CAT 08: Career Launcher Analysis & expert chat on MBAUniverse.com

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MBAUniverse.com News Desk |
August 1, 2016
Leading test prep company Career Launcher shared their detailed analysis of CAT 08 with MBAUniverse.com.

 

Mr R Shiva Kumar, Director, R&D of Career Launcher answered questions from MBA-aspirants on MBAUniverse.com expert chat on CAT day itself. Here are highlights from the analysis and expert chat. 

 

Highlights from Career Launcher Analysis of CAT 2008

Lo and behold! The pervasive air of ambiguity, which dominated previous year’s CAT Verbal Ability section, seems to have vanished in CAT 2008. On the whole, according to Career Launcher experts, the CAT 2008 paper was moderately tough, with Verbal Ability section providing long awaited respite to the aspirants. Comparatively speaking, the students would have found Data Interpretation (DI), with a mix of calculations and logic to be on the tougher side.

Vocabulary based questions in its old format reappeared in CAT after a span of two years! The emphasis in the Verbal Ability section with 40 questions allotted to it is probably to check the much-debated lack of language skills of the Indian management graduates with rigour. One could also assume the larger number of verbal ability questions to be a reflection of GMAT pattern where verbal ability questions are almost as much in number as Quant and DI put together. Signs of CAT going online?

But Quantitative Ability (QA) proved to be on difficult side once again for an average student.

However, on a closer look 7-8 questions could have been solved using options without using deeper mathematical knowledge. The proportion of Algebra based (40 %+) questions seemed to be higher than last few years with Geometry maintaining a constant proportion of 16% for last two years.

In Verbal Ability (VA), the number of Reading Comprehension (RC) passages was same as last year (4). All four passages with 20 questions altogether bore the stamp of the CAT written all over it. Overall the RC section had fewer tricky questions than the EU section. As a section, it is safe to infer that the VA section checked almost all the aspects, including verbal logic, vocabulary and grammar.

The vocabulary based and sentence correction questions in VA were similar in nature to last year’s except for traditional sentence completion questions a la GRE which resurfaced. The Para completion questions provided a bit of a breather in terms of difficulty level.

But the clincher this time is the DI Section, which was deceptively difficult. Few questions were ambiguous and time consuming. Experts of Career Launcher feel that this is the toughest section in CAT 2008 and student’s faced maximum problem in this section. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that the time allocation strategy was disturbed by uneven distribution of questions.

In conclusion, according to the experts of Career Launcher, even with the best of preparations it would be really tough to score more than 120 in this paper. An ideal time allocation strategy of

40-44-66 minutes in QA-DI-VA sections could have enhanced the possibility of maximizing the score as felt be the experts of Career Launcher.

Overview

Here is an overview of how you should have attempted this paper.

Section

Topics

Number of questions

Total Marks

 

 

Suggested time

 

Possible Attempts

Expected Cut-offs

I

Quantitative Ability

25

100

40

13

30-32 

II

 

Logical Reasoning/  Data Interpretation

25

100

42

14

28-30

III

Verbal Ability

40

160

68

22

46-48

Total

 

90

360

150

46

124-128

Disclaimer: These cut-offs are decided by expert faculty of Career Launcher who have attempted the CAT 2008 paper and may not tally with the actual IIM cut-offs. These are calculations based on our experience and expertise.

Expected Cut Offs for different institutes:

Institute

Likely Cut Offs in CAT

2008

 

Marks

Percentile 

Any 1 IIM call

126+

98.6 

MDI (BM)

126+

98.6 

S P Jain, NITIE, IMT, IMI, MDI-HR

120+

97+ 

MICA, TAPMI

112+

95+ 

KJ Somaiya, BIM, Fore, UBS, NIRMA, IMI-HR

100+

92+ 

ITM(Mum), LBS, FMS (BHU)

90+

90+ 

IFMR, IIFM, BIMTech, Kirloskar, IISWBM, Jaipuria

82+

86+ 

IILM (Lodhi Rd), IMDR, SDM-IMD, JIMS

76+

80+ 

SCM Cochin, IMM, Globsyn, Cosmic, Alliance, ISBM

60+

72+ 

NDIM, EMPI, Asia Pacific, Amrita, Suryadatta, Skyline

50+

65+

Disclaimer: All information on cut-offs, analysis, answer key, solutions and scores are based on independent analysis and evaluation made by Career Launcher. We do not take responsibility for any decision that might be taken, based on this information.

Excerpts from MBAUniverse.com chat with Mr R Shiva Kumar, Director, R&D, Career Launcher

MBAUniverse.com hosted a live chat on the CAT evening where we invited experts from IMS Learning, TIME, Career Launcher and PT Education for solving problems faced by MBAUniverse.com readers. Here are the excerpts from the chat with Career Launcher’s Mr R Shiva Kumar:

Chandresh: Dear Sir, IIMs have increased the questions in English this year. What do you think? What should be the reason behind this?
Mr R Shiva Kumar, Director, R&D, Career Launcher: Just to build a balance between English & Quant.

Aditi: Hello sir, according to you how did you find CAT 2008 paper overall...
Mr R Shiva Kumar, Director, R&D, Career Launcher: English is easy in comparison to last year. DI is on the tougher side & quant is same. Overall it is easy in comparison to last year

Rajath: I took the test this year but am focusing on next year. How will this cat change planning for next year. whats you advice to students focusing on next year....
Mr R Shiva Kumar, Director, R&D, Career Launcher: Next year CAT is going online. Probably it will move towards GMAT pattern.

Rekhansh: Hi Sir, Were there any errors in the paper. I heard from some batchmates in my test center in Mumbai...
Mr R Shiva Kumar, Director, R&D, Career Launcher: There were error in DI section