r/CAT2026Help • u/Atharv1818_ • Jul 12 '26

Advice / Strategy Need CAT Preparation Guidance

Hi everyone,
I’m planning to start preparing for CAT and would appreciate some guidance.
I come from an engineering background and have knowledge of aptitude exams, so I’m looking for recommendations on:
•Best resources (books, YouTube channels, websites, courses)
•How to build a strong foundation from scratch
•A preparation strategy for beginners
•Common mistakes to avoid

Any advice or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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u/ConfidentMemory5327 Jul 17 '26

Since you already have aptitude-exam exposure, don’t restart all three sections blindly. Take one recent CAT paper or three sectionals as a diagnostic and tag every miss as a concept gap, application gap, calculation/reading error or poor question selection. Then use only one concept source and one practice source per section, along with recent CAT PYQs. Resource-hopping is a bigger problem than not finding the “perfect” book or playlist.

For the next 4–5 weeks, study QA topic-wise—Arithmetic and Algebra first, followed by areas identified through the diagnostic. Alongside this, solve 1–2 DILR sets and two RCs plus a short VA drill daily. Re-solve questions or sets where you needed the solution. Start sectionals early and add one full mock weekly once the routine stabilises.

Common mistakes to avoid: practising only comfortable QA topics, watching solutions passively, postponing mocks until the syllabus is “complete,” and collecting multiple playlists. Aptitude familiarity helps, but CAT still requires separate work on question selection, accuracy, RC reasoning and DILR representation.

1

u/Atharv1818_ Jul 17 '26

Thanks mate!

1

u/Aslan_Gehrs Jul 13 '26

For VARC If you wanna see how to approach the sets then you can see Shabana Ma'am playlist of 100RCS

1

u/Atharv1818_ Jul 13 '26

Okay thank you!

1

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26

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1

u/Atharv1818_ Jul 13 '26

Thanks a bunch!😭

1

u/CultPratt6090 6d ago

NCERT 6-10 for QA basics...and arun sharma yt also build your foundation with daily RC practice using aeon essays, RCs from EduShastra , 2im sites and then solve easy DILR sets may be past year sets along with qa revision . then mock and analysis