Before you open a single practice question, it helps to know exactly what you're preparing for. CAT (Common Admission Test) is India's most competitive MBA entrance exam, and its structure is unusually rigid compared to many other competitive exams, you can't shift time between sections, and the marking scheme punishes careless guessing in a specific way. Here's the full pattern, section by section, along with the syllabus each section actually covers.
The big picture: 3 sections, 120 minutes, 68 questions
CAT is a computer-based test with three sections, each given exactly 40 minutes, for a total test time of 120 minutes. The three sections are Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC), Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR), and Quantitative Ability (Quant). As of the most recent test pattern, VARC carries 24 questions, DILR carries 22 questions, and Quant carries 22 questions, 68 questions in total across the exam.
The single most important structural fact about CAT is that the sections are strictly timed on their own. You get 40 minutes for VARC, then the section locks and you move to DILR for 40 minutes, then Quant for the final 40 minutes. You cannot carry over unused time from one section into another, and you cannot jump back to a section once its 40 minutes are up. This is different from some other exams that let you manage time freely across the whole paper, and it changes your strategy: pacing within each individual section matters just as much as your overall speed.
Marking scheme: how the 204 total marks break down
CAT uses a marking scheme most Indian test-takers are already broadly familiar with, but it has one nuance that trips people up. For every multiple-choice question (MCQ) you answer correctly, you get +3 marks. For every MCQ you answer incorrectly, you lose 1 mark. So far, that's standard negative marking.
The nuance is TITA questions, Type In The Answer questions, where there are no options and you type your numerical or text answer directly. TITA questions carry zero negative marking. Whether you get a TITA question right, wrong, or leave it blank, you never lose marks for attempting it (beyond simply not gaining the +3 for a correct answer). This makes TITA questions meaningfully lower-risk than MCQs, and many aspirants deliberately prioritize them when they're short on time, since there's no downside to taking an educated shot. With 68 questions each worth 3 marks for a correct answer, the maximum possible score works out to 204 marks.
Section-wise syllabus: what's actually being tested
CAT doesn't publish a fixed syllabus document the way school board exams do, instead, the syllabus is inferred from years of consistent question patterns across the three sections. Here's what each section covers in practice.
VARC: Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension
VARC is roughly split between reading comprehension passages and standalone verbal ability questions. The reading comprehension portion typically makes up the bulk of the section, long and short passages drawn from areas like economics, philosophy, science, culture, and current affairs, followed by inference-based and vocabulary-in-context questions. The verbal ability portion covers para-jumbles (rearranging jumbled sentences into a coherent paragraph), para-summary (identifying the best summary of a paragraph), odd-sentence-out questions, and para-completion. Unlike Quant and DILR, VARC questions are almost entirely MCQ-based, with only a handful of TITA-style questions, typically the para-jumble and summary items.
DILR: Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning
DILR is usually the section aspirants find hardest to prepare for, because it doesn't reward memorized formulas the way Quant does, it rewards pattern recognition and structured thinking under time pressure. The section is built around "sets": a block of data (a table, chart, graph, or a logical arrangement like a seating puzzle or scheduling problem) followed by 4-6 questions that all draw on that same set. Data interpretation sets typically involve reading and cross-referencing tables, bar graphs, line charts, pie charts, or combinations of these. Logical reasoning sets typically involve arrangements (circular, linear, or matrix-based seating and ranking puzzles), blood relations, direction sense, binary or ternary logic, and puzzles involving conditional constraints. The core skill DILR tests is your ability to quickly build an accurate mental (or scratchpad) model of a data set and then answer several questions off that single model efficiently.
Quant: Quantitative Ability
Quant covers the widest spread of distinct topics of the three sections. Broadly, it spans: arithmetic (percentages, profit and loss, ratios and proportions, averages, time-speed-distance, time and work, simple and compound interest, mixtures), algebra (linear and quadratic equations, functions, inequalities, simultaneous equations, progressions), geometry and mensuration (triangles, circles, coordinate geometry, and the volume/surface area of solids), number systems (divisibility, remainders, factors, LCM/HCF, and properties of integers), and modern math (permutations and combinations, probability, and sequences and series). Arithmetic and algebra questions tend to dominate by question count, but geometry, number systems, and modern math show up consistently enough every year that skipping them is a risky strategy.
A necessary caveat
The exact number of questions per section, the exact MCQ-to-TITA split, and even details of the marking scheme have been revised by the IIMs (who jointly administer CAT on a rotating basis) in past years, and they can be revised again. The figures in this article, 68 total questions, 24/22/22 across VARC/DILR/Quant, 120 minutes, and the +3/-1 marking scheme, reflect the pattern as of 2026. Before you finalize your exam-day strategy, always cross-check the current year's official CAT notification and mock test instructions released by the conducting IIM, since these are the only fully authoritative source for a given year's exact pattern.
Start practicing with the real structure in mind
Understanding the pattern is only useful once you start applying it under real, timed conditions, reading about section-wise timing is very different from actually feeling the 40-minute clock run out on a DILR set. PrepTest Hub offers free, full-length CAT practice tests organized by module, so you can drill VARC, DILR, and Quant separately or simulate the complete exam experience. Head over to the CAT practice hub to try a VARC, DILR, or Quant test and see exactly where your pacing and accuracy stand against the real exam structure.