CAT 2019 Analysis by CATKing: Slot 1 and Slot 2

Overall CAT did not bring in any surprises for the students, the difficulty level of the exam overall was Moderate. Read CAT 2019 analysis by CATKing.

CAT 2019 is finally done. The most important day for 2.2 Lakh aspirants who gave the exam today. Let’s deep dive into understanding the difficulty level, section wise breakup of the two slots of CAT 2019 today so as to help candidates analyse their performance and plan the way ahead.

Overall, the CAT question paper did not bring any surprises for the students. The difficulty level of the exam overall was moderate. Of course, all students would have mixed reactions basis their own strengths and weaknesses.

CAT 2019 Analysis: Slot 1

Overall, the CAT 2019 exam was moderate in terms of difficulty level and quite similar to CAT 2017, the paper pattern was same as the previous two years. Verbal Ability was on the tougher side with the passages having a poetic touch with lot of inference-based questions, well that has been a trend since past two years. This enables to bridge the differential factor between engineers and non-engineers to avoid an upper edge of stronger analytical and mathematical skills. LR/DI of this slot was doable and did not create a trouble as one always hears students crib usually. Quants was on the side of being moderate.

Also Read:

• CAT exam analysis 2019 and expected cut offs
• CAT 2019: Student reactions & reviews
• CAT 2019 answer key of slot 1 and 2
• CAT 2019 score vs percentile

Section-wise CAT 2019 Analysis

Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension

Overall Difficulty: Moderate to Difficult

Section	Type of Questions	Number of Questions
Reading Comprehension	RC 1 - Arabian Nights  RC 2 - Science and Technology RC 3 - Consumer Retail RC 4 - Idea of Folk Music RC5: Topophilia	24 Questions
Verbal Ability	Odd One Out - 3 Questions (TITA) Parajumbles - 4 Questions (TITA) Paragraph Summary - 3 Questions	10 Questions

The Verbal section bought tears in eyes of most students with its increasing difficulty level of comprehending. Most questions were inference-based across all the passages. The Critical reasoning questions made it tricky too. Of course, there were easy questions amongst the 24 RC questions like Few Direct Factual Questions - Who was the author? Life could not be easier than this.

Good Vocabulary would be a boon for aspirants as they did ask questions based on this within the passages.

The Parajumble questions were TITA based just needed a little focus and time if you did not waste time attempting each RC question you wouldn’t find time crunch here. The odd-one-out questions too were doable. Para summary was interesting, MCQ based questions against the expected TITA ones. This made the life simpler.

Overall, in this section 24-26 questions would be considered an ideal attempt and with an accuracy of 90 per cent should fetch you 99 percentile.

Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning

Overall Difficulty: Easy to Moderate

Usually one fears this section, but today there were not too many tough sets at least not in Slot 1. Reasoning dominated the section with five analytical reasoning sets coming in. Data Interpretation though time consuming but was doable it wasn’t complex to interpret. A few new type of questions were there too from the Radar chart, street map.

Section	Features
Reasoning	5 sets total
Spider Set	Very easy
Chocolate and Candies Set	Doable
Multiplication A/B/C/D Set	Moderate
Data Interpretation	2 sets were lengthy and calculation intensive
Logical Reasoning plus Data Interpretation Combined	One question

An ideal attempt would be 16-20 questions with 90% accuracy target.

Quantitative Ability

Difficulty Level: Easy to Moderate

Surprisingly Quants was easier, definitely easier than previous years and like we have always been predicting it was definitely an Arithmetic intensive paper, followed by majority questions from Modern Maths and Geometry trailing in. For any aspirant even preparing for Arithmetic and Geometry would work as that would equip them to attempt 20/34 questions. Formula based questions were also prevalent today. This definitely would have helped ease the stress created in the start with the Verbal section not going super smooth.

Topics	Number of Questions
Geometry	6 to 7 questions
Arithmetic	11 to 13 questions
Algebra	6 to 7 questions
Modern Maths	8 questions
Number System	1 question

Definitely one should be able to attempt 22-25 Questions in this section.

CAT 2019 Analysis: Slot 2 Analysis

Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension

Most Questions were inference-based, students really found this a challenge to comprehend the passages. It definitely was tougher than Slot 1 Verbal section. Many Critical Reasoning Based Questions. Reading Comprehension Had Poetic Language and Tough to Comprehend passages.

Reading Comprehensions Summary	Verbal Ability Summary
P1: British Colonization in India	Parajumbles - 4 doable sets
P2: Language mitigating Cultural Barriers	Odd One Out -  3 TITA questions
P3: Philosophical	Soil Erosion Question
	Para Summary - 3 Questions
	Ability to convey expressions/ language questions

In this section, we would expect an ideal attempt of 22-24 Questions with a good accuracy.

Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning

This was the toughest section of all the slots. Most students were bamboozled by the questions being complex. A good attempt was 12 questions. Only two sets were easy.

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Reasoning section had games-based questions, which were tough. Data Interpretation section had triangular graph, produce, clothing with revenue and cost percentage was tough.

2 DI sets were Easy and 2 DI sets were moderate (Sudoku Based Question / 3 Doctors Clinic Based Question).

Quantitative Ability

The easiest of all Sections, many direct formula based questions. This totally compensated for the tough questions with questions based on percentages, averages and direct application based questions.

Difficulty Level: Easy to Moderate

Topic	Number of Questions
Geometry	4 to 5 questions
Arithmetic	12 to 15 questions
Number System	1 to 2 questions
Functions and Graphs	2 to 3 questions
Progressions	2 to 3 questions
Algebra	2 to 3 questions

Summarizing the two slots: Overall moderate exam. No surprises in CAT exam.

Expected CAT Score and Percentile

Total Score	Expected Percentile
160	99 percentile
110	95 percentile
100	90 percentile

About the Expert:

Rahul Singh is the Director of CATKing, a premier MBA Coaching institute of Maharashtra. Rahul Singh completed his MBA from SPJIMR and is a Master of Information Technology from Virginia Tech. He has also pursued SPNM from Havard Business School. Among numerous awards, he's been honoured with Digital Indian of the Year 2016 and Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2015.