CAT (Common Admission Test) is a milestone for MBA students who wish to take admission in top B-schools in India. CAT exam is considered as the most important management entrance exam and its given high priority by the top management Institutions.
The CAT exam is conducted by the IIMs on a rotational basis. The motive of the CAT exam is to test the candidate’s Aptitude, logical thinking, Decision- making ability.
CAT syllabus is generalized and vast. The IIMs does not have a fixed syllabus for CAT. The topics will be based on middle school maths and English.
CAT 2019 Syllabus is not predefined. As per trend, the questions can be asked from any topics of verbal and reading comprehension section, Quantitative Aptitude, Data Interpretation, and Logical Reasoning.
CAT syllabus for Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension:
Over the past few years, the verbal ability and reading comprehension section has been focused quite heavily. Out of 34 questions, can expect anywhere from 20 to 25 questions from reading comprehension. The other 10-15 questions would be from verbal reasoning.
Topics to cover for Reading Comprehension:
- Different categories of passages
- Tone of writing
- Writing styles
- Types of questions
- Reading skills
- Types of passages
- Accuracy in Reading Comprehension
Topics to be covered in Grammar:
- The articles – A, An, The
- Parts of speech in English
- Sentence construction in English
- Punctuations
- Modifiers
- Subject-verb agreement
- Verbs Tenses
- Sentence correction
- Word usage
Topics to be covered in Verbal Reasoning:
- Logical Deduction
- Statement and assumptions
- Courses of Action
- Para Jumbles
- Para completion
- Sentence exclusion
- Fact Inference judgment
- Syllogism
Topics to be covered in Critical Reasoning:
- Basic assumption and inference
- Strengthen and weaken the argument
- Paragraph summary
- Method of reasoning and boldfaced
- Flawed and paradox
- Parallel, further application and evaluate
- Fallacies and strong weak arguments
These are just the tools that one should prepare and score well in verbal ability and reading comprehension.
CAT syllabus for Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation:
Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation is gruelling of all sections in CAT exam over the past few years. Typically, there are 8 sets with 4 questions. To score around 90 percentile the candidates need to do 2-3 sets correctly. Whereas, to score around 95 percentile the candidates must do 3-4 sets correctly.
The topics to be covered in Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation:
- Coding-decoding
- Number series
- Letter series
- Symbol series
- Symbol-based logic number and alphabet analogies
- Odd one out
- Direction Sense
- Blood relations
- Family tree
- Inequalities and conclusions.
- Data sufficiency
- Approximation of values.
- Bar chart
- Pie charts
- Tables
- Binary logic- true/false statement-based questions
- Linear and circular seating arrangements
- Sequential input-output
- Logical conditions
- Logical grouping
- Critical path
- Cube based problems
- Dice related problems
- Quant-based Logical Reasoning puzzles.
CAT syllabus for Quantitative Aptitude:
Quantitative aptitude is concerned as the most well defined and most vast as well. The reason is that the large numbers of candidates make the mistake of spending more than 75% time preparing for QA section ignoring the others. Quantitative aptitude section has been divided into
- Number system
- Algebra
- Arithmetic
- Geometry
- Modern math
The topics to be under number system:
- Basics of numbers
- Properties of numbers
- Divisibility rules
- Divisibility and factors
- HCF and LCM
- Finding out the last digit
- Finding out the last two digits
- Number of trailing zeroes
- Special cases of factorials
- Finding our remainders
- Base system
Topics to be covered in Arithmetic:
- Averages
- Mean, median, mode
- Percentages
- Ratio and proportion
- Simple and compound interest
- Instalments
- Profit and loss
- Mixtures and Allegations
- Time speed and distance
- Time and work
- Pipes and cisterns
- Calendars
- Clocks
- stocks and shares
Topics to be covered under Algebra:
It is probably neglected section by the greatest number of students as they don’t know what to do it and where to practice it. Some students skip some of the sections and that is a very bad idea.
- Basics algebraic formulae
- Linear equations
- Quadratic equations
- Higher degree equations
- Inequalities
- Logarithms
- Functions
Topics to be covered in Geometry:
- Lines and Angles
- Triangles – Basic concepts
- Polygons
- Circles
- Solids/ Mensuration
- Co-ordinate geometry
- Trigonometry
Topics to be covered in modern math:
It is a low priority topic.
- Sequence and Series
- Binomial theorem
- Set Theory
- Permutation and Combination
- Probability