CAT 2019 Slot 2 Analytics

Apart from academic questions, you may have several questions with regards to ideal exam strategy to employ for the CAT 2020 Exam. Some of these questions might be: "How many questions should I attempt to score a 99%ile in CAT?", "What should my ideal accuracy be in each section?", and even "How many easy and difficult questions to expect per section?".

Here, we will answer a couple of these questions using the power of Machine Learning. Post CAT 2019, we asked aspirants to fill in their number of attempts in our score calculator. This gave us the cleanest data that there could be regarding the attempts of the students in CAT 2019.

Therefore, let us dive in to the data and figure out some interesting insights from it.

Attempts and Accuracy for 90+%ile

The graphs given below give us an interesting perspective of what it took to get a 90+%ile in CAT 2019 Slot 2.

The first graph, on the left hand side, suggests what number of attempts led to what percentile in CAT 2019. Reading this graph is simple. For example, for someone with a 95%ile in CAT 2019, an attempt of roughly 58-60 questions out of 100 questions was required. Similarly, for a 99%ile, 70-72 attempts were required in CAT 2019.

The second graph, on the right hand side, in the image given above, suggests what sort of accuracy leads to what kind of a percentile. Effectively, this graph states that ..............

How the toppers managed attempts and accuracy in CAT 2019 Slot 2?

Just like we shared for Slot 2, what our insights suggest here is something that is extremely interesting. The graph given below should tell you that there is no one and only one way to get a 99%ile in CAT. With the number of attempts and accuracy being the two variables here, there are many combinations of the attempts and accuracy that could have got you to a 99%ile in CAT 2019 Slot 2.

In the graph, the color of the pointer suggests the percentile. For example, the grey dot signifies a 99%ile, a yellow dot signifies 95%ile and so on.

The graph plotted between the No. of Attempts and Accuracy, suggests multiple combinations to get a particular percentile.

For example, in order to get a 99%ile, one could have attempted just 60 questions in the entire paper with an accuracy of 85-90%.

At the same time, 99%ile could also be achieved at a lower accuracy of around 70% but with a higher number of attempts, as high as 80 attempts. This should given hope to you no matter what your current performance level might be. Which means that if you are a student who generally has a lower accuracy in mocks, you now know that the number of attempts for you have to be at what level. Similarly, if you have a high level of accuracy in the mocks, then a lower number of attempts will also be fine.

CAT Analytics of CAT 2019 Slot 2 - VARC Section

Our data science team delved deeper into each section and found out analytics that have the potential to entirely change the way you take CAT.

Have a look at this graph on the right side which is for the VARC section of CAT 2019. As the legend suggests, the colors signify the level of difficulty of each question. Here you must know what our definition of level of difficulty is over here.

Easy - A question is marked in Green color, i.e. easy, if at least 75% of the aspirants who attempted that question got it correct

Medium - A question is marked in Yellow color, i.e. medium, if 50% to 75% of the aspirants who attempted that question got it correct

Difficult - A question is marked in Red color, i.e. difficult, if less than 50% of the aspirants who attempted that question got it correct

Here it can be seen that there are exactly 5 out of 10 questions of Verbal Ability that were difficult. This means, that less than 50% of the students who attempted the question got it correct. What should also be seen is that, all of these 5 questions were non-MCQ questions.

This simply tells you the fact that cracking the non-MCQ questions in VA (which are usually the Para Jumble questions) is extremely difficult. Therefore, your focus in the VARC section should be on capitalizing from the questions on Reading Comprehension. With 24 out of 34 questions being from RCs, it becomes important for you to master the RCs.

Yes, it is worth mentioning that while RCs are non-negotiable, it is the VA section that can make all the difference for someone who is willing to get a 99+%ile.

CAT Analytics of CAT 2019 Slot 2 - DILR Section

DILR section is the Achilles heel for many CAT aspirants. Therefore, in order to truly understand the section, lets have a look at the naked picture of the section.
Here, the same definition of Easy, Medium and Difficult applies as mentioned for the VARC section. The CAT 2019 Slot 2 DILR section had 8 sets which are depicted in the graph on the left.

As you can see, there are three DI sets that are quite doable as all the four questions of this set are solvable. Apart from these, there are a few other easy questions sprinkled across the entire section along with 2 LR sets which were doable as well. This suggests that while you should be able to spot and definitely solve the easy sets, you should also look for the easy questions in various other sets.

At the same time, you should definitely stay away from extremely difficult sets, like the second last set of CAT 2019 Slot 2 DILR. Therefore, a student should have ideally attempted the easier sets in the paper and leave the more difficult ones.

CAT Analytics of CAT 2019 Slot 2 - QA Section

The analytics of the QA section, which is the last section in CAT, gave a good overview of what should be your attempt strategy.

As you can see from the graph, there was a good number of easy and medium questions in the paper. Slot 2 of CAT 2019 has 18-19 easy questions (as opposed to 15-17 easy questions in Slot 1) along with several medium difficulty questions.

For any candidate, these questions should be the ones that you should be attempting to maximize your score.