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The Jump Is Smaller Than It Looks
Let’s start with the number that intimidates most aspirants: moving from the 70 to 95 percentile in VARC. It looks dramatic. A 25 “score” jump! Students look at that jump and immediately behave as if they need to become a different species.
But a percentile is only a rank, not a score, and ranks distort perception.
Here is the simpler, more accurate version.
- A 70th percentile in VARC usually sits around 15 marks.
- A 95th percentile is roughly 30 marks.
So the real jump is not from 15 to 60. It is from 15 to 30.
In question terms, that is the difference between getting about 5 questions net correct and getting about 10 questions net correct.
Which means the actual requirement is straightforward: you need 5 more correct answers. Once you see the score behind the percentile, the problem stops looking so huge.
So set the right target. Not “95 percentile,” but “30+ marks consistently,” which translates to “10+ net correct consistently.” When the target is defined this way, preparation becomes calmer and far less dramatic.
First, Understand What CAT VARC Actually Tests
CAT VARC has 24 questions: 16 from Reading Comprehension and 8 from Verbal Ability. The RC part comes from 4 passages of roughly 500 words each, with 4 questions each. The VA part includes para summaries, para jumbles, odd-sentence-out, and sentence placement.
All of these are comprehension tasks.
CAT is not checking whether you know philosophy, economics, politics, or anthropology. It may use passages from these areas, but it is not testing prior knowledge. CAT does not care whether you have read philosophy before. It cares whether, after reading this passage now, you know what the fellow is trying to say.
That is why VARC is practically an open-book exam. The passage is right in front of you. Nothing is hidden. The challenge is not knowledge; it is whether your reading and reasoning are sharp enough. That is good news. It means the section is learnable.
Also Read: How to approach CAT Mock Tests
Before practice, there is one thing you need to fix first: how you are looking at the section.
Mindset Shift 1: Stop Treating VARC as “Basically RC”
A lot of aspirants behave as if VARC is just RC with a little VA attached to it. That mindset alone keeps many people stuck around the 70th percentile.
Remember the real target: 30+ marks. And the VA portion carries 24 marks.
If you can secure even 10-12 marks from VA, the pressure on RC drops dramatically. But most students do the opposite. They over-fear RC, over-focus on RC, and quietly underprepare for VA. That is unnecessary.
VA is exactly where students leave marks lying around because they never sit down and learn how each type behaves.
VA is not random.
VA is not “extra.”
VA is not optional.
It is a trainable part of the paper and a place where many students can pick up marks faster than they think. For many students stuck at the 70th percentile, it is the neglected goldmine.
Once you stop treating VARC as “mostly RC” and start giving VA the respect it deserves, the entire section becomes calmer, more predictable, and far more score-friendly.
Mindset Shift 2: RC Is Important, But Not for the Reasons You Think
Yes, RC matters. But most students think RC is a speed problem. It is not. They read faster and faster and understand worse and worse, then wonder why CAT is ‘tricky’.
That is the wrong mindset.
The point is not to read faster. The point is to read better.
If you read better, the options become easier to eliminate.
If you read better, distortions become obvious.
If you read better, you don’t need hacks, shortcuts, or panic.
CAT passages are around 500 words. Even if you read them aloud to your grandmother at a slow 150 words per minute, you would still finish in about three minutes. Speed is not the bottleneck. Clarity is.
RC is about understanding what you read, paragraph by paragraph, idea by idea, and seeing how those ideas connect into the larger argument. If you can answer three simple questions for every paragraph:
- What is it doing?
- Why is it here?
- What is the author building toward?
…RC begins to make sense.
RC improves through proper reading, not random reading. You cannot keep reading only things you already enjoy and then complain that CAT gives you weird passages. You need exposure to diverse, idea-dense writing. Aeon Essays, JSTOR Daily, and Smithsonian Magazine work well because they force you to read outside your comfort zone.
The difficulty in RC is not that CAT creates some next-level, diabolical options. The options look tricky, mostly because the passage was not properly understood. Yes, the correct answer is usually a paraphrase, a clean restatement of the idea. Yes, the wrong options are distortions: slightly exaggerated, slightly narrowed, slightly twisted. But once your reading is solid, the pattern becomes clear: distortions can be spotted, and the paraphrased truth can be recognised. The better you read, the less “tricky” the options become.
Also Read: How To Analyse CAT Mocks
Mindset Shift 3: Use CAT PYQs Early – Not as a Final-Phase Museum Piece
Most students make the same mistake: They treat CAT PYQs as a final-stage exam, something to attempt only after “finishing the syllabus.”
That mindset is completely backwards.
PYQs are not meant to test what you learned.
PYQs are meant to teach you what to learn.
If you want to understand VARC, you must understand the people who set the paper. And the only direct access you have to their thinking is the previous year’s questions.
Start using papers from 2017 onwards early in your prep.
They show you exactly how CAT constructs the entire VARC section:
- What kinds of RC passages it prefer
- What kinds of distortions it use in options
- How it frames the Para Summary traps
- How it designs Para Jumbles
- What makes a sentence “odd one out”
- What level of precision is expected across all 24 questions
This is not a theory. This is the exam showing you how it actually behaves.
You are trying to beat this exam. Why would you postpone looking at the only real evidence of how it thinks?
Every hour spent with PYQs early in your prep saves you ten hours of random, unfocused practice later.
Use them early. Use them repeatedly. Use them early enough for them to influence how you prepare.
Also Read: Common Mistakes to avoid during CAT preparation
Mindset Shift 4: Stop Doing More. Start Doing Better.
Most students think improvement comes from doing more questions. Often, that just means repeating the same mistake 200 times with greater confidence.
Shift the focus from quantity to quality. Most students don’t!
Every time you solve a question, there is a way you should sit with it:
- Solve it seriously. No casual guessing, no half-attention.
- Resolve before checking. If you’re unsure, rethink the question once more without looking at the key.
- Check only the answers first. Don’t rush to the explanation.
- Become your own teacher for every wrong question:
- Defend the correct answer. For RC, explain how the question setter has reworded or paraphrased the idea from the passage to create the right option.
- Attack your chosen answer. For RC, use S.T.E.A.L. to identify why your option is bad: Scope issue, Tone issue, Extreme position, Alien idea, Lie.
- Only then read the explanation. At this point, the explanation has something to attach to. Before this, it usually just washes over your brain and leaves no trace.
Quality prep means every mistake pays rent.
What Your Prep Should Actually Look Like
If you are aiming to move from the 70th to the 95th percentile, your preparation cannot be random. It needs a simple, repeatable weekly structure. Your week should have four things in it.
- Read diverse articles, and doodle as you read.
You are not reading for entertainment; you are reading to train your brain to handle unfamiliar ideas calmly. Pick articles from serious, idea-dense sources and read them slowly. After each paragraph, write a one-line doodle capturing what that paragraph was doing. Over time, this builds structural awareness, not just “I read it” comfort.
If you want to check whether your doodle is accurate, you can use an AI tool, but use it correctly.
Paste the article and your paragraph summaries and ask:
“Are my one-line summaries capturing the main idea of each paragraph?”
If the AI says yes, you’re on track. If it says no, revise your doodle and learn why.
Remember: Use AI only as a check. The reading and the thinking still have to be yours. The day AI starts understanding the passage for you is the day your prep goes for a walk without you.
- Do sensible, structured RC practice.
Don’t spam passages. Pick a small, fixed number of RC sets and work through them carefully. Focus on:
- Understanding the passage structure
- identifying the author’s point
- Analysing why each option is right or wrong
Your goal is not “I did 8 passages today.” Your goal is “I understood exactly why I lost or gained marks on each question.”
- Focus on one VA area at a time.
Do not turn VA into a verbal khichdi. For a few days, pick just one area, say Para Summary or Para Jumbles, and go deep. Understand the logic, the patterns, the common traps. Build a process you can repeat under pressure. Once that feels stable, move to the next VA type. - Work through one CAT year at a time.
Take one CAT paper year (start with 2017) and work through the VARC section in detail. Don’t just solve it; study it. That means understanding how CAT builds the section, not just checking how many you got right. Look for patterns across RC and VA:
- What kinds of passages and question types does CAT consistently use?
- What distortions appear in the options, and how are they phrased?
- How does CAT frame Para Summary options?
- What makes a sentence the “odd one out”?
- What patterns appear in Para Jumbles?
- What logic does CAT reward in Sentence Placement?
- Which traps did I fall for, and what does that reveal about my reading or reasoning?
You are not collecting scores. You are learning how CAT thinks.
Treat each year as a case study in how CAT thinks.
Also Read: Why solving PYQ is the ultimate game changer
What you should not do
If you are stuck around the 70th percentile, the solution is almost never “more of the same.”
You do not need to:
- Do 10 passages a day mindlessly. That only reinforces bad habits.
- Ignore VA until later. You are leaving easy marks on the table.
- Chase reading speed or hacks. Fast confusion is still confusion.
- Jump from source to source. That creates noise, not progress.
Moving from the 70th to the 95th percentile is not about becoming extraordinary. It is about becoming more precise, more methodical, and more consistent.
You are not trying to conquer the entire section. You are trying to get five more questions right. Some of those will come from better reading. Some from better option handling. Some are finally taking VA seriously.
Once you see it that way, the target stops looking like a mountain and starts looking like work. Serious work, yes. But doable work.
That is the job. Read better. Think better. Analyse properly. Stop looking for escape routes. Just serious work done properly for long enough. Do that well, and the 70 → 95 jump stops being a miracle story. It becomes a preparation story.
All The Best!!
