Common Admission Test (CAT) is conducted by IIMs every year. Like GMAT, CAT also assesses the potential of applicants for courses in business studies at the graduate level.

The skills required to do well in both the examinations are quite similar. If you have already prepared/appeared for CAT, a major portion of your CAT preparation is relevant for GMAT. With a bit of additional preparation on the few areas of divergence, you should be able to do well in GMAT.

Difference Between CAT & GMAT Writing skills are not tested in the CAT. The GMAT has an Analytical Writing Ability (AWA).

Critical Reasoning (CR)has not been a significant area in the CAT in recent years. In the GMAT, about 30% of questions in the Verbal Ability section are of Critical Reasoning.

Sentence Correction questions that come in the GMAT are of slightly different flavor when compared to those in the CAT. In GMAT, the emphasis is not only on the functional aspects of grammar rules, but also on contextual meaning and usage. There are specific error types that are looked at in the GMAT and familiarity with those types will be very handy.

Reading Comprehension passages in the CAT and the GMAT are quite similar.

The quantitative section in the GMAT has two question types: Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency. The problem solving questions in GMAT are relatively easy.

Students typically struggle with data sufficiency in GMAT as this a new question type for most. Weightage for Data Sufficiency in GMAT is very high (almost 50% of the quant section), whereas the CAT presented not more than 4 questions on Data Sufficiency in recent years.

The GMAT is an adaptive test while the CAT is just a linear computer based test. In an adaptive test like the GMAT, you must answer every question that comes on the screen to get to the next question. Unlike in the CAT, in the GMAT, you will not be allowed to skip a question or to go back to an already submitted question. This makes time management in GMAT quite tricky and you need to a test taking strategy that suits you.