Common Admission Test or CAT is the national level management entrance exam conducted by Indian Institute of Management for admission to 20 IIMs and more than 100 B-schools across India. Around 2 lakh MBA aspirants take the test every year.

Eligibility Criteria

The candidate must hold a Bachelor’s Degree, with at least 50% marks or equivalent CGPA (45% in case of the candidates belonging to Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Persons with Disability (PWD)/Differently Abled (DA) category) awarded by any recognized University or institute.

Examination Pattern :

CAT Exam Section Number of Topics Number of Questions Section Score
Quantitative Ability 5 34 102
Logical Reasoning
And Data Interpretation 8 32 96
Verbal Ability And
Reading Comprehension 6 34 102

Preparation Tips :

This is a useful tip for almost any exam. Understand the syllabus by going through past year’s papers and official guidelines. CAT can be segmented into four broad parts-

Quantitative Ability
Data Interpretation
Logical Reasoning
Verbal Ability


Start your preparation with sheer determination. Whenever you feel demotivated, you can dream about the day when you will crack the exam and it will definitely motivate you.

The best way to go on with the CAT preparations is to evaluate oneself in every 10-15 days, which is done by mock tests. But one thing that students should be careful about is to not to repeat the mistakes made by them in either the mock CATs or while practicing at home

While preparing for the CAT question paper, one must keep in mind that management schools seek to test understanding of basic concepts that the student possesses. S

Only if the student is able to eliminate 2-3 choices, then he should take a guess. Otherwise there is no point in wild guessing, as it may drop ones chances of making it right.


Last but not the least, students are advised to keep their calm, relax, and believe in them on the day of the paper.