Numbers first. CAT 2026 is on Sunday, 29 November, conducted by IIM Indore in three sessions. Admit cards become downloadable on 4 November and remain so until exam day. Registration closed on 15 September, so if you're reading this without a CAT ID, the door has shut for this cycle.
If you do have a CAT ID, this is the part where most candidates drift. The form is done, the exam feels far away, and then November arrives and there are only twenty-five days left. Let's use them properly.
How to download the CAT 2026 admit card
To get the CAT 2026 admit card, log in at iimcat.ac.in with your CAT ID and password. If you've forgotten the password, use the reset option on the same page now, not on the evening before the exam. The reset email goes to the address you registered with, which for a surprising number of people is an old account they no longer open.
Once you're in, the admit card appears as a PDF. Do three things immediately. Save it to your phone and your email. Print it on plain white paper, clear enough that the photograph and barcode are readable. Then print a second copy and put both in the folder you will carry on exam day.
A word on screenshots. They don't count. The exam rules ask for a physical printout, and a phone display at the centre gate won't get you in.
What to check on your CAT 2026 admit card, line by line
The card lists your name, photograph, session, reporting time, test centre address and instructions. Check the following slowly.
Your name should match the photo ID you plan to carry, letter for letter. Your photograph should be yours and recognisable. The session and reporting time should be written down in two places, because the session decides when you arrive. The centre address needs to be looked up on a map today. If any detail looks wrong, don't wait for the exam week to raise it. Use the helpdesk channels listed on the CAT site and keep a record of what you sent.
Here is something that catches people. You can't swap sessions or centres because it suits your commute. The allotment on the card is the allotment.
ID, documents and what you cannot take in
You need two things at the gate: the printed admit card and one original, valid, government-issued photo ID. Photocopies of IDs won't do. Choose one ID and make sure it's the one whose name matches your admit card; carrying three IDs with three spellings invites questions.
Centres in these exams generally allow no bags beyond a small clear item, no phones, no smartwatches, and no calculators other than the on-screen one provided in the test. Rough sheets and a pen are normally supplied inside. Read the instruction list on your own card, since that's the version that applies to you.
If you wear a religious or medical item that may be questioned, check the guidance on the CAT site beforehand and carry any supporting paperwork.
Pacing, with actual numbers
Take a hypothetical. You have 40 minutes in a section and decide to attempt 14 questions. That's roughly 170 seconds a question, which sounds generous until you remember that a reading passage can swallow five minutes before you've answered anything.
Now compare two strategies. In the first, you read every question in order and fight each one to the end. You attempt 11 questions, get 8 right and 3 wrong, and leave the hardest three untouched. In the second, you spend the first four minutes scanning for the quickest ten, solve those, then use the remaining time on the medium ones. You attempt 14, get 11 right and 3 wrong.
The difference isn't ability. It's order. Both versions of you know the same maths. One simply spent the clock better.
The lesson for the next three weeks: practise the scan. In every mock, force yourself to spend the first few minutes of each section choosing what to attempt, and write the order down. Your percentile will thank you more than another stack of practice sets.
How to spend the final 25 days
Resist the urge to learn something new in November. Last-month cramming rarely adds more than it costs. Mock tests, review and rest are the three jobs.
Take mocks in the same time slot as your allotted session. If you've been given the afternoon, schedule your mocks in the afternoon. Your body should recognise the hour.
After every mock, spend at least as long reviewing as you spent writing. Sort every mistake into one of four buckets: concept gap, calculation slip, misread question, bad selection. The bucket that's fullest tells you what to fix. Most people find it's 'bad selection', meaning they chose to attempt questions they should have skipped. In an exam with sectional time limits, that's the mistake that costs percentile points.
Remember that each section in CAT has its own clock, so time you save in one section can't be carried into the next. That changes how you think about pacing: spending an extra three minutes on a hard question in the last ten minutes of a section doesn't borrow from anything useful. Plan for the section as a closed box of forty minutes, with a pass for the easy marks, a second pass for the medium ones, and a rule for abandoning anything that has already eaten more than its share.
Section plans deserve a rehearsal. Decide beforehand how you'd handle the first five minutes of each section: which questions you'll scan, in what order, and when you'd abandon a question. Practise that plan until it stops requiring thought. In the real exam, your working memory will be busy with nerves.
One more habit is worth building: when you review a mock, note the time you spent on each question you got right as well as each you got wrong. A correct answer that took four minutes is a hidden loss, and finding a pattern in those slow correct answers often reveals more about your preparation than the wrong ones do.
The last 48 hours
Stop heavy practice two days before. Do a light review of your error log. Pack your folder: admit card copies, ID, a pen, a water bottle if allowed, and a small snack for after. Confirm travel timing. Sleep matters more than another mock; a rested mind makes fewer misreads.
On the morning itself, eat what you usually eat. Don't experiment. Leave early. Read the instruction screen slowly when the test begins, because those minutes are part of your allotted time only partially, and rushing them costs more than it saves.
If the portal misbehaves on 4 November
Admit card day brings a rush, and the login page can crawl. Don't refresh it forty times. Wait ten minutes, try again, and try a different browser or your phone's data connection before you panic. The card stays available until the exam, so a slow first day costs you nothing except calm. What you shouldn't do is leave the download until the final week, when the helpdesk is busiest and a fault in your details has no time to be fixed.
Beyond 29 November
When the exam ends, it's tempting to disappear for a week. A better idea: write down, that same evening, what you remember of each section while it's fresh. If your percentile surprises you in either direction, those notes help you judge it. And start preparing your profile material for the interview stage, such as your work story, academic summary and reasons for the course you want, long before the shortlists appear.