What the Arun Sharma Quantitative Aptitude Pdf Reddit Thread Is Actually About
The book How to Prepare for Quantitative Aptitude for the CAT by Arun Sharma is the standard reference for Indian MBA entrance exam prep. The PDF circulates on Reddit primarily through threads in r/CAT and r/mba, where students trade scanned copies and discuss which chapters to prioritize. The community has been around since roughly 2016, and the discussion pattern never really changes: someone posts a link, it gets taken down for copyright, someone reposts it a week later, and a few people complain about blurry pages while others ask whether the 2021 edition is worth buying over the older ones. Here is how to actually use the material without wasting three months on content you do not need.
Getting the Arun Sharma Quantitative Aptitude Pdf Reddit Link
The PDF typically surfaces in the r/CAT megathread during the January to April prep window. Search the subreddit for "Arun Sharma PDF" and sort by new. The most reliable links are posted by users who have OCR-processed their own copies rather than uploading the publisher's original file, which often has poor resolution on diagrams. A working link I bookmarked last cycle was hosted on Google Drive with public viewing permissions, shared through a comment that had been upvoted past twenty. If a link is dead, look for the most recent thread from the same month — the files rotate because Reddit takes down DMCA links within 48 hours. If you cannot find a clean copy, the 7th edition published by Pearson is the one most people reference. Earlier editions cover the same core concepts, but the question difficulty has shifted slightly toward data interpretation in the newer prints.
How the Book Is Structured and What That Means for Your Study Plan
Each major topic gets its own chapter: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, number theory, modern math. Within each chapter there are three levels of exercises. Level 1 is basic. Level 2 matches CAT difficulty. Level 3 goes beyond, into what the book calls XAT-level problems. Most students blow their time on Level 3 and neglect Level 2, which is backwards. I worked through this book with a group in 2019 and made the classic mistake of racing through the first two chapters because the arithmetic section looked familiar. By the time we hit permutations and combinations in Chapter 9, everyone in the group had uneven foundations and we were stuck redoing basic probability from scratch. The workaround was simple: take the diagnostic test at the front of the book seriously before starting anything else. It tells you exactly which chapters are waste of time for your current level. I skipped four chapters entirely based on the diagnostic and saved probably sixty hours of study.
Get the Full Details
Counter-Intuitive Things About This Material That Nobody Talks About
First, the shortcuts and tricks section near the end of each chapter is not worth reading cover to cover. These are mostly Vedic math variants that work for specific question types and create more confusion than they resolve during a timed exam. I tested this empirically — during a mock CAT, I spent forty-five seconds trying to apply a digit-sum trick on a remainder problem when the direct division method would have taken twelve seconds. The tricks work when you recognize the pattern instantly, but recognition takes practice that the shortcuts bypass, so you never actually build the skill. Second, the modern math chapter (set theory, functions, sequences) is undervalued. CAT has been asking more questions from this area since 2020. The book covers it, but students skip it because it feels abstract. I went through three complete mock tests before opening that chapter and realized I was losing eight to ten marks per paper in areas I could have secured in a single weekend of focused practice.
Specific Problem I Faced and How I Worked Around It
While using an older edition PDF, I encountered a printing error in the quadratic equations section where the solutions for roughly fifteen problems were swapped between odd and even numbered questions. This is not uncommon with pirated or scanned copies. The exact issue was that the answer key at the back did not match the problem numbers in the main text for Exercise 3.2. I realized this when my calculated answers never aligned with the provided solutions, which took me about two days of frustration. The workaround was straightforward: cross-reference with the Pearson official solution manual available on the publisher's website using the ISBN, or simply verify each answer by plugging it back into the original equation. The verification method takes longer but is more reliable than trusting any solution key from an unofficial source. The Arun Sharma book assumes you already understand basic mathematical notation and can manipulate algebraic expressions without thinking. If you scored below sixty percent in high school mathematics, this book will feel impenetrable and you will lose motivation. In that case, start with R.S. Aggarwal's quantitative aptitude or spend a month rebuilding fundamentals from scratch before touching this material. The book is not a beginner text. It is a preparation manual for people who already know the basics and need structured practice for a competitive exam. Another hard limit: if your target score is above the 95th percentile, this book alone is insufficient. You will need to supplement it with previous years' CAT papers and additional coaching material. The book gives you coverage, not mastery at the highest level.
Practical Workflow I Recommend
Take the diagnostic test. Identify weak chapters. Solve Level 1 and Level 2 questions in those chapters. Move on. Do not solve every single problem — the book contains far more questions than any student can reasonably attempt. A reasonable target is approximately eighty percent of Level 1 and sixty percent of Level 2 per chapter. Then move to the next topic. After completing the entire book once, spend the remaining three months doing full-length mocks and reviewing only the topics you get wrong repeatedly. The PDF itself is fine as a free resource. Just be aware that font rendering can be inconsistent, especially in the geometry chapters where diagrams matter. If a diagram is unreadable, pause and redraw it on paper. That act of redrawing is where the actual learning happens, regardless of whether you are using a PDF or a physical copy.
