CAT 2014 Analysis for Day 2 final slot

by Manish Harodia

After five first day first shows, CAT decided to give me a cold shoulder this year and relegated me to the last of its suitors. No complaints, though!! I managed to read about what people did in the first three slots, what should be my strategy, what questions/areas/formulae I need to mug up again so that I can score that elusive to score etc. I did all of that and here I present my CAT 2014 analysis.

CAT 2014 day 2 third slot analysis

CAT 2014: Student reactions on DAY 2

This was my 13^th tete-a-tete if I count right. CAT has come a full circle in my opinion: from having seen 180 questions in 120 minutes to 123 in 120 to 60 in 120 to, now, 100 in 170.

Much has been written over the past three slots this year. I will try to make this CAT analysis as objective as possible without acting Nostradamus.

CAT 2014 Live Updates

Reached the centre in Pune well in advance (for CAT 2014 day 2 second slot) only to find a Coke Studio audition truck playing loud music outside.J Went in through the normal frisking and identification protocol and we were then seated to our respective workstations.

Flip Side of the process:

1. The centre had shortage of pens and candidates were left high and dry for a good 15 minutes before the invigilators finally managed to restore sanity by providing the pens.
2. Rough sheets had no accountability, at least in my testing lab. Even after the exam, the invigilator just asked us to leave the rough sheets with him without ‘counting’ and move out of the hall- slightly risky as it would be very easy for someone to use the rough paper to carry questions outside.
3. Questions in Reading Comprehensions (RCs) were mixed up for me. For example, I found couple of questions of an RC in some other RC and was slightly surprised at the goof up. However, I guess, this can be attributed to the coding failure rather than the content failure on the part of the IIMs.

Pros of the new test

1. Wonderful testing experience. However, the Prometric summary sheet of the yesteryears was ‘summarily’ missed this time.
2. Unlimited rough sheet supply with Pens. Ensured that the hassle of sharpening pencils like previous years was taken care of.
3. System prompts you to start the test and also collects feedback. A welcome move, only if the feedback is taken seriously by TCS and/or IIMs.
4. Zero disturbance by the invigilator unlike previous years to come and randomly check your admit cards.

CAT 2014 Paper analysis

Section 1 (QA & DI)

As has been the trend this year, most of the questions in QA were very do-able. I could identify at least 12 sitters that any reasonably prepared student would have surely attempted. With a little more application of basic logic and use of answer options, the attempts could be taken to 22/34. No high level concepts or lengthy questions made this a sail through section.

DI, on the contrary, was a little trickier. The good part was minimal calculation, but DI, in my opinion, had a very strong bit of reasoning involved as well. Students might get stuck in couple of questions here. Another fact that I noted was the data provided in DI was pretty huge and therefore replication on rough sheets might have made job tougher.

Overall, an attempt of about 28 should be very good in section 1.

Section 2 (VA & LR)

Easily a broad change in strategy from the previous years’ papers with ambiguous Verbal. This time questions were fairly straight-forward. However, some questions on ‘find the odd one’ may raise variable consensus.

A change from previous slots was the reversal to the five sentence parajumbles today.  However, this complexity was probably offset by the easy answer options provided. Again, not a single question on vocabulary emphasizes the preference of contextual English usage compared to rote English. I also identified a question that was verbatim reproduced from one of the previous years’ CAT actual question.

Logical reasoning section had some tough caseletes and most of the questions provided had conditional solutions. There were a number of questions starting with the conditionality ‘if’ ,therefore making the question solving a little time consuming.  Another interesting part was that there was a caselet which also involved mathematical reasoning, unlike simple reasoning, to crack in less time.

Overall, an attempt of about 25 should do the trick for this section.

To sum up, I do not think people should be too bothered when they read about people making 75-80 attempts. Even after taking my 13^th CAT today, I realized that what I stated on the first day might actually be very accurate. One needs only about 45-48 genuine attempts to get at least one IIM call.

What is also sad to note is the continued irrelevance of the so called national test series. I did not find a single test series that was close to what actual CAT 2014 was. Probably the coaching institutions are serving some purpose by unnecessarily creating a halo around a simple and manageable exam like CAT. The only ingredients, that would have marred/made the chances, are aggression for 170 minutes, with a judicious discretion at leaving select questions/caselets.

Wish the readers all the very best for IIFT tomorrow!!

About the author

Manish Harodia is the founder of Genesis Mentors, an institute that claims to send almost 75% of their students to top 20 colleges in India and world every year.They can be connected here for any queries:www.facebook.com/genesismentors