The CAT-24 Prep Road – Is it Really That Long?

Some aspirants who are contemplating taking a shot at this year’s CAT still feel as if it’s a long way off. The CAT prep road seems long and CAT-24 is a distant mountain to climb. And I can understand. 9 months is a significant period to time. It is almost equal to 2 entire semesters in terms of time.

So naturally, thoughts like how to prepare for CAT  get pushed to the backburner simply because they don’t seem immediate or pressing.

But let’s do some simple Math to understand things better. CAT-24 is around 260 days away – give or take a few, depending on when you are reading this. A solid CAT Prep would mean at least 1000 hours of work – again, give or take a few 100 hours, depending upon what your strengths & weaknesses are. (Identifying your strengths & weaknesses and ADAPTING your entire CAT Prep around the same infact lies at the core of the phenomenally 

If you are really good, maybe you need 800-850 hours. On the other hand, if you have significant weaknesses, you may need 1200-1250 hours. But in either case, every hour you put in today takes off that 1 hour from 1000 odd hours you need to put in overall. More time invested now means less would be needed later.

1000 hours over 250 days is nearly 4 hours daily. And pushing back on your prep would mean this daily requirement will go up. You should at least not allow the required number of daily hours to go beyond a level. And that will happen only if you start putting in some regular hours from right now. Start by putting in some extra effort in your weaker area – be it Quant or Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension.

CAT-24 isn’t nearly as far off as it may appear at first.

About the author: Deekshant has sleep-walked through several 100 and 99.9 %iles in practically every section of the CAT. That he is a cricket fan and he writes okay is evident from most of his posts. 1000s of our students swear that he can motivate almost anyone to double his/her percentile through very simple yet powerful inputs. And that’s why every MBAGuru student has direct access to him via mail and Telegram. Oddly, he somehow also finds the time to write songs professionally. And yes … almost missed this … he is an alumnus of IIT Delhi & IIM Cal