There’s a peculiar kind of competitor that every CAT aspirant knows, one that doesn’t exist in real life. You’ve never met them, but they live rent-free in your head. They’re faster than you in DILR, smarter in Quant, calmer in mocks, and always one step ahead. You tell yourself, “Someone out there is studying right now,” and somehow, that someone becomes your invisible rival.

It’s an exhausting way to prepare, chasing a phantom benchmark that only gets higher the closer you get. Let’s kill that unknown competitor through this blog.

The Phantom of Perfection

The imaginary topper in your head isn’t real. A few topper interviews, a friend’s percentile screenshot, a stranger’s post on Telegram stitched together into a flawless version of what you think CAT success looks like.

The problem? You start measuring your every move against that perfection. You forget that the topper you’re chasing isn’t human. The imaginary topper is just in your head. And yet, you treat them as the standard. That’s how insecurity dresses up as “motivation.”

When Comparison Becomes Paralysis

At first, this invisible competition feels like fuel. You tell yourself it’s healthy pressure. But slowly, it morphs into guilt, the kind that makes you feel unproductive even after a 6-hour study session. Because no matter what you do, someone out there must be doing more.

This kind of comparison doesn’t sharpen focus; it drains it. You start taking more mocks, switching prep strategies too fast, and chasing trends in what toppers did instead of understanding what you need. Before you know it, you’re no longer preparing for the CAT; you’re performing for an audience that doesn’t exist.

Your Only Benchmark Is Yesterday

Here’s a thought that can change your prep entirely: your only real competition is yesterday’s version of you. That’s it. The moment you start tracking your own curve and not someone else’s percentile, everything shifts. You will begin to notice improvement not in rank, but in rhythm. Maybe your accuracy went from 70% to 75%. Maybe you handled an LRDI set calmly that would’ve broken you a month ago. That’s growth. The best students don’t obsess over who’s ahead; they obsess over whether they’re improving.

Silencing the Imaginary Room

Every CAT aspirant carries an invisible “room” in their head full of imagined toppers studying harder, understanding faster, and scoring better. But that mental crowd is noise. And your brain can’t focus in noise.

The trick is to shrink that room until it’s just you and your prep. When you sit to study, don’t picture others. Picture the question in front of you. The moment you start thinking, “They’re better than me,” counter it with, “Maybe, but I’m better than I was.” That’s the only truth that matters.

The Quiet Kind of Confidence

There’s a quiet confidence that comes from working in your own lane, no screenshots, no percentile wars, no drama. Just deliberate, disciplined effort. The kind that doesn’t need validation because the results speak for themselves later.

And here’s the irony: the students who eventually become toppers are rarely the ones obsessed with toppers. They’re the ones too busy fixing their weak RCs or refining their DILR timing to bother imagining who’s “ahead.”

The Real Game

CAT isn’t a race against others; it’s a negotiation with yourself between what you know and what you can recall, between distraction and focus. So stop chasing someone else’s mock score and start noticing your own quiet progress. 

Remember that the real growth in CAT is often invisible at first, but unmistakable in the end.