MBA · Indian Institutes of Management (convenor IIM rotates each year)
CAT — Common Admission Test — MBA/PGDM admission to the 22 IIMs and 1,000+ B-schools
The complete CAT blueprint: tier-wise pattern, topic weightage from previous-year analyses, and free chapter-by-chapter study material.
68 questions across 3 sections204 total marks, +3/−140×3 minutes — each section locked, no going back Free · tutor-verified
CAT at a glance
Conducted byIndian Institutes of Management (convenor IIM rotates each year)
CycleOnce a year (registration ~August–mid September; exam last Sunday of November, three slots in a day)
ModeComputer-based, sectional-locked — 20 MCQ + 4 TITA in VARC, 14 MCQ + 8 TITA in DILR, 15 MCQ + 7 TITA in QA. A basic on-screen calculator is provided for QA and DILR.
EligibilityA bachelor's degree with at least 50% marks (45% for SC/ST/PwD) from a recognised university, in any discipline; final-year students can apply provisionally
LanguagesEnglish only
Admission to2-year full-time MBA/PGDM at the 22 IIMs and 1,000+ other B-schools that accept the CAT score, including FMS Delhi, MDI Gurgaon, SPJIMR Mumbai and NITIE-merged IIM Mumbai
Schools you can enter with a CAT score
IIM AhmedabadIIM BangaloreIIM CalcuttaIIM LucknowIIM KozhikodeIIM Indore6 more of the original IIMs13 newer IIMs (2010s cohort)FMS Delhi, MDI Gurgaon, SPJIMR + 1,000 more B-schools
⚡ What changed recently
- Sectional lock is the single most consequential structural fact: each of the 3 sections gets exactly 40 minutes, you cannot move between sections, and you cannot revisit a section once its timer ends — a fast VARC does not buy DILR extra time.
- TITA (type-in-the-answer) questions carry zero negative marking, unlike MCQs in the same section, which lose −1 for a wrong answer. Attempt every TITA you can even partially solve; never leave a confident MCQ guess for a TITA slot instead.
- CAT runs in multiple slots on exam day (morning/afternoon/evening), so raw scores are statistically normalised across slots before being converted to a percentile — your percentile reflects relative performance within your slot's difficulty, not a fixed raw-score table.
- Most IIMs apply sectional percentile cut-offs, not just an overall cut-off — scoring very high in QA cannot compensate for a weak VARC if that IIM sets a separate VARC floor. Check each target IIM's own criteria rather than assuming a single overall number decides shortlisting.
How CAT selection works
Know what each stage is for before you spend a single hour preparing.
OVERALL AND SECTIONAL PERCENTILES
CAT exam
120 minutes, 68 questions, 204 marks, three sections each sectional-locked at 40 minutes. +3 for a correct MCQ, −1 for a wrong one; TITA questions carry no negative marking. Your raw score is normalised across slots into an overall percentile and three sectional percentiles.
CALL FOR WAT-PI
IIM-wise shortlisting
Each IIM sets its own shortlisting formula — typically a minimum overall percentile plus separate sectional percentile floors, weighted together with class 10/12 marks, graduation marks, gender diversity and academic-discipline diversity. The weights differ IIM to IIM, so the same CAT score can clear one IIM's cut-off and miss another's.
FINAL COMPOSITE SCORE
WAT-PI (and GD at a few schools)
Shortlisted candidates sit a Written Ability Test and a Personal Interview (a handful of schools retain a Group Discussion). Final admission offers combine the CAT percentile, WAT-PI score, academic profile and work experience in a composite formula each IIM publishes separately.
The exam pattern, tier by tier
Marks, timing and negative marking exactly as per the official notification.
CAT — VARC, DILR, QA, one sitting
Merit — feeds every IIM's own shortlisting formula204 marks · 68 Q
120 min (40 min per section, sectional-locked) · −1 per wrong MCQ; TITA (type-in-the-answer) questions carry NO negative marking
| Section | Questions | Marks | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension | 24 | 72 | 40 min |
| Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning | 22 | 66 | 40 min |
| Quantitative Ability | 22 | 66 | 40 min |
💡 Three sections, fixed order VARC → DILR → QA, each locked to exactly 40 minutes with no movement between sections and no returning to a closed one. A basic on-screen calculator is provided for DILR and QA (not for mental-arithmetic-only purists) but does not replace estimation speed under the clock.
Where your 204 marks come from
CAT is a single 120-minute, computer-based test split into three sections, each separately timed at 40 minutes with a hard sectional lock — once a section's clock runs out you cannot return to it, even if time remains unused elsewhere. Every correct MCQ scores +3 and every wrong MCQ costs −1; the TITA (type-in-the-answer) questions scattered through all three sections carry no negative marking at all. Your raw score is then normalised across exam slots into a percentile, since CAT runs in multiple sessions on exam day. Here is how the 204 marks split across the three sections — click any block to open its chapters:
Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension72 marks · 35%
24 questions, 20 MCQ + 4 TITA. Reading Comprehension alone is roughly 60% of this section — 4 passages of 4-6 questions each — so passage-reading speed decides the section more than any single technique.
Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning66 marks · 32%
22 questions, 14 MCQ + 8 TITA, almost always structured as sets — 4-6 questions sharing one table, chart or logic puzzle. Choosing which 2-3 sets to attempt out of 4-5 offered is the actual skill being tested.
Quantitative Ability66 marks · 32%
22 questions, 15 MCQ + 7 TITA. Arithmetic alone is the single largest QA topic — heavier than Algebra, Geometry, Number System and Modern Maths combined in some years' analyses.
Subjects in CAT
Chapter-by-chapter study material built to the exam's own blueprint.
Topic-wise weightage — what to study first
Question counts per topic, distilled from previous-year paper analyses. Click any topic with a link to open its full chapter.
| Topic | Qs in paper | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Reading Comprehension | 14–15 | Very high |
| Odd Sentence Out / Sentence Placement | 3–4 | High |
| Para Jumbles | 3 | High |
| Para Summary | 3 | High |
🎯 VARC opens the exam and sets the tone for the rest of your attempt. Reading Comprehension dominates with 4 passages of 4-6 questions each, drawn from a wide register — business, science, culture, philosophy, opinion pieces — and rewarding accurate literal reading and inference over speed-reading tricks. The three Verbal Ability sub-types (Para Jumbles, Para Summary, Odd Sentence Out) are TITA-heavy, carry no negative marking, and reward a small set of learnable techniques — pronoun and connector tracking, opening-sentence identification, central-idea distillation — far more than passive vocabulary. Because VARC is first, over-investing in one stubborn passage here taxes DILR and QA later; a firm per-passage time cap matters more in this section than in the other two.
| Topic | Qs in paper | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Data Interpretation | 7–8 | Very high |
| Logical Reasoning | 7–8 | Very high |
| Caselets & Data Sufficiency | 4 | High |
| Games & Tournaments | 2–3 | Medium |
🎯 DILR is rated the most unpredictable CAT section because it is not organised by topic the way QA is — it is organised into 4-5 independent sets (a table, a chart, a logic puzzle, a caselet), each carrying 4-6 questions, and no candidate can comfortably finish all of them in 40 minutes. The actual tested skill is triage: spending the first 3-4 minutes surveying every set, fully solving the 2-3 that are genuinely tractable, and abandoning or partially attempting the rest, rather than getting anchored on the first set in booklet order. Data Interpretation sets reward arithmetic fluency (percentages, ratios, weighted averages) applied to tables and charts; Logical Reasoning sets reward systematic diagramming of arrangements, rankings and relations; Games & Tournaments and Caselets are recognisable sub-formats with their own fixed solving templates once you've seen a few of each.
| Topic | Qs in paper | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Arithmetic | 7–8 | Very high |
| Algebra | 5 | High |
| Geometry & Mensuration | 4 | High |
| Number System | 3 | Medium |
| Modern Maths | 3 | Medium |
🎯 QA closes the paper and, unusually among Indian entrance exams, provides a basic on-screen calculator — so the bottleneck is rarely raw computation and almost always problem setup: translating a word problem into the right equation, or recognising which of several near-identical-looking formulas actually applies. Arithmetic (percentages, profit-loss, ratios, time-work, time-speed-distance, interest) is the single largest topic most years, ahead of Algebra, Geometry & Mensuration, Number System and Modern Maths individually. TITA questions (7 of the 22) require an exact typed answer with no options to eliminate against, which rewards a genuine derivation over an answer-choice shortcut — a technique that works for MCQs by elimination will not transfer.
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FAQs
Frequently asked questions
68 questions across 3 sections, 204 total marks, in one 120-minute sitting: Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (24 Q, 72 marks), Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (22 Q, 66 marks) and Quantitative Ability (22 Q, 66 marks). Each section is separately timed at exactly 40 minutes with a hard sectional lock.
Each of the 3 sections gets exactly 40 minutes; you cannot move to another section before your current one's timer ends, and you cannot return to a section once it closes. A candidate who finishes VARC in 25 minutes cannot use the extra 15 minutes on DILR — the time is simply lost. This makes per-section time discipline, not just overall time management, the core exam skill.
Each correct MCQ scores +3, each wrong MCQ costs −1. TITA (type-in-the-answer) questions — 4 in VARC, 8 in DILR, 7 in QA — require you to type a numeric or short answer with no options given, and carry zero negative marking, so an educated attempt on a TITA is always worth making even without full confidence, unlike an MCQ guess.
Not necessarily. Most IIMs set sectional percentile cut-offs in addition to an overall cut-off, so a very high QA score cannot compensate for a VARC score below that IIM's own floor. Each IIM also weighs class 10/12 marks, graduation marks, gender and academic-discipline diversity differently in its shortlisting formula, so the same CAT percentile can clear one IIM and miss another.
A bachelor's degree in any discipline with at least 50% marks (45% for SC/ST/PwD categories); final-year students can apply provisionally. All 22 IIMs use the CAT score, and it is additionally accepted by 1,000+ other B-schools including FMS Delhi, MDI Gurgaon and SPJIMR Mumbai — each running its own separate shortlisting and interview process after the written score.
Yes — a basic on-screen calculator (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and square roots) is provided on-screen for DILR and QA. It removes pure arithmetic drudgery but does not replace the speed of recognising the right approach, since most of the 40-minute crunch comes from setup and triage, not raw computation.
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