CAT 2018 exam analysis: Slot 1 and Slot 2

This year’s CAT conducting authority, IIM Calcutta, successfully conducted the exam at various centres across the country. The forenoon slot was held from 9am to 12 noon while the afternoon session was held from 2:30pm - 5:30pm. The Common Admission Test (CAT) is an annual admission test conducted by IIMs for their PGP (equivalent to MBA) admissions.
This troublesome feline did show its true colours right in its first slot. The Quant section was the most intimidating section and as opined by experts it was ‘by far the most difficult QA section in CAT in the last 10 years’. The DILR was not far behind, nonetheless, it could not overshadow the QA. It is noteworthy that there was no remarkable change in the exam pattern except minor structural changes in the VARC section.

The exam had a total of 100 questions. Section-wise, 34 were asked from the VARC section, 32 from DILR and 34 questions from QA. In the first slot, there were 24 TITA questions while the second slot had 26 TITA questions



We, at Gradeup, expect CAT 2018 cut-off to be lower than that of CAT 2017 in the QA section. The cut-off is likely to remain the same in the VARC section.

An overall break up of the second slot:


VARC

The first slot was on similar lines as those of CAT 2017. The passages were doable, para-jumbles easy and para summaries moderate. The RCs were on the following topics;

• Increase in aggression in human and elephant conflicts caused by post trauma stress in elephants
• neglect of India’s role in the Second World War in its popular narrative
• Corporate hypocrisy about and around plastic usage
• Inheritance of acquired characteristics
• Economics of happiness

In the second slot, no noteworthy change was noticed as reported by the students. The VA section was easier with para summary being a tad too difficult. The RCs were on the following topics;

• Demerits of the metric system
• Saturn’s orbit and rings

DILR

The first slot had 8 sets of 4 questions each. It had 8 TITA questions and the topics covered topics that included pie charts, matrix, Venn diagram, tabular and missing data etc. It had almost the same difficulty level as that of CAT 2017.
In the second slot, other things remaining same, coding- decoding was the only new topic asked. The tabular DI was exhaustive in terms of calculations.

QA

The title of the “most gruelling section” goes to the QA. As said earlier, it was the most difficult QA section in CAT in the last 10 years.
In the second slot, the level ran parallel to that of the first.

Percentile wise raw score:


According to the official CAT 2018 notification, the results of this exam is expected to be released by Second week of January 2019.