24 questions, 40 minutes, RC-dominated. The section that rewards reading, not technique.
VARC is 24 questions in 40 minutes, and reading comprehension makes up the clear majority of them — typically around two-thirds, with the rest being parajumbles, para-summary, para-completion and odd-sentence-out. The section rewards reading speed with retention, not vocabulary. Candidates who improve here almost always do it by reading more, not by learning more techniques.
Quant has methods you can learn and apply. VARC largely does not. The questions test whether you understood a dense passage under time pressure, and no strategy substitutes for being able to read that kind of prose comfortably. This is why VARC improves slowly and steadily rather than in jumps — and why leaving it until the last month rarely works.
Read dense non-fiction daily, in the registers CAT draws from: long-form journalism, philosophy, economics, sociology, science writing, arts criticism. The point is not enjoyment — it is building tolerance for unfamiliar, argument-heavy prose so that exam passages stop feeling alien.
Read the passage first, properly, before looking at questions. Skimming and hunting for keywords works on easy passages and fails badly on the hard ones that decide your percentile. Aim to finish with a clear grasp of the author's position and the structure of the argument — most RC questions test exactly that, not recall of details.
Inference questions are where marks leak. The correct answer is what necessarily follows from the passage, not what is plausibly true about the world. Options that are reasonable but unsupported are the standard trap.
Find the opening sentence and linked pairs first. Chronology and pronoun references do most of the work.
Reject options that add information, narrow the scope, or overstate. The summary must cover the whole paragraph.
Build the coherent paragraph first; whatever will not fit is the answer.
Follow the direction of the argument. The ending must continue the logic, not introduce a new one.
Not every passage is worth the same time. Some are dense but fair; others are deliberately punishing. Deciding within the first thirty seconds whether a passage suits you — and being willing to leave one entirely — protects the marks available in the rest of the section.
VARC moves in weeks, not days. If you are three months out, daily reading from now is worth more than any amount of last-month drilling. If you are closer than that, focus on accuracy and selection rather than trying to raise raw reading speed, which will not shift meaningfully in the time available.
Section weighting and timing sit inside the CAT 2026 exam pattern, and how this fits the wider schedule is in the full CAT 2026 preparation plan.
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