Common admission test or CAT as it is commonly known is one of the toughest exams across the world. This test is essentially the only one, which tests the intelligence of the. test taker along with his ability to handle a situation. The. CAT exam is after all a definitely tough situation that a candidate finds himself in- a totally unpredictable paper, where the pattern changes every time; negative marking (of unknown weightage); different sectional cut-offs, one more unknown, selection criteria of the candidates, yet another of the important but unavailable information which could have helped a candidate muddle through the sea of 150-180 questions. All of these go towards making the CAT, not just an exam, but a very tough and demanding situation where the candidates need the very best of his faculties in order to make it through.

Try cExams mock test to ensure your success. These tests are randomly generated, each time different questions will appear in the test.

Strategies for preparation:

Maths: For arithmetic, it is important that one practices the questions first by long-method and then by shortcuts. This will give the. Student a good command over the questions and also tell him which questions to select for solving. In higher maths, it is essential that a candidate while preparing first build up his concepts and then go on: to using short-cuts. While preparing for higher maths, it is important that one first work problems totally and only later resort to doing the steps orally. One should be careful while solving problems during the preparation stage here it is essential that the student solve all types of problems regardless 'of whether it is a lengthy or not. This will give him familiarity with the problems types and will also give him an ability to later judge whether or not to attempt a question.

English: While preparing for the English portion of the tests, it is a must that the students keep in mind that he will have to read a lot in the paper. Therefore it is important that he/she builds up a good reading speed and a familiarity with lots of concepts. This will later facilitate his understanding of the passages and the questions that follow. Reading with the questioning approach often goes along way in giving an idea of what will come later in the passage. This will help the candidate to answer questions that come across his way. Building understanding of words and their roots also gives student the ability to solve direct word based questions.

Reasoning: Reasoning is the test of clarity in your thought process and the ability of a person to store lots of data in his mind and process the relevant information in order that it may be useful to solve the problem. A basic sense of logic and arithmetic helps you through mathematical reasoning. Practise is the keyword for building up speed in the reasoning area since it is only familiarity with the questions that will help you.

Data Interpretation: To get confidence in oral techniques or shortcuts, one first has to learn basic stuff like tables, squares, cubes, reciprocals, fractions and their decimal values. Though these are not directly used, they help you make the lengthy solutions simple. Again for DI, one has to get comfortable with numbers and practice short cuts of multiplication/division, etc. in order that one may develop the skill of speedily solving problems.