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Before anything else, preparation is the key to success". These are the words of Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish-born scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone.
His quote is as relevant to CAT preparation as it was to his successful career. In this post, I share the list of books/materials that I used during my CAT preparation. I have kept the list of books as nimble as possible, listing only the ones that actually improved my concepts and in turn, my CAT percentile. In my experience, if you're able to persevere through ~70-80% of this list, you should find yourself comfortably in 99.5+%ile range.
So, without further ado, let's begin:
Verbal Ability
- TIME AIMCAT series
- TIME online sectional tests
- Manhattan/Princeton GMAT Critical Reasoning
- Manhattan/Princeton GMAT Sentence Correction
- Word Power Made Easy
Reading Comprehension
- TIME AIMCAT series
- TIME online sectional tests
- Manhattan/Princeton GMAT Reading Comprehension
- Total Gadha 1000 Reading Comprehension sets - You may download this file from here (it's available for free)
Data Interpretation
- TIME AIMCAT series
- TIME online sectional tests
- Arun Sharma's Data Interpretation for CAT
Logical Reasoning
- TIME AIMCAT series
- TIME online sectional tests
- Arun Sharma's Logical Reasoning for CAT
Quantitative Aptitude
- TIME AIMCAT series
- TIME online sectional tests
- TIME Quantitative Aptitude modules
- Arun Sharma's Quantitative Aptitude for CAT
Previous Year Question Papers
Solving past CAT questions is of utmost importance during your preparation. In addition to taking mocks, one must definitely try to solve all the previous years' questions. If you are constrained on time, I would recommend solving questions from 2001-2008. That would give you immense look-and-feel of the question pattern in each section. You can easily find these papers online. If not, you may buy the compilation
here.
Edit: You can practise from the CAT 2018 and CAT 2019 question papers too. Please click here to download!
Happy Studying!
I'd be more than happy to answer any queries you may have. All the best!
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About the Author
Akshita Agarwal is an alumna of IIM Ahmedabad PGP class of 2017-2019. She scored 99.87%ile in CAT 2016 and bagged final admission offers from IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, and IIM Lucknow.