CAT Exam


Intro

CAT is the most well-renowned entrance exam for over 150 B-schools across India, including the 19 IIMs. The online exam is conducted by the IIMs every year in the month of November and the GDPI round takes place from Jan to April. The academic sessions begin in the months of July-Aug.

CAT focuses on general aptitude (English, Math, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning). The special feature about CAT is renowned institutes that one can gain admission to by cracking this exam. One can get admission into the IIMs only by cracking the CAT exam.

With the change of pattern for CAT 2015, a significant inclusion into the exam is that of the non-MCQ questions. The candidate is required to type-in the answers of these questions. These questions will not have any negative marking. Another feature included is the on-screen calculator. This calculator will only have the basic mathematical operations.

 

Pattern

CAT 2015

Section

No. of Questions

Time Limit in minutes

Good Attempts (Accuracy)

Quantitative Aptitude
(QA)

34

60

22 - 24 (90%)

Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning
(DILR)

32

60

22 - 24 (90%)

Verbal & Reading Comprehension
(VRC)

34

60

24 - 26 (75%)

 

CAT 2014

Section

No. of Questions

Optimal Time in minutes

Difficulty Level

GoodAttempts

Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation

50

80

Easy

35+

Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning

50

90

Easy-Moderate

35+

Total

100

170

Easy

70+


Dates:

CAT is conducted in October-November every year and the results are declared in the last week of December or first week of January. The registration for CAT starts 2-2.5 months before the exam.
CAT 2015 will be conducted on 29th November 2015.The registrations commenced on 6th August '15 and will be open till 20th September 2015.

 

Analysis

There were surprises in the structure of CAT this year with a fixed number of questions in LR (16) and DI (16) across each slot. Also the pattern was fixed wrt the question numbers of LR (35-50) and DI (85-100). The QADI section had 34 QA questions along with 16 DI questions in 4 sets of 4 questions each. In the VALR section, Verbal Logic and Usage contributed to 18 questions while LR and RC contributed to 16 questions each (4 sets of 4 questions each).
While the QA AND VA questions continued to be very easy, LR and DI were difficult and many students would have had a tough time trying to solve these sets. Verbal Logic and RC proved to be life savers in the second section.

The overall structure of the paper was as follows:
Section No. of Questions Optimal Time in minutes Difficulty Level GoodAttempts
Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation 50 80 Easy 35+
Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning 50 90 Easy-Moderate 35+
Total 100 170 Easy 70+

 

Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation

There were 34 questions of QA and 16 questions of DI in the slot. The difficulty level was low and the questions were designed to test the grasp of fundamentals. There were questions from regular topics like Number System, Algebra, Geometry, Modern Math and Geometry. There were two questions from trigonometry as well. Questions in Data Interpretation area did not involve convoluted calculations; however, they continued to be tricky. As has been the norm this year Logic-based DI was visible again. All the questions in DI came in sets of

 

Section Topic No. of Questions
Quantitative Ability Number System 5-7
Algebra 5-7
Arithmetic 11-13
Modern Math 3-4
Trigonometry 2
Geometry and Mensuration 7-9
Data Interpretation Bar Graphs 4
Incomplete Table 4
Table based 4
LR Based 4

With a very easy QA good students could have attempted about 28-30 questions in QA and 2 sets of DI for a total of 35+ attempts. However in an easy paper it is accuracy that is the differentiator and anyone with poor accuracy will lose out.

Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning

The questions in this section were of low difficulty level. The trick here was to aim for high accuracy by correctly identifying the questions that one was confident of solving correctly. RC’s were manageable, not being inordinately lengthy or abstract. At most only one of the four given passages was tough. There was a balanced mix of questions from various areas of Verbal Ability. All the questions in LR came in sets of 4. 2 sets were doable while it was best to leave the rest alone

.
Surprises: There were not many questions of vocabulary or fill in the blanks.
With a difficult LR and easy RC many students ended up attempting three RC passages and only two LR sets. An attempt of 35+ would be considered good in this section.

 

Area Topic No. of Questions Description
Reading Comprehension
(16 Questions)
Reading Comprehension 16 4 passages of about 550 words and 4 questions each.  All the passages were easy to read and comprehend and the difficulty level of the questions varied from easy to moderate. Only one question in one of the passages was a further application question that could have troubled the students. 
English Usage
(18 Questions)
Sentence Correction 3 Spot the correct sentence, out of five sentences/parts of a sentence. Easy to moderate but the options gave away the answer.
Para-jumble 4 5 Sentence type. Very easy. One could have solved at least 2 of these by only spotting the first sentence of the sequence and using the options. The language too was not difficult. Except for one questions, sentences were moderate in length.
Summary 3 Small paragraph of about 200 words followed by four options. Elimination of options made the task easy.
Critical Reasoning 4 Small passage of about 200-250 words, followed by an inference question - time consuming but easy
Grammar 3  Simple words, use of phrasal verbs
Para-jumble (Odd sentence out) 4 Very easy sentences to read, the theme was not difficult either, short sentences. Correct answer was easy to spot owing to very obvious pointers - use of pronouns, change in context etc.
Logical Reasoning
(16 Questions)
Maxima Minima concept 4  2 LR sets were not very time consuming and doable. 1 set was difficult and time-consuming but doable. The last set was very difficult and left best alone. Students were tested on the concept of maxima minima.
Arrangement 4
Circular arrangement 4
Set theory based 4

Top B-Schools

With over 150 schools under the ambit of CAT it could be a difficult choice to select the right ones to apply for. Thus, closely follow our B-School advisor which lists the top 100 schools in order. However, for a quick reference SPJIMR, MDI, FMS and JBIMS are some of the leading B-Schools other than the IIMs.

Strategy

The strategy for CAT is dependent upon the Level of Difficulty. CAT 2014 was one of the easiest papers over the last decade. The strategy should have been to survey the paper in the first 5 minutes and estimate the Level of difficulty. Once it was apparent that it was an easy paper, the aim should have been to attempt 70+ questions with an accuracy of 80%+. QA and VA turned out to be a cakewalk whereas LR and DI were on the tougher side. However, with 68 easy questions out of 100 the game-changer was accuracy.

For More Info , Please Visit   www.iimcat.ac.in