In this guide
Three months is a common preparation window for AFCAT. The notification usually appears a few months before the exam, and many candidates start in earnest only then. Twelve weeks is enough if the order is right: foundations first, speed second, full mocks last, with English and general awareness running quietly underneath all of it.
The plan below assumes about three hours a day, six days a week, with the seventh day for a mock or revision. Adjust the hours to your life, but keep the order. If you are working or in final year, read our guide to preparing with a job or college alongside this one.
The hour budget
Three hours a day for six days is 18 hours a week, or 216 hours over twelve weeks, plus the mock days. That sounds like a lot until you divide it among four sections. Here is how the plan spends it.
| Block | Daily time | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Numerical Ability | 45 minutes | Improves fast with daily practice; needs formulas and speed |
| Reasoning and Military Aptitude | 45 minutes | Figure and spatial questions need repetition to become quick |
| English | 45 minutes | Vocabulary and reading improve only with daily contact |
| General Awareness | 45 minutes | Broad and slow; daily news plus one static subject |
Split each block into about 25 minutes of learning and 20 minutes of timed questions. Learning without timing builds knowledge but not the speed the paper needs.
Phase 1: Foundations (weeks 1–4)
Aim: understand each topic properly. Accuracy before speed.
Take one full mock on day one, before you study anything. The score does not matter. It shows you where you stand and what the paper feels like.
| Week | Numerical | Reasoning | English | GA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Number system, simplification, decimals and fractions | Analogy, classification, series | Tenses, subject-verb agreement; start a word notebook (15 words a day) | Polity basics; start daily news |
| 2 | Percentage | Coding-decoding | Articles, prepositions, error detection | Polity; IAF ranks, commands and history |
| 3 | Ratio and proportion, averages | Blood relations, directions | Synonyms, antonyms, one-word substitution | Modern India and the freedom struggle |
| 4 | Profit and loss; simple and compound interest | Seating arrangement, syllogisms | One comprehension passage daily | Ancient and medieval history; art and culture |
End of week 4: take your second full mock and compare it with day one.
Phase 2: Practice and speed (weeks 5–8)
Aim: cover the rest of the syllabus and start timing everything.
| Week | Numerical | Reasoning | English | GA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Time and work | Figure series, figure analogy and classification | Cloze tests | Indian physical geography |
| 6 | Time and distance, trains, boats and streams | Mirror and water images, paper folding and cutting | Idioms and phrases | World geography; environment and ecology |
| 7 | Mixtures and alligation, ages, HCF and LCM | Embedded figures, dot situation, figure completion | Sentence rearrangement and transformation | Physics and chemistry basics |
| 8 | Mensuration, heights and distances, probability, statistics, exponents | Cubes, dice and spatial rotation | Homonyms, word analogies | Biology; science and technology; IAF aircraft, missiles and exercises |
Probability, statistics, mensuration and heights and distances are in the official syllabus. Do not skip week 8's maths because older booklists leave these topics out.
Daily target in this phase: 20 timed questions in each of Numerical and Reasoning, one English set, and GA revision. Take a full mock at the end of weeks 6 and 8.
Phase 3: Mocks and revision (weeks 9–12)
Aim: turn knowledge into marks.
| Week | Full mocks | Other work |
|---|---|---|
| 9 | 2 | Revise percentage, ratio and averages; economy basics; current affairs for the first half of the year |
| 10 | 2 | Weakest topics from the mock analysis; current affairs for the second half; sports and awards |
| 11 | 3 | Error log revision; defence notes; vocabulary notebook |
| 12 | 2, early in the week | Light revision of formulas and notes; admit card and documents; rest before the exam |
With the diagnostic mock and the three in phases 1 and 2, that makes thirteen full mocks over the three months. Analyse every one before you take the next; our guide to mock tests and analysis explains how. In phase 3, cut new learning to almost nothing. You will gain more from fixing repeat errors than from one more chapter.
Progress checks
Use these at the end of each phase. If you miss a check, repeat the weakest week's work before moving on, and do not add new topics.
| End of week | Check |
|---|---|
| 4 | Can you solve a basic percentage, ratio or average question in under a minute? Do you have about 350 words in your notebook (15 a day, six days a week)? |
| 8 | Is your accuracy in timed sectional sets 80% or more? Have you touched every syllabus topic at least once? |
| 12 | Are your last three mock scores stable, and is your accuracy on attempted questions 85% or more? |
Worked example. Suppose an aspirant's week 8 sectional sets show Numerical 17 of 20, Reasoning 15 of 20, English 12 of 20 and GA 11 of 20. The accuracies are 85%, 75%, 60% and 55%. English and GA are below the check, so for weeks 9 and 10 the aspirant should move 15 minutes a day from Numerical to English and GA until they rise, and keep the mocks going.
Fitness and the AFSB start now
If you clear AFCAT, the AFSB follows within weeks, and there will not be enough time to build fitness then. The notification advises that by the time you report, you should be able to run 1.6 km in 10 minutes and do 10 push-ups and 3 chin-ups.
- Run or train three to four mornings a week, from week 1.
- Test the 1.6 km run once a fortnight and log the time.
- Practise push-ups and chin-ups on alternate days; chin-ups take longest to build.
Also start small AFSB habits: read about the IAF's role and history for ten minutes a day, and write a paragraph about yourself once a week. Our physical fitness guide has a full routine.
Rules for weeks that go wrong
- Missed a day? Do not double the next day. Continue the plan and drop the lowest-value task that week, usually re-reading notes you already know.
- A topic running late? Cut depth, not coverage. Finish the basic questions on every topic before going deep into one.
- Sick or away for a week? Skip that week's new topics in GA first. GA can be covered in revision; maths and reasoning skills cannot.
- Review every Sunday. Fifteen minutes to check what you finished and adjust next week stops small slips from becoming big ones.
Your start-this-week checklist
- Download the notification and confirm your eligibility and branch.
- Take the diagnostic mock and note your score by section.
- Write the 12-week table into your notebook and pin it where you study.
- Start the word notebook and the daily news habit.
- Do your first 1.6 km timed run and write down the time.
A note on dates and numbers. Exam patterns, vacancies and schedules change from year to year. Always confirm the current details in the latest notification on the Indian Air Force website .
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