CAT 2016 Slot 1 Analysis and Cut Offs

CAT 2016 expected cutoff: 155-160

CAT 2016 Exam Pattern

CAT 2016 did not throw up any surprises wrt the paper format. The level of difficulty of the paper changed this year as compared to last year. While VARC continued to be easy, DILR was deceptive with easy looking sets that had difficult questions. Quant threw the biggest curve ball in terms of Level of difficulty and topic distribution. On first impressions, overall raw score of 155-160 should fetch a student a 99%ile, this year. The overall structure of the CAT paper was as follows:

Section

No. of Questions

No. of non-MCQ questions

Difficulty Level

Good Attempts

Verbal Ability and Reading comprehension

34

10

Easy

27-28

Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning

32

8

Moderate - Difficult

14-16

Quantitative Ability

34

7

Moderate - Difficult

22-25

Total

100

 

 

68-72

CAT 2016 Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension Analysis

This section seemed like a repeat of last year’s paper. The RCs were from familiar area like Economics and Environmental Studies. The questions in this section were of easy to moderate difficulty level. The trick was to aim for high accuracy by correctly identifying the factual questions in the RC section. However, one must have practiced adequately in order to tackle this lengthy session. There were many logical structure questions. The options were extremely tricky. RC’s were majorly factual, not being inordinately lengthy or abstract in nature. Only one passage was difficult to read. The others were easy and two passages were also very interesting.
The questions in Verbal ability were dominated by Verbal Logic and did not carry any negative marking, though they needed prior practice to aim for a high percentile. The para jumble section was tough. Even the odd one out questions had close options. Subjective parajumbles should have been attempted without wasting a lot of time. The summary questions were easy.


Surprises: Contrary to popular speculation, the section was a replica of the last year’s paper.


With a moderate level of paper many students ended up attempting a lot of questions from RC passages and all questions from Verbal Logic. An attempt of 25-27 would be considered good in this section. Accuracy level will be an issue. As the non-MCQs didn’t have any negative marking, a student could have guessed an additional three questions.

 

Area

Topic

No. of Questions

Description

Reading Comprehension
(24 Questions)

Reading Comprehension

24

There were total 5 passages - three passages (450-650 words in length) and two passages (300 words each). The three passages had 6 questions each and the other two had 3 questions each. Only one passage was difficult to read. The options were really close. They were very easy. The difficulty level of the passages varied from easy to moderate. Any serious aspirant could have easily attempted 4 passages with about 75% accuracy.

Verbal Ability
(10 Questions)

Para-jumble

4

5 Sentence type. All the four questions were difficult. There were many ambiguous sentences too. Hence, a student should have been careful in time management. The questions could have led to wastage of time. The four questions should have been attempted in around 6 minutes with two correct answer.

Summary

3

Small paragraph of about 150 words followed by four options. Elimination of options made the task easy. Only one question had two extremely close options. One had to simply type in the correct option number. Hence, it was not really non-MCQ.

Para-jumble (Odd sentence out)

3

5 sentence paragraphs and one was the odd sentence. One question was really difficult. Other questions had easy options. Many of the answers could have been marked by choosing mandatory pairs.

 

CAT 2016 Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning Analysis

In this section four sets were easy (Questions set [5 questions of 4 questions of 10 marks], Folders, T-shirts, movies) and the one based on set theory was of moderate-difficulty level. A couple of sets had 1 question each which were difficult to crack and students would have been wise to leave those questions. Most of the DI sets were calculation intensive. Logical reasoning questions were easy-moderate level of difficulty. There was no DS question. 4 - 5 sets in this section should be attempted, so to get a 99%ile a score of 46-48 (raw score) should suffice.

Section

Topic

No. of Questions

Doable

Data Interpretation

Pass percentage - Moderate

4

2-3

Movies - Easy

4

4

Train - Diff

4

1-2

Veg/Non-Veg - Moderate/Diff

4

1-2

Logical Reasoning

Marks - Easy

4

4

Folders - Easy

4

4

T-shirt - Easy

4

3 (1 questionable)

Venn Diagram (Laptop/Smartphone/Tablet)-Moderate

4

3 (1 questionable)

 

Picking sets was the key. In general, students would have picked 5 sets out of the 8 above and thus doable questions would be around 15-17.

 

CAT 2016 Quantitative Ability Analysis

There were 34 questions of QA. There were 7-8 Questions of Non MCQ type and the rest were MCQs. The difficulty level was marginally higher than the CAT 2015. The questions were designed to test the grasp of basic fundamentals. In some of MCQs, options were very helpful to get the answer. There were questions from regular topics like Algebra, Geometry, Modern Math, Arithmetic and Number Systems. The number of questions in Geometry showed a spike over previous years.

Section

Topic

No. of Questions

Doable

Quantitative Ability

Number System

4

3

Algebra

10-11

8-10

Arithmetic

10

7-9

Modern Math

2

1

Geometry and Mensuration

7-8

4-5



Questions in Algebra were focused on Inequalities and Quadratic equations. Arithmetic questions were focused on Commercial Math and TSD. There were a good number of questions from Geometry with one question from Pyramids as well. 22-25 attempts with 90% accuracy should suffice for 99 percentile.

 

Please Note: All information on analysis and scores are based on the accuracy of attempts provided by you as well as independent analysis and evaluation made by Career Launcher Academic Team. We do not take responsibility for any decision that might be taken, based on this information.

 

CL extends its best wishes to all CAT aspirants 
All the very best!!