I will urge you to start with the next important stage, which is the application form. First week of August your CAT application forms will be out and you need to fill the application form by the second or third week of September,  when the application will end and you need to fill the application form. Two very important things will be there in the application form. One will be the programs that you want to choose, that is all the IIM and the different programs, and the IIM that you want to apply for and the second will be the city in which you want to appear for the CAT exam.

CAT  Exam Date 2025 : 

 After that, you will have your admit cards by the first week of November. And admit cards will be important for two reasons. First, you need to check the slot in which you are going to appear for the CAT exam and also the test centre where you are going to appear for the CAT exam. So, the CAT exam is conducted in three slots. Morning slot, afternoon slot and evening slot and you will be allocated any of these slots randomly. So,  that is one important thing that you will get from the admit card, and the other is obviously your test centre. Usually, you get your test centre in the preferred city that is first, second or third choice. But you obviously need to be careful about your test centre. After that comes your CAT exam. The last Sunday of November is when your CAT exam is going to be held. This year, I think it's going to be the 30th of November when the CAT exam is going to be held. And once the CAT exam is over by around the 2nd week of December, you will get your answer keys. So that's the next step. Once you get your answer keys, you know your scores and everything, you kind of know your tentative percentile as well. But the final results will be out by the first or second week of January. It can be out before that as well. But by the first or second week of January, you can expect the results to be out. After that, your interview scores will be out and the different IIMs will start rolling out their interview calls as well. And those interview calls will be scheduled from February itself. Towards February, you will see most of the IIMs start rolling out their interview calls. And February, March onwards, your interviews will be scheduled. So from April, your results will also start rolling in. In April and May, you will have your results and from June, the B school session will also start. A lot of B schools will start the session in July as well and some of them will start in August as well. A lot of new-age B schools will also start their session from August to September. So kind, it's kind of different from one B school to another. However, mostly you can expect it from the month of June till August, when most of the B schools will start their sessions. Next, coming to a very important question, what are the colleges that I can apply to through the CAT exam? 

 Indian MBA colleges : 

Almost all major Indian MBA colleges accept applications through the CAT exam. Yes, there are certain colleges, like the ISB 1-year program, where you can apply through the GMAT exam. Extra, which is a great college, you can apply only through the CAT exam. But almost all the other B schools, all the major IIMs, you can apply through the CAT exam and for most of the IIMs, in fact, you just need to fill the CAT form. You just need to check the particular application form that you're applying for at this IIM and it will be done. However, there are a few IIMs where you need to fill out a separate application form. And yes, there will be a lot of other colleges as well where you need to fill out a separate application form. They accept the CAT score, but there is a separate application process for them. FMS and  MTI and all the other B schools as well. A very great B school as well. They have their own application process, too. And that is something you need to be careful about, based on what percentile you're targeting, based on what you are, and what your dream B school is. You need to apply for those colleges because there's a deadline for those colleges. Definitely, I will keep telling you about the different deadlines that these colleges have. Some colleges have their deadline before the CAT exam. Some colleges have the deadline after the CAT exam as well. So I will keep telling you about those deadlines. And this is something you need to be really, really careful about. I have heard so many students year on year that I scored great in the CAD exam, but I did not apply for this particular college. There are very good colleges outside of IIMs as well, but somehow they have missed the deadline and there is no way that they can fill the application form again and obviously they have to appear for the next year itself. So that's why it's very important that you fill those application forms wherever you are targeting, whichever college you are targeting, you fill those application forms within the deadline.

CAT  Exam Pattern : 

 Now, coming to the CAT exam pattern, the CAT exam is divided into three sections of 40 minutes each. First is the verbal ability and reading comprehension. Second is the data interpretation and logical reasoning and third is the quantitative aptitude. Now, you need to attend the first section. After that, you can move to the second one and you cannot switch between the sections during the paper. So it's like 40 minutes of verbal, then 40 minutes of DR, then 40 minutes of quant. And that's why I always ask people to treat the CAT exam as three different examinations of 40 minutes each rather than one CAT exam of 2 hours. So the way that it works is you understand that every 40 minutes you need to come back to the same form of energy and you also understand that you do not have to carry the baggage of one section to the other one. If verbal has not been good, then it's completely fine. You can make up for that in the DIR and quant section. So that is the kind of mentality that you need to develop. And it's not that you just go on exam day and it will happen. It can only come from your preparation. If you treat the CAT exam as this, then only you will develop that kind of a mindset during your mocks. You have to treat the CAT exam like that for 40 minutes, and then you will develop that kind of a mindset and it will be easier for you when you go for the paper. And here 24 questions come for the verbal section, around 20 to 22 questions for the DIIL section and another 22 questions for the quant. So this is kind of a tentative number. It might change a little bit here or there. But if it's a two-hour paper, usually you can expect the number of questions to be this only. It does not change a lot. Yes, one or two questions here or there. It can happen. CAT never says that this is going to be the pattern. This is going to be the number of questions. It will always be it will always be a secret till you open your CAT paper. But usually this has been the trend: 24 questions, 20 to 22 questions for DIR and 22 questions for the quant paper. And here I will not talk about the trend of the verbal section and the DIR section because usually you cover everything in those two sections.

CAT Exam Syllabus : 

 However, for the quant section, I will talk about the past trends that you need to understand. For example, there are three broad sections in the quant paper: arithmetic, algebra, number system, geometry and modern maths. And if you see the trend of questions from these particular topics, how many questions come from these topics? And for this, I will use Oswal's book's 25 years solved paper.  Here, you can see arithmetic mostly dominates; that is, 10 to 11 questions come from arithmetic, and another five or six questions come from algebra. So more than 50%, 60% and 70% of the paper is arithmetic and algebra. After that, around three to four questions can come from geometry, another two or three from the number system and another one or two from modern maths. So that typically has been the trend. If you see year-wise as well ,that has typically been the trend. However, I always recommend that if you have a lot of time, your focus should be on arithmetic to absolutely nail arithmetic because that is also a section where you should be scoring very high. So absolutely nail your arithmetic, but after that, cover all the sections because this is a general trend. If somehow CAT changes the trend this year, you never know, you have to cover all the topics, but yes, arithmetic, you can focus a lot. If you don't have enough time, then obviously your next focus will be completely on algebra and the question or the topic that you would want to ignore would be your geometry or modern maths.

CAT Exam  Preparation : 

 Okay. And now talking about Oswald books, 25 years salt paper. I always say the best way to prepare for the CAT examination is through mocks and past year papers. No matter how much preparation you have done, you have to solve past year questions. That is very, very important because it gives you an idea of what level of questions are being asked in the CAT examination from that particular topic. That's why solving previous year questions at least 15 years of previous year papers is very, very important. You need to solve that and you can definitely use 25-year-old salt paper for that. And the best thing about this book is that all of these questions are segregated into topics, which becomes a challenge. So, suppose you're preparing for simple interest, compound interest and you have been through the initial theory. After that, you can solve CAT-level questions because all the CAT-level questions will be in this particular book and that is segregated topic-wise. So, simple interest, compound interest, whatever previous questions have appeared, you can solve it then and there itself. So that's exactly the best part of this book ,because you can use it in your preparation stage itself. After all, you're preparing one topic solve questions from that topic the previous year questions from that topic, which will give you a lot of confidence boost and also there are different kinds of smart revision notes some kind of mind maps as well that you can use for quick revision when you're revising later or you can also use it for your initial preparation. And suppose you have missed any formula, there are these smart revision notes and mind maps as well that you can use to remember the formula as well as see if you have missed out on anything. And obviously, the explanation to these questions, the answers are mentioned in the book. So you can always refer to them if you want to purchase this particular book. And now coming to the marking scheme. Usually, you will have plus three for a correct answer, minus one for an incorrect answer if it's an MCQ question. That is, you will have four options. You need to choose one among them. However, there are some other kinds of questions as well that are typed in the answer where you need to input the right answer. There will be no option; you need to input the correct answer, and for that, plus three for a correct answer and there is no negative marking if you get these kinds of questions wrong. So you get your marks accordingly + 3 minus on, whatever you get is what we call the raw score. So plus three minus one based on the number of questions you got right, you left unattempted or you got incorrect you get your raw score and after that this raw score is converted into your scaled score and this is very important for CAT aspirants to understand because you are selected in those IM colleges based on that scaled score and not based on your raw score. So what happens is that, as I said, the CAT exam is conducted in three slots. You have your morning slot, you have your afternoon slot and you have your evening slot. So it might so happen that one of the slots is more difficult than the other, but the CAT examination takes care of that. You need not worry if your slot was difficult or easy or whatever. It will take the law of averages. If everyone in your particular slot has found the paper to be difficult, if your paper was really difficult compared to the other slots, your raw score will be scaled up. Suppose you are scoring 100 marks in your paper. Your score might go up to say 105, 106 or even 110, depending on how much scaling has to happen. If, suppose your particular slot was easy and all of the other people in your slot have performed really well, then your raw score might be scaled down as well. So your score of 100 might become 95 - 96 and so on, depending on how much scaling needs to happen. So all of these papers are compared across slots. All the candidates who have performed their performance is compared across different slots and based on that your raw score will be scaled up or it will be scaled down and then based on your scaled score your percentile is calculated and it might so happen two people who are scored the same raw score across two different slots might have very different percentile because of the scaling factor across the different slots. Okay, but you need to worry obviously about your raw score. You need to maximise your raw score. Obviously, it's very obvious that the higher the raw score, the better chance you would have at a better percentile, right? So, you need to concentrate on your raw score and leave the calculations and statistics to be based on which your scale score will be calculated. You cannot control those factors, right? The best thing that you can do is perform based on your potential. If your slot was easy, try to maximise your raw score and everything else will be taken care of.

So, now, how is the CAT exam conducted? For that, it's an online proctor test. You need to visit a centre and you need to sit on the computer and appear for the CAT exam online. So that is how it happens. Your test centre, as I said, will be allocated randomly. Usually, it's based on your first, second, and third preferences that you have put on your CAT application form. But you will be allocated a test centre at a particular time slot. You need to reach the centre in the assigned time slot and appear for your paper. And also, you have to remember that your entire paper will be in English. Right? So a lot of people ask me whether they have the option of other languages as well, but your CAT paper will be in English. So you need to solve the paper in English completely. Next, coming to the admission and interview processes that happen. Once you have your CAT score after that either you need to fill the application form of the respective college or your score will be automatically sent to that particular college and beyond that you will get your interview calls if your percentile is sufficient and on the basis not only of your percentile but your past academics your diversity points and other things are also added in your profile and based on that you will get short list from the respective colleges and once you have the short list you will appear for the interviews. On the interview day, typically, two stages are conducted. One can be your VAT that is your written aptitude test and the other will be your uh it can be a GD as well that is your group discussion. Either a VAT or a GD is usually the norm. It might happen that some interviews or some B schools might conduct both rounds as well. VAT and GD and after that, you will have your final interview, and on the basis of these two, your final score will be calculated. So there will be a percentage allocation for your final interview, which usually has the most weightage; almost 40 - 50% weightage comes from your personal interview. Another 10 -20% weightage comes from your VAT or your GD as well and the rest of the weightage is from your CAT score, past academics and your overall profile. So once the complete process is over, you will get the results from the B school, either you will be admitted to the college, or you will be put on the list or you will happen to be rejected. So if you have been admitted to the college, obviously, you need to deposit the fees and complete the admission process. If you are put on the weight list, then you need to wait for other people to clear the seats and if you happen to convert the weight list, then you need to complete the admission process after that and obviously, it might happen that all the colleges do not release the results at the same time.