BBA student starting preparation in the first year

Well, beta.. first of all, it’s a great thing that you have decided to start your preparation from the first year itself. If every student in our country had this clarity, so many would be able to save so much of their time and do things without inviting excessive pressure. Now, how should you prepare for CAT? That’s simple - first understand what CAT is trying to test and then, develop all those qualities one by one. So, our question now becomes - what does CAT try to test in their exam and why? CAT is test of only three things: 1. Logic 2. Reading Habits 3. Comfort with Numbers The underlying unity behind all three sections of CAT (VARC, LRDI and QA) is logic. You combine deep logic with great English and you get VARC. Combine deep logic with great amount of data, you get LRDI. And you combine deep logic and numbers and you get QA; that’s why almost 70% questions in CAT’s QA every year can actually be solved without any mathematical concept or formula. Because at a fundamental level, CAT does not want you to be a mathematician, it wants you to be logical while being comfortable with numbers, so that when you become a manager, you are able to take numbers driven decisions. Similar reasoning for VARC as well. Senior Leaders in corporate have to read many many reports, have to keep tab on their industry, internal documents, client requirements and whatnot. Somebody who does not like to read will make for a very limited type of manager and will not be able to become a leader. So, you are not supposed to prepare for VARC, LRDI and QA - you are supposed to master logic, develop love of numbers and and become a good reader. You do this and you are ready for CAT. How should you do this?  1.⁠ ⁠Begin with logic first - pickup a game of logic - chess or something else. And start playing it. And pickup one more thing on the side - either reading or numbers. In the first year, master just these two things.  2.⁠ ⁠Then, pick up the third thing next year while moving to more difficult things in the first two. Target getting into your college chess team, start solving puzzles and start solving maths questions or read difficult books.  3.⁠ ⁠It’s in the final year that you start directly practicing CAT relevant questions. But if you have worked well on your fundamentals by then, that would be a formality. I have see so many students clearing CAT in just 2 months - only because their fundamentals (logic, reading, numbers) were already sorted. Coming to your second question - Ideally the roadmap should be personal to you, beta ji.. Ideally it should be customized for YOU based on your individual weaknesses and strengths, likes and dislikes etc.. but since I don’t know you personally, I will give you a generic roadmap. Year 1 (first 6 months ideally) - Start playing chess and start reading books. There is a list of 15 books on my YouTube channel, you can follow that list. At the same time, read a few articles everyday on CATLab.in or some other website if you already follow something. In the beginning, you can follow some blogs as well. Reading is important in the beginning - the source matters only after 6 months. Year 2 (First Half) - Start solving puzzles alongside chess (you can use Puzzles & Teasers by George J Summers). Read more advanced books (they are in the list) and read articles from good sources. Now, start number crunching as well. Practice only calculations - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. No need to learn any Vedic maths or something else, plain simple oral calculation practice is enough. People who are good with numbers, naturally pickup maths. If you are not good with numbers, you will have to work 3X to become good at Maths. Year 2 (Second Half) - Start solving Easy & Medium LRDI sets alongside chess (CATLab has enough free content, you can use that). Reading remains as it is. By this time, you should have exhausted the list of books and should move to your own list. You will know what to read and what not - enjoy freely. For maths, now start practicing Some topic of Number Systems (HCF/LCM and Surds & Indices) and Arithmetic (all). Year 3 - Full-fledged CAT preparation. You can join a coaching if you want or not. But this year is for difficult LRDI sets, RC and VA questions + reading, and Algebra & Geometry in QA along with multiple revisions of Arithmetic.