Dear readers,

This quiz consists of questions from
various past actual CAT papers. Leave your answers/ responses in the
comments section below and soon we’ll let you know the correct answers!

Directions for questions 1 to 10: The
sentences given in each question, when properly sequenced, form a coherent
paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a letter. Choose the most logical
order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent
paragraph.

1.

A. Although there are large regional
variations, it is not infrequent to find a large number of people sitting here
and there and doing nothing.

B. Once in office, they receive friends and
relatives who feel free to call any time without prior appointment.

C. While working, one is struck by the slow
and clumsy actions and reactions, indifferent attitudes, procedure rather than
outcome orientation, and the lack of consideration for others.

D. Even those who are employed often come
late to the office and leave early unless they are forced to be punctual.

E. Work is not intrinsically valued in
India.

F. Quite often people visit ailing friends
and relatives or go out of their way to help them in their personal matters
even during office hours.

a. ECADBF              b. EADCFB               c. EADBFC               d. ABFCDE

2.

A. But in the industrial era destroying the
enemy’s productive capacity means bombing the factories which are located in
the cities.

B. So in the agrarian era, if you need to
destroy the enemy’s productive capacity, what you want to do is burn his
fields, or if you’re really vicious, salt them.

C. Now in the information era, destroying
the enemy’s productive capacity means destroying the information
infrastructure.

D. How do you do battle with your enemy?

E. The idea is to destroy the enemy’s
productive capacity, and depending upon the economic foundation, that
productive capacity is different in each case.

F. With regard to defense, the purpose of
the military is to defend the nation and be prepared to do battle with its
enemy.

a. FDEBAC          b. FCABED                  c. DEBACF               d. DFEBAC

3.

A. Michael Hofman, a poet and translator,
accepts this sorry fact without approval or complaint.

B. But thanklessness and impossibility do
not daunt him.

C. He acknowledges too – in fact, he
returns to the point often – that best translators of poetry always fail at
some level.

D. Hofman feels passionately about his work
and this is clear from his writings.

E. In terms of the gap between worth and
rewards, translators come somewhere near nurses and street-cleaners.

a. EACDB             b. ADEBC              c. EACBD              d. DCEAB

4.

A. Passivity is not, of course, universal.

B. In areas where there are no lords or
laws, or in frontier zones where all men go armed, the attitude of the
peasantry may well be different.

C. So indeed it may be on the fringe of the
unsubmissive.

D. However, for most of the soil-bound
peasants the problem is not whether to be normally passive or active, but when
to pass from one state to another.

E. This depends on an assessment of the
political situation.

a. BEDAC             b. CDABE               c. EDBAC                 d. ABCDE

5.

A. The situations in which violence occurs
and the nature of that violence tends to be clearly defined at least in theory,
as in the proverbial Irishman’s question: “Is this a private fight or can
anyone join in?”

B. So the actual risk to outsiders, though
no doubt higher than our societies, is calculable.

C. Probably the only uncontrolled
applications of force are those of social superiors to social inferiors and
even here there are probably some rules.

D. However, binding the obligation to kill,
members of feuding families engaged in mutual massacre will be genuinely
appalled if by some mischance a bystander or outsider is killed.

a. DABC              b. ACDB                  c. CBAD                    d. DBAC

6.

A. Branded disposable diapers are available
at many supermarkets and drug stores.

B. If one supermarket sets a higher price
for a diaper, customers may buy that brand elsewhere. C. By contrast, the
demand for private-label products may be less price sensitive since it is
available only at a corresponding supermarket chain.

D. So the demand for branded diapers at any
particular store may be quite price sensitive.

E. For instance, only SavOn Drugs stores
sell SavOn Drugs diapers.

F. Then stores should set a higher
incremental margin percentage for private label diapers.

a. ABCDEF             b. ABCEDF             c. ADBCEF                d. AEDBCF

7.

A. Having a strategy is a matter of
discipline.

B. It involves the configuration of a
tailored value chain that enables a company to offer unique value.

C. It requires a strong focus on
profitability and a willingness to make tough tradeoffs in choosing what not to
do.

D. Strategy goes far beyond the pursuit of
best practices.

E. A company must stay the course even
during times of upheaval, while constantly improving and extending its
distinctive positioning.

F. When a company’s activities fit together
as a self-reinforcing system, any competitor wishing to imitate a strategy must
replicate the whole system.

a. ACEDBF              b. ACBDEF                  c. DCBEFA                             d. ABCEDF

8.

A. As officials, their vision of a country
shouldn’t run too far beyond that of the local people with whom they have to
deal.

B. Ambassadors have to choose their words.

C. To say what they feel they have to say,
they appear to be denying or ignoring part of what they know.

D. So, with ambassadors as with other
expatriates in black Africa, there appears at a first meeting a kind of
ambivalence.

E. They do a specialized job and it is
necessary for them to live ceremonial lives.

a. BCEDA             b. BEDAC                  c. BEADC                        d. BCDEA

9.

A. “This face-off will continue for several
months given the strong convictions on either side,” says a senior functionary
of the high-powered task force on drought.

B. During the past week-and-half, the
Central Government has sought to deny some of the earlier apprehensions over
the impact of drought.

C. The recent revival of the rains had led
to the emergence of a line of divide between the two.

 D.
The state governments, on the other hand, allege that the Centre is downplaying
the crisis only to evade its full responsibility of financial assistance that
is required to alleviate the damage.

E. Shrill alarm about the economic impact
of an inadequate monsoon had been sounded by the Centre as well as most of the
states, in late July and early August.

a. EBCDA           b. DBACE                   c. BDCAE                       d. ECBDA

10.

A. This fact was established in the 1730s
by French survey expeditions to Equador near the Equator and Lapland in the
Arctic, which found that around the middle of the earth the arc was about a
kilometer shorter.

B. One of the unsettled scientific
questions in the late 18th century was that of exact nature of the shape of the
earth.

C. The length of one-degree arc would be
less near the equatorial latitudes than at the poles. D. One way of doing that
is to determine the length of the arc along a chosen longitude or meridian at
one degree latitude separation.

E. While it was generally known that the
earth was not a sphere but an ‘oblate spheroid’, more curved at the equator and
flatter at the poles, the question of ‘how much more’ was yet to be
established.

a. BECAD                 b. BEDCA                 c. EDACB                  d. EBDCA

MBA:

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