Here are some steps offered by the CAT experts and toppers, these five steps tell you the strategy to be followed from the first day of your preparation to the day before the test, the five steps are as follows:

1. Initiate your CAT 2011 preparation: Initiating the CAT 2011 preparation is the foremost step that you have to take, rest will fall into place. The first step is to familiarize yourself with all the sections of CAT exam. These sections are Quantitative Ability, Verbal Ability and Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning.  Define your overall task in terms of number of questions you want to solve (and learn from) in each area. Then divide your time available into the number of weeks you have. That will give you the amount of work you would need to do in each section on a weekly basis.

2. Analyze your strengths and weaknesses: It’s June last week and if you have started your basic preparation, then you must be having the idea of all the section, the topics and areas they cover. By this, you will get the idea which is your area of strength and that of weakness. When you find out your area of weakness, you should make proper plan for improving the area, this can happen if you analyze your weakness. You have to see if it is the lack of conceptual clarity or it is just a matter of lack of practice. If it is the former, then you need to spend more time on studying the basics. But if it is the later, more practice and analyzing the mistakes is the only solution. Focus on your error sources, balancing your work in each section and have a clear strategy of the level of excellence you target in each area of each section.

3. Strengthen your weakness and improve your strengths: Once you analyze your areas of strengths and weaknesses, you will need to work on making your weak areas strong as well as work on making your strong areas stronger. Reading Newspapers and magazines like The Times of India, The Hindu, Economic Times, Business Standard etc. on a regular basis is essential. In case it is difficult to understand some terms used in the articles, a standard English dictionary like the Oxford English Dictionary can be used. Meaning of financial terms can be checked at various online financial glossaries. This exercise will help you to understand different topics and increase your hold over English, general knowledge and various other topics. If you believe that your fundamentals are weak and you lack motivation to sustain your preparations, you can enroll for regular MBA prep classes.

4. Make a time table and abide by it: It is necessary to make a proper time table and abide by it if you want to take your CAT 2011 preparation in the right direction. At this moment, if you have already started your preparation, you have to define your level of preparation at each section and then make the time table. In Quantitative Ability if you are weak in all areas, you would need to solve and learn from around 5000 questions in order to match your skills with the best. Over a 150 day period this means 30 to 35 questions per day.

5. Take regular mock tests: When you get a grip over the basic syllabus of the CAT exam, you should start taking regular mock tests to know your preparation status.  After almost three months of preparation, you should start taking regular mock tests and analyzing them. It is also necessary to act according to the analysis; otherwise there will be no use of taking the mock tests.
Now that it will be the third year of CAT changing its format to computer based, it is suggested that you take all your mock tests in the computer based format. Arun Sharma author of best selling CAT preparation books, mentor and IIM Bangalore alumnus advises, “There are many portals which offer you mock tests for CAT along with proper scores and analysis. You can also enroll into test series to get regular practice. But before moving into full length mock tests, take sectional mock tests so that you have a clear analysis about where you are heading towards.,”

Amit Tandon, 99.49 percentiler in CAT 2009 and an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad has devised a time table for the CAT aspirants:
June - Basics of all the sections namely Quantitative Ability, Verbal Ability and DI & LR (which you should be complete by now); Higher level Problems of all the sections
July, August and September - Take two mock CATs per week and analyze them thoroughly. If need arises go back to the basics of the topics.
October - Take three mock CAT per week and revise the previous mock papers.
November - Just relax and take one mock CAT per week so as to maintain the momentum till the D-day!