CAT 2017 second slot was no different than the first- DILR continued to play spoiler. Most CAT aspirants who spoke to PaGaLGuY said that while the paper was moderately easy, DILR will keep them worried till the results next year. 

Rhythm Agarwal, Patiala’s engineering graduate from Thapar University said the paper was better than last year. “I personally found Quant to be quite easy. But, as the trend goes, DILR was very tough and tricky to be solved in the limited time frame. I solved around 18 questions in DILR, but quite a few of them, I was not sure of the answer,” Rhythm said. He added that the mouse given to him at his computer desk was malfunctioning and he had to click at least 3-4 times for an impression. “This took quite a bit of my time too,” the engineer said.  

It was Ankit Patel’s third try at CAT this year. This Jabalpur lad wants to better his previous scores of 85 and 92 percentile. “ I solved around 30 questions in English, 11 in DILR and 23 in Quant. I am expecting a lower cut-off this year as well for DILR, keeping in mind the tough nature of the questions,” Ankit said.

Comparatively, Dheeraj Dhurve from Mumbai sounded confident of his performance. He is taking CAT for the second time. Dheeraj told PaGaLGuY that he received a call from IIM Ranchi last year but gave it a miss for a ‘better’ college. “If I look back at the exam last year, I can definitely say this was a better exam. Except for DILR, which is a tough nut to crack every year, all the other sections were comparatively easy.” Dheeraj added that he solved 30 questions in English, 20 in DILR and 28 in Quant. 

Bangalore’s Prateek Verma also found the DILR section difficult and could solve only 15 questions in it. “I found English and Quant section questions to be quite easy and doable in the specified timeframe. It was DILR that bothered me the most,” Prateek sighed.