CAT 2011 Overall Analysis

CAT 2011 Overall Analysis

First and foremost, for reducing unpredictability, the number of questions in each section was announced beforehand only. As result, students were no longer surprised or shocked after seeing the number of questions.

Secondly, this time CAT exam has fixed time limit for each section and the order of the section was fixed i.e. Quantitative Ability (QA) + Data Interpretation (DI) section was followed by Verbal Ability (VA) + Logical Reasoning (LR) section. As a result, students were free from issues such as time management and choosing the sequence of attempting various sections.

In the Minglebox survey, nearly 66% students claimed that their performance in VA+LR section was good whereas 40% students claimed that their performance in QA+DI section was good.

Thirdly, the only surprise element that came bundled with CAT exam this year was that even the students who took the exam in the same slot had different papers with a difference element of 1-2%. This was mainly followed to keep the difficulty level of the exam intact.

Fourthly, Minglebox after talking to a few students who took CAT inferred that the difficulty level did not vary drastically across various slots or different papers in the same slot. The difficulty level was maintained across slots and everyone got a comparable paper. This was probably a major change in the CAT exam in comparison to previous years.

Overall, CAT has not been a very tough exam this year. Nearly 60% of the students rated their overall performance in the CAT to be good in the MB survey.

Students who have made nearly 20-22 attempts in QA+DI section (1st section) with almost 85% accuracy and around 23-24 attempts in VA+LR section (2ndsection) with nearly 80% accuracy can expect at least some calls from the top B-schools in India.

Moreover, combining QA with DI and VA with LR has spread the questions more evenly in comparison to the earlier CAT exams. As a result, each student found more attemptable questions in either of the sections. More attemptable questions ensured CAT to be more competitive this year and the cut-offs can definitely expected to be on the higher side.

If the DI happens to be with more calculation oriented questions, it is hardly a surprise that students may find it difficult.

Students felt that section II was marginally easier than the first section as there were enough sets of Logical Reasoning, which are scoring and easy too.

While a student may be bad in Vocabulary, Grammar or Reading Comprehension, but if has the knack to give sufficient time to the Logical Reasoning questions, then it is that much more easier to clear the cutoffs in that section.”

Cutoffs

According to Experts, the cutoffs for CAT 2011 could be similar to that of CAT 2010.To get a 85 percentile in each of the sections, around 35percent of the net mark would be able to get one there.

Similarly, to get a 97percentile+, a student would probably need around 40 percent to 45 percent net mark in each of the sections say Experts.