Sunday, November 16, 2014

CAT 2014: First Day Analysis & Cut-Offs

The CAT exam began today all over the country and after five years of the 60 question format, this was the first time the IIMs had put out a two section, 100 question format.

While difficulty level is subjective, most students will find this paper much easier than any of the recent CAT exams.
Quant was Easy. Most students will find this one of the easiest Quant papers in the last 15 years.
DI was time consuming but definitely not difficult.
The only section that could be classified as difficult was the LR one which had 2 out of 4 sets which were difficult.
Expect cut-offs to be quite high, especially in Sec 1.

Outside of the difficulty level, there were no surprises as such but widely expected topics such as Data Sufficiency, Phrasal Verbs, Fill in the Blanks & FIJ were all missing. Please note that this is only sharing one of the first slot experience and is possibly not representative of students' within the in different slots. All students within the same slot got the same set of questions.

A detailed analysis of the exam is provided below followed by the experience a student will go through before & during the exam. To practice for other MBA exams, click here for XAT | NMAT | SNAP | CMAT | MHCET | CAT 



Expected Cut-Offs:- 
Cut-off ScorePercentile
215+99.9
176+99
139+95
121+90
96+80
Note; These are estimates only and it is recommended that you do not use it as targets. 

Section 1 Analysis:  Out of 50 questions, there were 34 questions on Quantitative ability and 16 on DI. Very similar to what was anticipated and given on the mock test of the IIM CAT. There were several sitters in the paper especially in Arithmetic and Numbers. DI had four sets with one on Tournaments. A serious candidate who spends 90 minutes here could have attempted 35+. 



Section 2 Analysis:  Out of 50 questions, there were 16 questions on RC across four passages with the passages of 450-550 words. And there is no highlighting feature. It is mentioned in the beginning of the exam itself that you will have RCs in four question blocks. Two of the RCs had only three questions together and the final question of each passage was isolated somewhere else in the paper. So do check for this before you believe you have completed your RC passage. There were very few specific detail questions and while many of them required a good understanding of the passages, they were easily doable. Logical Reasoning  had 16 questions across four sets. Surprising aspects was the low weight for pure Verbal ability topics such as Grammar, Fill in the Blanks and Vocab. CR had GMAT style questions on inferences and few on essence of short passages. There were 8 Parajumble questions with half of them being on sentence exclusion. 


15 comments:

  1. Your expected cut offs are way too high

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    Replies
    1. I think these could be correct yaar, lot of people have attempted like hell.The cut offs are seriously going to be quite high.

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    2. they said same last year as well but cut offs were not too high last year, though format is easier and cut off is definitely going up but not by very large extent, after all number of participants has gone down as well so take that into account also. All the best to you all...

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  2. Amit singh what are your predictions then? By how many marks it will deviate?

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  3. 150+ score will be 99+ percentile imo

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  4. they wud be right.. many people have attempted 75+ and in 80s.

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    Replies
    1. I second that. The cut offs could be this much or probably slightly even higher

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    2. attempts does not matter, correct answers do, so that should be taken into consideration.

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  5. The expected cut-offs are way too high.yes..it was easier than last yrs.as expected cuz f the pattern change Bt still keep in mind tym per question and th level of D.I and L.R .Tym would have been consumed in these two sections... not necessarily resulting in bring solved at the end..and even then tym wd hv been lost here.considering that on the second day.ppl would make more attempts since its expected now bt even considering that.these cut-offs are quite high.I feel.though with CAT u never knw..! Bt its an unlikely possibility..!!

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  6. Haha these cutoffs are ridiculous!

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  7. i think these expected cut-offs are OK.
    Almost everone from IITs have attempted atleast 65-70 questions

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  8. With 215+ 99.9% ile is ridiculous...one should never forget dat cat always gves importance 2 accuracy %.....ofcourse with avg no. Of attempts! One with high accuracy n avg no. Of attempts will surely crack cat!

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