Walmart engineer who scored 95 percentile in CAT after a week's study shares tips ahead of CAT 2026

The Common Admission Test (CAT) 2026 will be held on November 29. With few days left, candidates are putting the finishing touches to their preparation. A software engineer at Walmart has shared his preparation and exam-day experience, along with some practical advice for those preparing in the final stretch. He scored 95 percentile in the Common Admission Test last year after only a few days of study.

The advice comes from Aryan Akhouri, who completed a BTech in electrical and electronics engineering from BIT Mesra and now works as Software Engineer 3 at Walmart Global Tech. According to him, his preparation was very short, about 6 to 7 days, during which he mostly solved sample sets.

Akhouri said his engineering background made the quantitative ability section easy for him. He stressed that the right strategy and a calm mind are equally important.

Read the questions carefully in VARC. According to Akhouri, the Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC) section taught him the biggest lesson. His quant section went well and LRDI went better than expected, but the language of the VARC questions was convoluted and gave him considerable trouble. He said that even when he had the right answer, it was very hard to work out the exact meaning of the options.

He asked candidates to be particularly wary of questions asked in the negative. For example: if the given condition does not apply, which of the options below is not correct? Akhouri said candidates often get confused about whether they are to pick the correct or the incorrect option. He advises working very carefully while solving VARC, reading the question and options calmly, understanding exactly what is being asked, and not rushing through questions whose language is very complex.

Use your strength in quant. On quantitative ability, Akhouri said the section is "quite easy" for candidates with a maths background, as they are usually already familiar with the pattern. He particularly stressed speed and choosing the right questions.

He advises candidates to identify, as early as possible, their strongest topics in quant. For instance, if a candidate is good at geometry, he or she should master it completely, since such questions can often be solved very quickly. He also said that if a candidate has great confidence in algebra, choosing that topic would not be wrong either.

Do not fall into the trap of the wrong set in LRDI. Akhouri said the biggest challenge on exam day came in the Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (LRDI) section. He solved one set very quickly, but then picked a set that was very difficult, and most of his time was wasted on it.