Exam day: 40 minutes, two rounds
Attempt 10–12 questions in two passes and never spend more than 3 minutes on one. Your score comes from choosing well, not from solving everything.
The two-round plan
Minute 0 to 20
1. Round 1: pick the easy ones
Go through all 22 in order. Read the question and its final ask; if it is arithmetic or easy algebra and you see the method within 30 seconds, solve it. Otherwise mark it for review and move on. Expect 6–8 solved.
Minute 20 to 36
2. Round 2: the familiar leftovers
Return to marked questions you recognised but parked for time. Attempt the 3–4 most familiar, using the options where possible.
Minute 36 to 40
3. Last 4 minutes: TITA cleanup
Enter your best reasoned answer in any TITA you worked on, since a wrong TITA costs nothing. Do not blind-guess MCQs.
Decision rules
- The 2-minute check
- If you have no equation written after 2 minutes, skip. You can come back in Round 2.
- Skip on sight
- Unless it is a one-line giveaway: geometry with a busy figure, permutations and combinations, remainders of huge powers, function graphs.
- MCQ guessing
- A random guess among 4 options is worth zero on average (0.25 × 3 − 0.75 × 1 = 0). With 2 options left it is worth +1 on average, so guess only after eliminating two.
- Verify before you click
- Plug your answer back into the question (10 seconds). Accuracy is the whole game at a 9-correct target.
The format you will face
- 22 questions in 40 minutes on a sectional timer. QA comes last, after VARC and DILR, so you will be tired: always take QA last in mocks too.
- In CAT 2025 the QA section had 14 MCQs and 8 TITAs.
- A basic on-screen calculator is available. It is mouse-driven and slow, so use it only for ugly multiplications.
Three ways to use the options
- Backsolving
- Substitute each option into the question, starting with the middle value, so the result tells you to go higher or lower.
- Elimination
- Reject options with the wrong unit digit, the wrong parity (odd/even) or an impossible size.
- Assume values
- When the answer is a percentage or a ratio, set the unknown base to 100 (or an LCM) and work with real numbers.
What to track in every mock
| Metric | Target by mid-November |
|---|---|
| QA attempts | 10–12 |
| Accuracy | 85% or higher |
| Wrong MCQs | 2 or fewer |
| Easy questions you skipped (found in analysis) | 1 or fewer |
| Questions where you spent over 4 minutes | 0 |