending on the breadth and depth of topic, assign 3 to 5 weeks per topic from now onwards. Number System
Arithmetic
Algebra
Geometry
Permutation and Combinations + Probability
Set theory and some other miscellaneous topics
Which are the books you should refer to? This list of books is created by Gocareer experts. How to Prepare for Quantitative Aptitude for CAT by Arun Sharma
Quantitative Aptitude Quantum CAT Common Admission Tests For Admission into Iims by Sarvesh K Verma (New Edition)
Quantitative Aptitude For Competitive Examinations by Guha Abhijit
Download full Mathematics study material for CAT
Data Interpretation:
As far as our thinking is concerned, we view data interpretation as a combination of two skills: raw mathematical ability and calculation skills. For the first, if you honestly start your work on Qunatative, you are sorted. For the second, you should Learn tables for numbers 1 to 30 (at least from 1 to 30, remember we said at least)
Suggested Book:
Data Interpretation for the CAT by Arun Sharma- Buy (Amazon) - Buy (Flipkart)
Logical Reasoning
Dig into some puzzle books. Famous ones are those by George J Summers, Ravi Narula and Shakuntala Devi. Play some reasoning games. For example: Soduko
Suggested Books:
Logical Reasoning for the CAT by Nishit K. Sinha
Logical Reasoning for the CAT by Arun Sharma
A Modern Approach to Verbal & Non-Verbal Reasoning By RS Aggarwal
Verbal Ability
Ah, at last our favorite area: Verbal Ability
What should be you be doing for improving in this area? Our one word answer: READ. Suggested Books:
Word Power Made Easy Book by Norman Lewis (Must Have)
High School English Grammar & Composition by Wren, Martin
30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary by will.