Recent work has suggested that the accepted evolutionary track for cataclysmic variables, CVs, may be in error. Measurements of carbon abundances have suggested that the secondary stars in these systems may have undergone far more changes during the formation of the CV than previously thought. Also magnetic and non-magnetic CVs appear to follow different evolutionary tracks. A principal probe of this evolution are metal abundance in the secondary star. To expand our understanding in this area we have obtained near infrared spectra of a sample of CVs with SPEX on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. These data permit quantitative measurements of carbon and other metal abundances in the secondary stars with the aid of a stellar atmosphere model. We have used the program SPECTRUM to generate these models. We find that both AE Aqr and GK Per show extreme carbon 12 deficits. In the future we plan to extend these models to include Na, Mg, and Fe.