Day 1, 22nd October 2011 (Slot 1)
The first out of the 40 CATs was unveiled this morning. The test administration was almost flawless like most slots in 2010.
As announced earlier by CAT/Prometric, the test had a total of 60 questions with the two timed sections of 30 questions each. According to the students, there was hardly any element of surprise in the test and it was almost identical to the last few Proctored Mock CATs of CL.
A new feature of this paper was that the same set of 60 questions was not administered to all students. It appears that while the DI, Reasoning and RC sets were same for all students, the individual questions of QA and Verbal Usage were different.
As per the students, Section 1 consisted of 20-21 QA and 9-10 of DI questions. A few of the QA questions were difficult and DI was calculation intensive. No student has reported questions from P&C and Probability. Students faced time pressure in this section. A few students have reported that in one question none of the choices were correct.
The 30 questions of Section 2 were split almost equally between Logical Reasoning, Verbal Usage and Reading Comprehension. As per the students, while the LR questions were easy, one RC passage and a few Verbal Usage questions (para completion and parajumble) were tricky. Students have also reported a new type of Para Jumble question
Overall this test can be considered to be moderately difficult as each section had some difficult questions. An attempt of around 18 questions in QA&DI and 20-22 questions in VA&LR with a cumulative attempt of around 40-42 questions and an accuracy of 85% can be considered to be good.
The students should remember that there are 40 CAT slots and the above analysis is for the first test slot only. It should not be extrapolated to the other CAT slots.
All the Best!
-Team CL
Day 3, 25th October 2011 (Slot 2) The test had a total of 60 questions with the two timed sections of 30 questions each. According to the students, there was hardly any element of surprise in the test. The same set of 60 questions was not administered to all students. It appears that [...]
Day 5, 29th October 2011 (Slot 2)
The test had a total of 60 questions with the two timed sections of 30 questions each
As per the students, Section 1 consisted of 22 QA and 8 DI questions. Questions based on Geometry were fewer than expected. There were no questions on set series, time and distance and Data Sufficiency. A majority of the questions were based on Numbers and Algebra. The DI section took up more time than the other topics. However, the calculations were easy and quick
The 30 questions of Section 2 were split as 20 questions ion Verbal and 9 questions on LR. One of the passages in RC was tough. The other topics included the usual suspects â para completion, para jumble, sentence formation and sentence correction. A new type of question on 'which sentence is out of context' was spotted in this paper.
Overall this test can be considered to be on the moderate side. An attempt of around 22-24 questions in QA&DI and 17-19 questions in VA&LR with a cumulative attempt of around 39-43 questions and an accuracy of 85% can be considered good.
All the Best!
-Team CL
Over the years, the hallmark of CAT has been its unpredictability. This year though, a conscious effort seems to have been made to ensure standardization and reduction in the unpredictability quotient.
For starters, the number of questions across sections was announced beforehand, thus ensuring that one of the biggest surprises was no longer there at all. The fixed time limit per section and the fixed order of the sections (QA + DI followed by VA + LR) ensured that students no longer had to worry over the vexatious issues of time management across sections, sequence of attempting different sections and so on. Perhaps the only surprise that CAT threw up this year was that even in the same slot, some students have reported that there were different papers.
Feedback from students who have taken CAT this year further indicates that the difficulty level has not varied drastically across slots or across different papers in the same slot. This will further ensure that no student will feel hard done by as everyone has got a comparable paper. This is perhaps the biggest improvement in CAT this year as opposed to some of the previous years.
Overall, the analysis of CAT across 11 different slots so far suggests that CAT this year, has not thrown up very tough papers. Around 20-22 attempts in QA + DI section (the first section) with about 85% accuracy should be a very good effort. In the VA + LR section around 23 to 24 attempts with about 80% accuracy will also be a good effort. This should be enough to get at least a few calls from top B-schools.
Further, combining DI with QA and LR with VA has resulted in a more even spread of questions than earlier. Every student should be able to find a few easy questions and a few tough but attemptable questions in either section this year. This will serve to ensure that CAT is that much more competitive this year and accordingly, cut-offs can be expected to be on the higher side.
We have already presented our analysis of the first 11 CAT slots so far. With not much variation appearing across slots or across different papers in the same slot, it is rather unnecessary to post a detailed analysis of each slot any longer. We will continue to post a tabular analysis of the difficulty level in each slot and the expected number of attempts. If any slot or paper comes up with a surprise, we will post a more detailed analysis of that slot
We hope that our analysis was of assistance to all students and helped you better estimate your performance or soothed any anxieties that you may have had regarding your impending paper
All the best,
To those who have already appeared for CAT 2011 and are now biting their nails in anticipation of the result.
And to those who are yet to appear for CAT 2011 and are biting their nails in anticipation of their paper
-Team CL