Key Takeaways
- The daily question gets a rule. Open one sheet, do the items due today, do the day's section block, then log what happened.
- Trying it without looking is the revision. Students who tested themselves kept more after two days and a week than students who studied again, even though studying again felt more confident.
- Gaps between revisits should grow with the distance to the exam. A large study found the best gap grew as the test moved further away. It gave no single number, and this page does not turn it into a rule.
- New material stops on set dates. New sources close on 19 October and new chapters on 8 November.
- A 1 to 2 hour evening runs on the same sheet. The due list is capped, so a short day slows the plan without breaking it.
- The schedule is a template. No page can promise a percentile, and this one does not.
A post on r/CATpreparation from 29 September 2026 carried the mood of this week in one line.
"It’s almost like I went from worrying about preparation to worrying about performance."
There are 61 days between today, Tuesday 29 September, and Sunday 29 November 2026, when CAT 2026 is held. IIM Indore conducts it in three sessions. The paper is 120 minutes in three 40-minute sections (VARC, DILR and QA), with no moving between sections while one is running.
A September 2026 post in the same subreddit asked: "Where do you keep things you want to revisit?" A calendar tells you what to study on which day. A revision system tells you which old question, set or passage to reopen this morning, and whether it stuck. The longer story of why saved material fades is in why you forget what you study for CAT.
The exam pattern, a stage-wise plan, a weekly timetable and the three-way sorting of mock mistakes are already in How to Prepare for CAT Without Coaching. What follows sits underneath a calendar like that one.
What the calendars leave out
An iQuanta video from 23 September 2026 splits 60 days into three blocks of 20 and keeps an error log. A Darpan Saxena video from early September gives a day-by-day sheet for 75 days and names the daily decision: quant, VARC or DILR, a mock or a sectional. Both creators sell courses, mocks or mentorship, so read them as practice described by people with something to sell.
A Rodha video from 29 May 2026 comes closest to a tracking layer. It suggests a 15-day or 30-day revise cycle for each topic, and says to cross a question off only when you later solve it without the solution. The system below adds a date on every row, so the sheet itself tells you what is due.
One plan asks for 7 to 8 hours a day and another for 10 to 12, and none of the videos reviewed for this page speaks to a one or two hour evening. This page gives a full-day version and an evening version on the same sheet.
What the research supports
Four ideas do the work here. Each is stated at the strength its source supports, and none of the studies used CAT questions.
Retrieval
In a 2006 study, Roediger and Karpicke had students study prose passages, then either take free-recall tests without feedback or restudy. Five minutes later, restudying gave better recall. At two days and one week, testing gave substantially better recall, even though restudying made students more confident.
In a survey of 177 college students, Karpicke, Butler and Roediger found that a majority repeatedly reread, and only 11 percent (19 of 177) reported practising retrieval. A large review by Dunlosky and colleagues rated practice testing and distributed practice as high utility and rereading as low.
Spacing
A meta-analysis by Cepeda and colleagues (839 assessments in 317 experiments, verbal recall tasks) found that the gap between study sessions giving the best final test grew as the delay to the test grew.
A later study by Cepeda, Vul, Rohrer, Wixted and Pashler put numbers on it. More than 1,350 people learned a set of facts, reviewed them after a gap of up to 3.5 months, and were tested up to a year later. At any test delay, a longer gap first helped and then hurt, and the best gap grew as the delay grew. As a share of the test delay, the best gap fell from about 20 to 40 percent for a one-week test to about 5 to 10 percent for a one-year test.
The authors say the best gap is not one quantity that can be recommended, because it depends a great deal on how long you need to remember. In the accepted manuscript they also note that a gap that is too long costs much less than one that is too short. That supports leaning toward more time between tries, and no further for a CAT aspirant.
Growing gaps and recalling to a standard
Karpicke and Roediger compared expanding gaps with equal gaps for vocabulary pairs. Expanding gaps helped at 10 minutes, equal gaps did better two days later, and expanding had little effect on long-term retention across three experiments. What mattered was delaying the first retrieval so that it took effort.
Rawson and Dunlosky had undergraduates recall concepts to a set standard and then relearn them in later sessions, with retention measured one to four months later. Their advice to students was three correct recalls in the first session, then three relearning sessions at widely spaced intervals. It comes from one lab programme.
Mixing problem types
In a preregistered trial, Rohrer, Dedrick, Hartwig and Cheung had 54 seventh-grade maths classes practise with interleaved or blocked assignments over four months. On an unannounced test a month later, the interleaved group scored 61 percent and the blocked group 38 percent. An earlier experiment with 126 seventh graders pointed the same way.
The wider picture is mixed. A meta-analysis of 59 studies found a moderate overall effect, a small one for mathematical tasks, no clear effect for expository texts, and an advantage for blocking with words. For this plan, mixing topics inside quant practice is reasonable and mixing reading passages is unproven.
The book Make It Stick, by Brown, Roediger and McDaniel, covers retrieval, spacing and interleaving in practical terms, including a card-box method in which a card you miss moves to a box that you review more often. The ladder below borrows that mechanism.
A template, not a promise. The dates on this page are exact. CAT 2026 is on Sunday 29 November 2026, and each section is 40 minutes with no switching. The schedule is a template built from the research above and from practices coaches describe in public videos, and nobody has tested it on CAT candidates. It aims to make the daily decision easier and the revisiting visible. No page can promise a percentile, and this one does not.
The one-sheet tracker
A reply in that September thread described the core of it: "Keep one sheet for topics/resources with status, last-practised date and a notes link". The sheet below adds a few columns. It can be a spreadsheet or ruled columns in a notebook.
| Column | What goes in it | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Section | V, D or Q | Lets you count misses per section |
| Item | One line: the question, set type or passage | A row should be readable in five seconds |
| Where | Link or page number to the question alone | You can attempt it without seeing the answer |
| Solution | Separate link or page | Keeps the answer hidden until you have tried |
| Reason | Concept, careless, time or selection | The mock-review buckets from the preparation guide, plus selection for a question you should have skipped |
| Level | 1 to 4 | Sets the next gap |
| Last tried | Date | The anchor for the due date |
| Result | Clean, Slow or Miss | Decides the next level |
| Next due | Date | The answer to "what should I do today" |
Rodha's video warns against saving a screenshot that has the solution on it, while other creators are happy with screenshots. The Where and Solution columns settle it: the row opens on the question, and the solution sits one click away.
Revisit cycles
Every row climbs or falls a ladder. The level tells you how long the row rests before the next try. The gaps are our template values, chosen to fit 61 days, and they are not numbers taken from a paper.
| Level | Next try due | What happens after the try |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 days later | New rows start here. Clean moves the row to level 2 |
| 2 | 7 days later | Clean moves the row to level 3 |
| 3 | 14 days later | Clean moves the row to level 4 |
| 4 | 21 days later | Clean retires the row from the active list |
Clean means right, without looking, within your target time, and the row moves up. Slow means right but too slow, and the row stays where it is. Miss means wrong or blank, and the row goes back to level 1, as a missed card moves to a box reviewed more often.
A row logged on 30 September and marked Clean each time would be tried on 3 October, 10 October, 24 October and 14 November.
Our first gap is shorter than the best gaps in the Cepeda study for a test this far away. We start at 3 days because a row begins as a miss you have just seen, and it will be met four times. That is our judgement. If a 3-day retry feels like reading and not recalling, start at 5 days.
Four rules keep the ladder honest.
- Attempt first. Do not read the solution, or your own note, before you try. That is the retrieval part.
- Nothing is due after 26 November. A due date that lands later is pulled into the last-week pass.
- The gap shrinks near the end. A row logged after 8 November gets a check after 2 days and then the final pass, because the useful gap shrinks as the exam gets closer.
- No more than 20 items due on one day. Overflow rolls to the next day, oldest first. If overflow shows up two weeks running, log fewer rows and do not add hours.
Whether a row should be tried four times, as here, or ten times, as one coach says for a January starter, is not something the research settles. The coach's number has no source in the video.
What to log
The sheet fills from what you already have: the wrong-question notebook, bookmarked questions, abandoned sets. One aspirant on r/CATpreparation described the method in September 2026: "by giving mocks and analysing the questions you did wrong and then saving those questions separately and practise them once a few days."
Another wrote, also in September: "I am able to analyse what mistake I committed,but somehow not able to correct it in the following sectionals". A log with no due date invites that, and the Next due column is the fix.
Log a row only when all three are true:
- You could not do it clean, or you did it slowly.
- It was doable for you. A question far outside your reach belongs in learning, and a row there only repeats a miss.
- You can give the reason in one word.
The second test also caps the volume. A post in the same subreddit from 28 September 2026 said: "when I properly analyse my mocks, I can usually see around 20 marks worth of questions that were easy or at least doable for me." Take at most 8 rows from any one mock.
What to stop adding
More material does not fix a plan with no way to bring old material back. These stop dates are ours.
| Stops on | What stops | What replaces it |
|---|---|---|
| Monday 19 October | New sources: playlists, PDFs, question banks, courses | One main source per section, plus the sheet |
| Sunday 8 November | New chapters or topics | Rows from mocks and from the sheet only |
| Sunday 22 November | Full mocks | The final pass |
| Saturday 28 November | Everything new | One look at the rows you missed last time |
Coaches disagree about formula notebooks. The sheet needs no side: a formula you keep forgetting becomes a row like any other.
How mocks fit
A mock does two jobs here. It is a full timed test, and it is the biggest source of new rows. The testing research used recall of passages, and nobody has measured whether a full CAT mock gives the same benefit, so treat it as a strong pointer to what needs revisiting.
Analysis needs a budget. One aspirant wrote in July 2026: "It was very time-consuming. The analysis for the quant sectional alone took me like 2.5-3 hours." The sources we read range from about 30 minutes to about three hours for the same job, and none has evidence for its own number. A workable template:
- Within 48 hours, and sooner if you can, sort every miss with one of the four reasons.
- Pick at most 8 rows using the three tests above, set to level 1.
- Stop at about 90 minutes. What you have not finished is probably not worth logging.
- Attempt the previous mock's rows before you open the next mock. They are due anyway.
How many mocks to take is covered in the preparation guide, and creators disagree about it. Here, keep a weekly full mock through October, with a sectional in between if one section lags on the sheet. Once you know your session time, run mocks at that clock time.
The 61 days in three phases
| Phase | Dates | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Build | Tue 29 Sep to Sun 18 Oct (20 days) | Fill the sheet from what you already have. Sources are open. First revisits start |
| Cycle | Mon 19 Oct to Sun 8 Nov (21 days) | Sources closed. New chapters allowed until 8 November. Most rows sit at levels 2 and 3 |
| Sharpen | Mon 9 Nov to Sun 29 Nov (21 days, ending on the exam) | No new chapters. Admit cards open on 4 November, so read yours then. Last mock on 22 November, final pass after it |
The first three days of Build go to the sheet itself. Copy your wrong-question notebook and bookmarked questions into rows, capping the first fill at about 60. The rest arrives as mocks and sectionals produce it.
A full-day plan
This is for a day when studying is the day. It has five 40-minute blocks, each on one section with no switching, to match the exam. Inside a block, mix topics.
| Block | Length | What |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Due list | 40 min | Every row due today, attempted before anything is opened |
| 2 QA | 40 min | A mixed-topic set from your main source |
| Break | 20 min | Away from the screen |
| 3 DILR | 40 min | Two or three sets, choosing which to attempt in the first two minutes |
| 4 VARC | 40 min | RCs, with the reason each wrong option is wrong, and verbal ability questions |
| Meal | 60 min | Eat, walk, no screens |
| 5 Repair | 40 min | The section with the most Miss rows, or a sectional |
| Log | 20 min | Update every row you touched, and check tomorrow's due count |
Mock day replaces blocks 2 to 4 with the mock, and the analysis falls on the next morning. When the due list is empty, block 1 becomes a second repair block.
A 1 to 2 hour evening plan
This is for people who study after work or college. Cap the due list at 8 items on a one-hour evening and 12 on a two-hour one.
| Evening | About one hour | About two hours |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 10 min due list, 40 min mock analysis, 10 min log | Analysis plus 40 min QA |
| Tuesday to Thursday | 10 min due list, 40 min block (QA, DILR, VARC in turn), 10 min log | Add 40 min repair |
| Friday | 10 min due list, 40 min weakest section, 10 min log | Add overflow rows |
| Saturday | About 3 hours: a sectional, or two blocks on the weakest section, and the log | Same |
| Sunday | Full mock at your slot's clock time | Same |
Start the first fill with about 30 rows, not 60, and log at most 5 rows per mock on one-hour evenings so that Monday's analysis fits. The ladder rules stay the same. Overflow rolls forward, and the last-week pass is where a slower plan catches up.
The last week and the day before
| Day | What |
|---|---|
| Sun 22 Nov | Last full mock, at your slot's clock time |
| Mon 23 Nov | Mock analysis, 90 minutes at most, up to 8 rows. Due list |
| Tue 24 Nov | Final pass, QA: every active QA row, in one 40-minute block. Due list |
| Wed 25 Nov | Final pass, DILR, one 40-minute block. Due list |
| Thu 26 Nov | Final pass, VARC, one 40-minute block, then the Slow rows |
| Fri 27 Nov | Light day. Due list only, 15 items at most. Travel and logistics settled |
| Sat 28 Nov | One look at the rows you missed last time, done by afternoon. Nothing new, no mock |
| Sun 29 Nov | Exam day |
The day before follows what iQuanta says in its 23 September video: revise your own sheets and error log, start nothing new, take no mock. It is one coach's practice and also our template choice.
Keeping the material findable
This page is published by Rehearsal, an app for keeping your own material and asking questions of it.
Everything above works with a notebook and a pen, or a spreadsheet. The rules are the same on paper, so use whichever you will open every day.
If your questions and sets live in chats and folders, a spreadsheet link may not be enough. In Rehearsal you can forward selected links, PDFs and screenshots from WhatsApp or Telegram, and it keeps them with your own notes. It does not sync whole chats, so you choose what goes in. The free plan includes recording and transcription. The Unlimited plan adds Ask across saved material and a connector that lets ChatGPT or Claude search what you saved. Whether any of it helps is something your own Result column will show.
Related reading: the best app to organise CAT notes, the CAT error log you will reread, mock score swings and comparison, what to keep from WhatsApp and Telegram PDFs, and the CAT interview timeline for after the exam.
Common questions
What should I do today for CAT?
Open the sheet, filter for rows due today or earlier, and attempt each without looking. Then do the section block for the day and log the results. If nothing is due, go to the section with the most Miss rows.
How do I revise for CAT in the last month?
Use the same ladder, shortened. Rows logged after 8 November get a check after 2 days and a place in the final pass from 24 to 26 November. There are no new chapters from 9 November and no full mock after 22 November.
Is 61 days enough?
No page can say. Nobody can promise a percentile from a schedule, and this one has not been tested on CAT candidates. The sheet shows you each day what you have and have not been able to do clean.
How many times should I revise a topic?
The research gives no number for CAT. In this ladder a row that goes Clean every time is tried four times, rows you miss come back sooner, and rows you always get right leave the list.
Does this work on paper, or with a job?
Yes to both. A notebook with the same columns, a calendar and a pen is enough, and the evening plan is built for people who work. If worry about scores is affecting your sleep, eating or daily life, please speak to a qualified professional.