CAT 2026: a 30-day plan for the final month (30 October to 29 November)

CAT 2026 is on Sunday, 29 November. If you are reading this at the end of October, you have about thirty days left. That is not enough time to learn the syllabus from scratch, but it is plenty of time to turn what you already know into a better score. This plan is built for that: fewer new topics, more full-length practice, and honest review.

The shape of the paper you are training for

The recent CAT papers have had three sections in a fixed order, each with its own 40-minute timer: Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC), Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR), and Quantitative Aptitude (QA). MCQs carry +3 and −1; TITA (type-in-the-answer) questions carry no negative marking. Because you cannot move time between sections, your plan should train three separate 40-minute habits, not one 2-hour habit.

Week 1 (30 Oct – 5 Nov): diagnose

• Take one full-length mock in exam conditions, at the same time of day as your CAT slot.
• Spend longer reviewing it than taking it. List every question you got wrong and every question you got right but slowly.
• Sort your list into three buckets: concept gaps, careless errors, and bad question selection. Most students find the third bucket is the biggest.
• Pick at most three weak topics to repair this week. Leave the rest alone.

Week 2 (6 – 12 Nov): two mocks, one per three days

Take two full mocks. Between them, solve sectional tests only for the section that hurt you most. In DILR, practise choosing sets in the first four or five minutes; in VARC, practise leaving a passage that is eating time; in QA, practise skipping any question you cannot start within 30 seconds.

Week 3 (13 – 19 Nov): previous year papers

Swap one mock for an actual CAT paper from recent years. Previous papers show the real difficulty level and the kind of traps IIM setters like. A free set of CAT previous year papers with solutions is a good place to start; take the full slot, not individual questions, so you feel the section timers.

Week 4 (20 – 26 Nov): taper

• One last full mock early in the week, then stop taking new full tests.
• Re-read your error notebook from weeks 1–3. Re-solve questions you got wrong, without looking at the solution first.
• Do short daily reading (two or three editorials) to keep VARC warm.

The last three days

Sleep at your exam-day time, check your admit card and test centre, and do light revision only. A tired brain loses more marks than a missed formula.

How many mocks is enough?

Quality beats count. Five or six mocks in this month, each reviewed properly, will do more than fifteen mocks taken back to back. If you need free papers to practise with, the full-length CAT mock tests on Aptitude360 follow the current section-wise pattern and come with detailed solutions.

Written by the Aptitude360 team, Chandigarh. More strategy for the final stretch is on the Aptitude360 blog.