CAT 2026 RC Practice by Subject: 127 Topics to Read

Look at the top of the essays page on Aeon and you will find five topic channels: Philosophy, Science, Psychology, Society and Culture. It is a sensible map for a magazine. For a CAT aspirant it is too small. A real VARC section might hand you a passage on stone money, a court judgment, a film, a species of whale or a dispute over a calendar, and it will hand them to you in the same forty minutes.

GRADFLIX is built around a larger map. This post explains why, and how to use it. It builds on our guides to where CAT RC passages come from and reading RCs from unfamiliar subjects.

The problem with reading what you like

Most aspirants who read widely read within a comfort zone. A person who loves history reads history. A person from a science background reads science. The habit builds fluency in one area and leaves a flinch response for the rest. On exam day the flinch shows up as a re read, a lost minute or a skipped passage.

Breadth is a trainable skill. It is not a matter of knowing more. It is a matter of being less alarmed by not knowing, and of recognising the same argument structures in different clothes.

What a bigger map gives you

• Fewer flinches. A passage on a court judgment stops being strange after you have read fifteen essays on law.
• Transferable structures. A claim that a famous story is a myth, a result that fails to repeat, or an intervention that backfires appears in every field. Seeing it in many fields teaches you to spot it quickly.
• Vocabulary in context. Each field has its own words, and reading them in sentences teaches meaning better than any list.
• Better guesses on tone. Authors in law, art and science sound different. Wide reading teaches the registers.

The GRADFLIX map

GRADFLIX organises its essays into eleven categories, each with several subcategories, for 127 subjects in all.

• Philosophy runs from epistemology and ethics to bioethics, death and the philosophy of language.
• Psychology runs from cognitive and social psychology to sleep, love, addiction and wellbeing.
• Arts and Literature covers fiction, poetry, cinema, music, architecture, dance and craft.
• Culture and Society covers anthropology, language, religion, sport, food, travel and subcultures.
• History and Civilization covers ancient and modern history, empire and the history of ideas.
• Politics and Governance covers law, democracy, geopolitics, public policy and war and peace.
• Economics and Business covers markets, behaviour, labour, development and economic history.
• Science covers physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, genetics, public health and more.
• Technology and Future covers AI, digital life, automation and the history of technology.
• Nature and Environment covers ecology, climate, animals, oceans and energy.
• Education and Knowledge covers critical thinking, learning, academia and reading and writing.

A fair note on state. The library is growing, with new essays added every day, so some shelves are deeper than others. The map is wide on purpose, and the shelves fill as we publish.

How to use the map

1. Find your weakest shelf. Be honest. If law passages make you nervous, start there.
2. Read one essay a day, and keep it outside your comfort zone. Make the first essay of the week a subject you avoid.
3. Answer the four questions without looking at the explanations, then compare. The explanations show how each wrong option fails.
4. Rotate. Over a week, aim for seven different categories, one per day.
5. Keep a one line note per essay on its argument structure, such as myth busting, backfired intervention or rule and exception. The structures repeat.

What breadth cannot do

Breadth does not replace practice on the exam's own question types. Reading a wide range of essays will make you calmer and faster, but you still need to learn how CAT builds its options, and you still need full length VARC practice. Treat wide reading as the base layer and mocks as the test of it. The plan in our last six weeks guide shows how the two fit together.

Breadth also does not mean skimming. One essay read carefully, with its questions answered and its explanations studied, is worth more than five read quickly. The point of the wide map is to ensure that the careful reading happens across many fields.

A seven day starter week

• Monday: Politics and Governance, law and justice.
• Tuesday: Psychology, a study and its doubt.
• Wednesday: Science, a mechanism.
• Thursday: Arts and Literature, an interpretation.
• Friday: Economics and Business, an incentive.
• Saturday: History, a myth tested.
• Sunday: Nature or Technology, a system and a surprise.

Pair the week with the exam specific guides, such as our last six weeks VARC plan, so breadth sits inside a plan and not beside one.

Common objections

Some aspirants ask whether breadth is a luxury and depth the real need. The two work together. Depth in how you read an argument comes from many repeated attempts, and breadth supplies the variety that makes each attempt a real test. Reading ten essays on the same subject teaches you that subject. Reading ten essays on ten subjects teaches you to read.

Others ask what happens if they forget what they read. That is fine. The aim is not retention of facts. It is the fluency that comes from meeting unfamiliar material repeatedly and finding that you can handle it.

How to measure progress

• Track your accuracy per category for four weeks. A shelf with low accuracy is your weak area.
• Track the time per essay. Falling time with steady accuracy is the clearest sign of improved reading.
• Track your flinch. Note how often you feel the urge to re read the first paragraph. It should fall as breadth increases.

A wide map is only useful if you use it. Pick one shelf you have avoided and open its latest essay today.