What Is the CAT Exam?
By koboshi · Co-founder
CAT is the computer-based entrance exam for MBA and PGP programs at the Indian Institutes of Management. One exam, three sections, 120 minutes, and since 2015 a calculator built into the test window that you will be clicking on exam day. Here is what the exam actually looks like.
Who sits the CAT and why
CAT, the Common Admission Test, is the entrance exam for MBA and PGP programs at the Indian Institutes of Management, with a different IIM running it each year. The same score feeds shortlists at all the IIMs at once, and many other business schools accept it as well. Scoring is by percentile rather than raw marks, so your result is where you land against everyone else who sat the same test. The practical upshot: you are not chasing a fixed number, you are trying to be faster and more accurate than the candidate next to you.
Three sections, three clocks
The test runs 120 minutes and splits into three sections, each on its own 40-minute clock: Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning, and Quantitative Aptitude. Finish one section early and the leftover time does not carry over. The clock ends the section whether you are ready or not, and the structure decides how you budget the one resource that actually matters on the day.
Where the arithmetic lives
Quantitative Aptitude and Data Interpretation are heavy on the kind of calculation most people stopped doing by hand years ago: long divisions, large multiplications, chained percentage work. None of it is hard on its own. The difficulty is doing it fast while the section clock runs and the next question is already on screen. The exam does not expect you to compute like a machine. It expects you to be fast with the tools you have, and the main one is a small calculator floating inside the test window.
The calculator inside the exam window
You cannot carry a calculator into the hall, and phones or other electronic devices are barred too. The cat on screen calculator is the only machine you get, opened from a button in the exam interface. CAT introduced it in 2015 as a scientific model, then replaced it in 2016 with the basic version still in use today.
It is a simple machine, modeled on the Windows standard calculator: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square root, reciprocal, and percent, plus five memory keys (MC, MR, MS, M+, M-). There are no logarithms, no trigonometry, no powers. Multi-step calculations have to be broken into basic operations, and the memory keys exist to carry an intermediate result across the gap.
Two details only become obvious in the exam. Each entry accepts at most 8 digits, so a long number silently stops mid-typing. And the window floats over the question area, dragged by its title bar and clicked with the mouse, because there is no keyboard input on exam day. The exam calculator FAQ covers the common questions.
Why the calculator changes how you practice
Clicking keys is slower than typing, which makes the layout itself a skill. Candidates who already know where each key sits finish routine arithmetic in seconds; everyone else loses that time on every question. The habits you build with a CAT calculator simulator carry straight into the test window, because a faithful copy matches the exam machine key for key: same layout, same functions, same 8-digit limit, even the same quirks.
If you want the reasoning spelled out, read why you need a CAT calculator for exam practice. Otherwise the cat exam calculator here is free and needs no sign-up: open it and run one memory-key sequence.