Dear readers,

As you know, CAT 2015 slot 1 is now over. Let us take a quick look at the pattern of this test.

First of all, the VARC section was exactly on the lines of the CAT demo test – 24 RC questions and 10 VA questions. The VA questions were based on Parajumbles, odd sentence out and parasummary. All of the VA questions were direct input type. Some students reported that there were 6 RC passages – 2 with 3 questions each and the rest with 4 to 5 questions each. Other students reported that they had only 5 RC passages. This section was relatively easy and many students have reported 30+ attempts.

LRDI was relatively tough and most students have reported less than 20 attempts in this section. This section comprised 8 sets of 4 questions each – 4 sets of DI and 4 of LR. While DI was calculation-intensive, LR was relatively complex. Students have said that 2 DI sets and 2 LR sets were of medium difficulty level while the other sets were tougher. At least 2 sets were of direct input type.

QA too was relatively easy and many students have reported 25+ attempts here. In this section, Algebra and geometry accounted for 4 to 5 questions each while Arithmetic accounted for nearly 50% of the questions. Around 10 questions were of direct input type. Overall, this section was of easy to moderate difficulty level. 

Considering the changes in the test pattern this year and the level of difficulty, it is expected that overall cutoffs will be similar to last year’s cutoff (or slightly lower). Thus, students attempting around 27 to 30 in VARC, 20 in LRDI and 25+ in QA (with 85 to 90% accuracy) should expect calls from all or most of the top b-schools. (Note: we will also look at the second slot before giving a final statement on this.) Students who have attempted all of the Prepathon Mock CATs would be largely familiar with this test pattern and should do well in the actual CAT. 

All the Best everyone!!! 

Do post your experiences, opinion, number of attempts, queries, etc, in the comments section below.