Here’s how you ace your CAT prep while keeping your full-time work going

If you have a regular 9-5, you must’ve gone looking for CAT preparation tips, Googled tips to balance work and life, and searched a variety of resources to create a prep-plan that works for you.

Chances are, you got the same tired advice about creating time, making time, hustling, pulling all-nighters, taking time off of work and similar stuff. Right?

Now, while these are not bad ideas, they aren’t great ones either. Why? Well, for one thing, they tend to generalise and assume that everyone is in the same boat, job-wise. Two, they tell you what to do, but never ‘how to’ do it. This basically leaves you with a handful of advice that you don’t know what to do with.

Read on to discover two ways you can actually ace your CAT prep, even if you have a demanding job or if you don’t want to take time off of work to study.

Creating a CAT preparation strategy

If you’ve been working for a few years and are now thinking about taking that next step into your future, you might need some advice on starting your CAT preparation for working professionals.

Say you want to begin your MBA in the next five years. The first thing you need is to take a mock test . If you score close to your desired level, you can keep 4-6 months for your prep. But if your score is giving you red flags or if one section seems much weaker than others and is bringing your percentile down, expand your prep timeline to 8-12 months.

You might ask, why so long? Because, as a working professional, your work weeks will look different in different quarters.

Whatever your field, you will have peak work periods and slack work periods. The end of the financial year for bankers might be stressful, with appraisals and year-end reports. For people in communications, summers might be easier, with fewer projects at hand. Giving yourself a longer timeline can ensure that you maximise your slack times for study, and focus on work during peak periods.

With your timeline in place, chalk out each month by holidays, long weekends and slow work days. These are your windows to study. Highlight these days/periods and tell your friends/family that you will be less available during these days so they don’t make plans that need your attendance.

At work, you should decide if you want to tell your colleagues or boss(es) that you are undertaking CAT prep for your future or you want to keep it a secret. If you can someone senior, that works out great because then you can keep them in the loop about your off-work study plans and try to wiggle out of overtime or too demanding projects. Again, this entirely depends on your workplace relationships and how flexible your office team are, but it is worth looking into it.

With these things sorted out, the next thing would be to create a realistic plan of action.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” – an old English proverb.
(It also turns Jack into an exhausted person who can’t concentrate or work nor study!)

Plan your study when you can easily maximise your focus. This means no studying after a 13-hour work day. No study on the one weekend you get to yourself in a busy month. And so on.

But, on the other hand, this also means studying instead of visiting your relatives/family every month, travelling, going out to get drinks with colleagues or friends or spending hours watching streaming content.

Making smart decisions comes from within. Cut down on screen time, and use that time to study. Wake up 30 minutes earlier, and instead of jumping on Instagram, include 20-30 minutes of just DI/LR sets right in the morning with your tea or coffee. Switch out your scrolling habits with reading for RC passages, or even solving them if you are at that stage of your prep journey. The more you swap leisure activities with study tasks (in small but consistent measures), the better you will get at striking that crucial balance.

Creating a CAT cracking strategy

Coming to the next important aspect of your CAT cracking journey is actually getting to a place where you are confident about taking the test. Only one thing can show you where you stand – mock tests.

Make mock tests your constant companions. Sectionals. Full-length tests. Past year papers. Whatever you have on hand, attempt them. And time yourself.

Timed tests are great to polish your time-management skills and to show you how good of a test-taker you are. A lot of CAT aspirants fall behind even if they’re ready and prepared, because they are bad test-takers. Here, ‘bad’ isn’t a negative term, it is an assessment of your ability as a test-taker. If you buckle under pressure, if you tend to hyperventilate or get stressed out during interviews or tests, or if you just don’t perform well on tests despite preparing, it could be because you need to work on your test-taking skills.

As someone working full-time, this will be an additional thing you will need to address when undertaking CAT prep. You cannot ignore this and hope that you will push through.

So, as you take small steps in your study (as detailed above), also insert small windows of only test-taking into your prep weeks. This could be taking a sectional every week or every time you finish a concept. This could be attempting your most challenging sections repeatedly and with a timer. This could simply be taking full-length tests on a regular basis and only studying the questions you got wrong. We can’t tell you which strategy works for you, so you have to figure that much out on your own.

Creating a CAT study plan for working professionals

Lastly, get back to the basics. Before you even begin studying and taking tests, ask yourself the hard questions – Am I good in English, Maths or DI/LR? Do I need to revise my Maths foundations? Should I start reading more/tougher stuff? What do I need to do to optimise my studies as I work.

Answering these questions honestly will take you a long way in your CAT prep journey. And whatever your answer is, we’re here to show you the way ahead.

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Good luck!