CAT 2015: Exam analysis - expect high scores; Easy VARC, Quant & difficult DILR greet the aspirants

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November 29, 2015
Forenoon session of CAT 2015 began on time at 9.00AM today Nov 29, 2015 with no technical glitches and a totally revamped test at the test venues assigned with more testing labs
Forenoon session of CAT 2015 began on time at 9.00AM today Nov 29, 2015 with no technical glitches and a totally revamped test at the test venues assigned with more testing labs

Forenoon session of CAT 2015 began on time at 9.00AM today Nov 29, 2015 with no technical glitches and a totally revamped test at the test venues assigned with more testing labs accommodating 500+ candidates in each session.

It was a cool morning carrying cold breeze in Delhi NCR without sufficient Sunlight at 7.30AM the reporting time for the first session.  As anticipated the test had number of changes and surprises. Reporting time for the test was 90 minutes before the exam in CAT 2015, while it was 120 minutes in CAT 2014. It made the candidates a little comfortable also.

The exam was moderate to difficult with a few questions found to be very difficult while few were on easier side. The overall exam was doable and with 24-25 attempts in each section with 90% accuracy, candidates could expect a percentile as high as 95+. The accuracy level and attempts include Non-MCQs along with MCQs in each of the 3 sections.

CAT 2015 is divided in 3 sections namely VARC-1st section; DILR-2nd section and Quant-3rd section. Till last year there were only 2 sections, but CAT 2015 has de-clubbed Data Interpretation and Logical reasoning respectively from Quant and Verbal Ability sections and a new section consisting of DILR questions has been formed. This newly created section put forward a good deal of challenge for test takers in CAT 2015.

Earlier CAT exams allowed you to submit your test before the expiry of time limit but CAT 2015 does not allow you to submit the section wise test before the expiry of sectional time limit of 60 minutes. The submit button was enabled on expiry of the time limit only.

Sectional Analysis
 VARC
Verbal Ability and Reading comprehension (VARC) was the first section in CAT 2015 exam as against the earlier CAT exams in which Quant used to be the first section.

VARC contained 34 questions out of which 24 were MCQs and 10 Non-MCQs. Out of the 34 questions, the Reading comprehension (RC) part contributed the maximum share of 70% questions. There were 24 questions on 5 RC passages.

Questions on RC
CAT 2015 has not only changed the type, pattern and size of RC passages, but has also done away with the customary type of questions based on RC which used to be present in earlier CAT exams like Tone of the passage.

Out of the 5 RC passages 2 were relatively shorter passage with about 500 words and were followed by 3 questions each. Other 3 passages were a little longer with about 800 words and were followed by 6 questions each.

The passages were rich on vocabulary, although there were no direct vocabulary questions in CAT 2015.

There were a few common type of questions on RC passages like what was the message according to the passage, out of 4 statements which was not correct according to the passage and on the contents of the passages.

There were 3 questions on the message conveyed by the author through a particular sentence or the entire RC passage. In fact this question was indirectly asking the purpose of writing the passage. There was no questions like ‘Tone of the passage’ but the questions of different types were also indirectly getting to the same theme.

Questions based on RC passages were all MCQs and carried negative marking also. Those who gave a concentrated reading to the RC passage and understood well also picked the answer options judiciously.

Verbal Ability
The 10 questions on Verbal Ability part were based on only 3 major topics Jumbled paragraphs; para summary and picking out the odd sentence from a jumbled paragraph.

4 questions on Jumbled sentences
There were 4 Non-MCQ questions on jumbled sentences in a paragraph. These sentences were spread randomly in the paragraph and neither the beginning nor the closing sentence was given beforehand so that the test taker’s task could be made easier.  Since all the 4 questions based on para jumbles were of non-MCQ type, wrong answers to these questions would not attract penalty of negative marking and the score would remain unaffected.

3 questions on Passage summary
The Verbal Ability part in CAT 2015 VARC section placed 3 questions asking the candidates to pick out of 4 answer options that best explains summary of the given short passage. Each of the short passages  contained only one paragraph with around 100 to 150 words.

All the 3 questions were in the Non-MCQ format and almost all the candidates attempted them irrespective of the fact whether they picked out the correct or wrong answers.    The paragraphs were not very tricky but the answers had to be carefully searched to pick the right answer option. Those who read the paragraphs between the lines hit the right answer with less difficulty

Picking out the odd sentence in a paragraph
There were 3 questions to pick out the odd sentence from a group of 5 jumbled sentences in each question. The formation was that 4 sentences were on the same topic and could form a coherent paragraph when placed in a sequence while one sentence was odd one. Candidates had to pick that odd sentence and had to type to key in its number in the given answer box.

Many candidates got confused and were trying to figure out whether they had to type the number of other sentences also along with the number of odd sentence after putting all the sentences in a sequence and making it a coherent paragraph.  Good sense prevailed after a while as there was no such facility provided in the answer box to split and type the numbers after segregating the sentences on the topic and odd sentence.

The candidates were supposed to write only the number of odd sentence which did not belong to the topic.   The form of the questions was Non-MCQs and needless to mention that CAT 2015 aspirant did not have to miss answering any of them as there was no negative marking for them.

DILR
The newly created DILR section was the second section in CAT 2015. DILR with 32 questions in total, had 16 Questions on Data Interpretation (DI) which was the first part in this section and 16 questions were based on Logical Reasoning.

The 16 questions in each part were divided in 4 sets of problems and situations. Each problem/situation was followed by a block of 4 questions. The 32 questions in the entire section were divided between 24 MCQs and 8 non-MCQs with 4 Non-MCQs allocated to DI and 4 to LR part in the section.

The prominent topics on which problem/situation were formed consisted of  Data comparison, Table, Charts, Graphs  in DI section and Testing series, Groups, among others in LR section.

The section was rated tricky and lengthy. The questions were time consuming. Very few candidates have claimed to have gone beyond 20 or marking around 16-18 correct. Number of  test takers after completing their exam came out cursing the DILR section saying DILR was the most difficult and time consuming section in CAT 2015

Quant
Out of 34 questions in Quant, the last section to attempt in CAT 2015 there were 10 Non-MCQs. Most of the candidates attempted all of the Non-MCQ questions. The section had good difficulty level but was doable.

The modified question types could be rated as surprise elements. Candidates who were fear struck and were expecting unprecedented changes in the difficulty level  found the section not so high with the level of difficulty. Prominent topics on which questions were based are

Expert says
In view of Prof S K Agarwal, expert on Verbal Ability and mentor on CAT, the CAT 2015 test takers can expect higher raw scores with the introduction of good number of Non-MCQs. You can expect a higher percentile only with your balanced higher core marks in each section. Since the sectional performance will play an important role in determining your overall scores and cut offs for shortlisting, it will be better to use the facility of percentile predictor available with MBAUniverse.com

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