CAT Mock Tests, Syllabus & Complete Exam Guide

CAT has three separately-timed sections — VARC (24 questions), DILR (20) and Quantitative Aptitude (22) — for a total of 66 questions and 198 marks, taken over 2 hours (40 minutes per section). Each correct answer earns +3 and each incorrect MCQ loses 1 mark, while non-MCQ 'TITA' questions carry no negative marking.

You need a Bachelor's degree with at least 50% marks (45% for SC, ST and PwD candidates), and final-year students may also apply. There is no upper age limit and no cap on the number of attempts, so many candidates take CAT more than once.

The older IIMs — Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta — typically shortlist General-category candidates at around 99+ overall percentile, with sectional cut-offs also applied. New and 'baby' IIMs and many strong private B-schools extend calls in the 90–97 percentile range, and reserved-category cut-offs are lower.

Because CAT is held in three slots, raw scores are normalised to remove any slot-difficulty advantage, and the normalised scores are converted into percentiles. Your percentile reflects the proportion of candidates who scored at or below you, so a 100 percentile corresponds to the top rank overall.

Beyond all 21 IIMs, a CAT score is accepted by hundreds of institutes including FMS Delhi, MDI Gurgaon, SPJIMR Mumbai, IMT Ghaziabad and the management departments of the IITs. Some elite schools such as XLRI primarily use their own tests, so always check each institute's accepted exams.

Start with topic tests to build accuracy in one area at a time, then take full-length mocks weekly under the real 40-minute sectional timer. CAT rewards set and question selection, so use mocks to practise choosing what to attempt and what to skip — and spend more time analysing each mock than taking it.