CAT, the Common Admission Test of IIMs, has remained as an aim for most of the MBA aspirants. The exam is well known for its high difficulty and also for throwing surprises to the students. But if you know the pattern and the trend for the past few years, then it becomes easy for you to prepare, if not speculate the paper! As according to experts, it takes at least six to eight months of rigorous preparation, many serious CAT aspirants have already started their preparation for CAT 2011.
In the special series of MBAUniverse.com on CAT 2011 preparation, today we have the third section, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning. This will help the aspirants to have a clear view about the type and format of questions asked in CAT exam.
Let us have a look at the last five years analysis of the DI & LR section of CAT exam.
CAT 2010
CAT 2010 had a total of 20 questions from DI & LR section out of the 60 questions. The level of difficulty in LR/DI in certain slots was quite easy but the lengthy statements and sets made it time consuming. The topics included in the section were almost the same as last year, with the regular topics of mixed graph & Bar Graph, Logical reasoning questions, etc. The overall difficulty level remained to be Easy-Moderate.
CAT 2009
CAT 2009 consisted of a total of 20 questions from the DI&LR section out of a total of 60 questions. The section proved to be tougher than the other two sections this year. This year DI section was dominated by DS. DS questions were verbose and lengthy. So they were time consuming and required a lot of concentration. The overall difficulty level proved to be Moderate-Difficult one.
CAT 2008
The 2008 CAT paper had a total of 25 questions from DI & LR section out of a total of 90 questions. The only difference in the section was reduced number of questions per set. Continuing from CAT 2007, there were enough traditional DI questions. There were some marked changes. Logical reasoning questions made a comeback after being absent last year. Most of the questions were deceptively tricky, hence which ones to be attempted and which ones to left was a time consuming decision. The paper included topics from Data Interpretation, Data sufficiency and Logical Reasoning. The difficulty level of the section was Moderate for this year.
CAT 2007
This year too the DI & LR section had 25 questions out of 75, same as the last year. There were a total of 21 questions from Data Interpretation and four questions from Data Sufficiency were asked. There were total five DI sets based on tables, four of which had four questions each and one had five questions. The DS questions in this section had five answer choices. The overall difficulty level for the section was considered to be Moderate-Easy.
CAT 2006
There were a total of 75 questions this year, out of which the DI&LR section contributed a part of 25 questions. The DI/ Reasoning questions had no surprise. It was similar to the mock tests aspirants have been writing in the past three months (in fact, easier). It included topics like Table, Caselets and Analytical Reasoning. The overall difficulty level for the section was found to be an easy one by the test takers, as well as the experts.
Stay tuned with MBAUniverse.com for more on CAT 2011 preparation!
