Experts say that the reduction in duration of the CAT 2020 contributed to increased time pressure in the students' minds and played a big role in pushing up the perceived difficulty levels across sections
The Common Admission Test (CAT), which is a national level MBA entrance exam, was successfully conducted by IIM Indore. It’s estimated that a total of 2.28 lakhs applicants candidates will appeared for the exam in all three slots. A total of 76 questions were asked.
There were three section s— Verbal & Reading Comprehension (VARC), Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DILR) and Quantitative Aptitude.
The overall difficulty level of the exam was moderate to tough, similar to last year. Out of the three sections, VARC was the toughest while QA and DILR were Moderate.
For slot one, DILR was moderate, the way it has been for the past. An important attribute of this section was this time there were two sets of six questions each which has never happened in the last five years.
VARC: There were a total of four sets of reading comprehension questions. Two sets of RC were of 4 questions each and the other two sets of RC had five questions each. The overall level of this section was difficult.
Quantitative Aptitude: Around 17-18 questions were asked from Arithmetic and Algebra. The overall level of this section was moderate. There were eight Type in The Answer (TITA) questions out of the 26 questions asked in this section. No questions were asked from Permutation & Combination.
Slot two was difficult compared to the difficulty level of the exam held in slot one. The level of VARC was difficult. The DILR section was also difficult while the level of Quantitative Ability was moderate.
The VARC: Overall difficulty level of the section was difficult. There were a total of four sets of reading comprehension. Compared to last year, this section was tough. Two passages were moderate and two were difficult. Questions were not straightforward, they were inference based.
Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning: It was tough as compared to last year’s paper. There were two sets of six questions each. Out of 24 questions, there were 18 MCQs and 6 TITA based questions.
Quantitative Ability: The majority of the questions were from Arithmetic and Algebra. The overall level of the section was moderate and tougher than last year. Around eight-10 questions asked from Arithmetic, out of which five-six questions were of easy level. Algebra — there were around 10 questions in which three-four questions were of easy level. In QA, out of 26 questions, there were 18 MCQs and eight TITA based questions.
For slot three, the difficulty level and distribution of questions in slot three remained similar to slot one and two. In slot three, the level of VARC was difficult. The DILR section was also difficult while the level of QA was moderate.
The writer is Vijay Jha, President, Academics, Gradeup
On the whole, CAT 2020 can be said to have gone very smoothly, with students reporting a very positive experience from across the country. The COVID related processes also seem to have been managed very comprehensively with enough distancing between candidates.
Coming to the content of the exam, the three-hour to two-hour reduction in the duration of the exam did result in a reduction in the number of questions which gave all its AIMCATs with similar number of questions after the new pattern was announced in September.
Difficulty level analysis
The reduction in duration did contribute to increased time pressure in the students' minds and played a big role in pushing up the perceived difficulty levels across sections. To add to this, the sets/passages from LRDI and VARC themselves also were tougher compared to what was seen in the CATs of the recent past.
In VARC, the RC part saw more number of the tricky question types involving phrases like all…..except and also double negatives. While the Para-formation questions were similar in difficulty level to earlier, it would not help to know that the difficulty level if these questions always remained high in the earlier years as well due to the questions being of non-MCQ type.
The odd-one-out questions were also tough, as was the case earlier. It may also be said that they were a tad on the tougher side this year. The para summary questions were a bit doable out of the VA part, and must have been attempted this year.
Though the number of sets in LRDI was only five, finding the doable sets in the LRDI section was a bigger challenge this year. Across slots, such sets would have been best left for the last. To add further trouble, the presence of non-MCQs in these sets pushed up the difficulty level even more.
The quant section was a relative relief in all the three slots, though it was a surprise this year with many more questions from Algebra which pushed the difficulty level up.
Numbers did seem to get a lower representation overall this year, while P&C was conspicuously absent. Geometry & Mensuration, Time & Distance, ERPV hogged the limelight this year. Concepts like logarithms, inequalities, functions and graphs, coordinate geometry were fairly represented.
The fewer number of questions available to select from did make the section tough compared to last year. The section had its share of tough questions, pushing the cutoff down.
The writer is Pradeep Pandey, Academic Head, TIME, Delhi