1)tips for working professional to prepare for cat? what study material should be used?

You can devote daily 2hours on weekdays and 9hours on weekends , this stretches your preparation time for 6months. You would require to give atleast 20 mock exams befor final CAT exam. Moreover , keep revision of your frequently committed mistakes and negative scored questions to eliminate them. You can use books by Arun Sharma for quantitative aptitude and lOgical Reasoning, Nishit sinha for Data Interpretation, CaTking notes for Verbal ability. For Onljne mock exams go with Oliveboard, Testfunda, HitbullsEye.

I have a total of 38 months of experience and I had given CAT while I was working, so let me share my personal experience with you. I started my preparation roughly 3 months earlier to CAT exam and I spent most of the time almost 2 months preparing the QA concepts and basics. I put more effort into those topics with which I was more comfortable so as to reduce my time to solve such question, for topics with which I was not that comfortable I prepared the basics and trained myself to solve the easy questions without spending lot of time on such questions. Now coming to RC/LR maybe my daily reading habit helped me but I didn't spend much time on this section and practiced few questions of different types. For DI/LR I practiced any sample questions that I could find on the internet and solve those questions which I felt where tough.
I prepared only on weekends and allotted around 8 weekends for QA 1 weekend for RC/LR and 1 weekend for DI/LR. The remaining weekend I revised and then went to take the exam.

I have a total of 38 months of experience and I had given CAT while I was working, so let me share my personal experience with you. I started my preparation roughly 3 months earlier to CAT exam and I spent most of the time almost 2 months preparing the QA concepts and basics. I put more effort into those topics with which I was more comfortable so as to reduce my time to solve such question, for topics with which I was not that comfortable I prepared the basics and trained myself to solve the easy questions without spending lot of time on such questions. Now coming to RC/LR maybe my daily reading habit helped me but I didn't spend much time on this section and practiced few questions of different types. For DI/LR I practiced any sample questions that I could find on the internet and solve those questions which I felt where tough.
I prepared only on weekends and allotted around 8 weekends for QA 1 weekend for RC/LR and 1 weekend for DI/LR. The remaining weekend I revised and then went to take the exam.

For working professionals it's all about managing time. The more amount of time you can devote towards preparation the better off you will be. So devote a particular time of the day for preparation be it brushing up on your skills, or working on your weaknesses or giving mock tests even if it means sacrificing a little party time. Practice makes one perfect and CAT is the perfect example. Concentrate on giving mock tests. It will help you gauge time issues and your weaknesses. It will help you get familiar with most questions. So subscribe to one me websites which let you give tests and give as many mock tests as you can. It will help you get a lot better