CAT 2007: Comprehensive Analysis
As the instructions for CAT2007 were being announced over the PA system, many a student would have been contemplating as to what the monster called CAT could throw at them, this year, in terms of the surprise element. The surprise, on the face of it, seemed to turn out to be a damp squib, as the paper was �on the lines� of CAT2006 � with no deviation in the number of questions, the marking scheme or the pattern. However, the adage - �do not judge a book by its cover� rang true and loud. The paper was full of surprises on the inside and left many a student stumped and dazed!!
However the students of T.I.M.E. would have faced this paper in a much more composed manner when compared to the unfortunate many who missed out on the steep learning curve of the AIMCATs!! This is because the students had, by virtue of having taken the AIMCAT�s and analyzed each one extensively, already become quite familiar with many possible patterns of papers that were very closely similar and in fact even exactly identical as the CAT2007 paper.
A careful analysis of the paper reveals that the Verbal Ability section, though shorn of the vile �FIJs� continued to don an �infer-me-if-you-can� look � one that it had adopted in CAT2006. The QA section came back with all guns blazing and would have taken many hostages and thereby regained its aura of toughness. The Logic and Data Interpretation section did a complete volte face and went right back to the �calculation intensive days of yore. Though this section was the easiest of the three in this paper, students, unfortunately, could not exploit it to the fullest, considering the time consuming nature of the calculations that were required. Another, last but not the least of the observations was the fact that questions on Data Sufficiency made a come back, after a hiatus of a full two years, that too in a very big way. In fact, both QA and L&DI sections saw DS questions appearing in a generous measure, albeit with a different set of DS directions. These DS questions, further, turned out to be a definite life saver in each of the two sections.
Let us now take a closer look at each of the three sections in the paper:
Quantitative Aptitude
If one had started to think that the Quant section of the CAT had, in any respect, lost it�s �sting� or that it no longer struck terror in the hearts of the test taker�s, then one was in for a rude shock in this year�s QA section. The section was not only the most difficult in the paper; it was also, undoubtedly, the most difficult QA section to appear in the last several years. A cursory look at the questions in this section itself was sufficient to make an average CAT aspirant�s heart sink. The questions, were very evidently �tough� and finding a �familiar� question seemed to almost impossible. The emphasis was clearly on a thorough understanding of and proficiency in the concepts of QA and also on very high presence of mind � to glean the basic issue out of a seemingly complicated question in a very short time.
However, the section was not without its usual share of easy/doable questions � the adage that �no matter how difficult a section, there will always be a few easy questions in it� seemed to hold true even in this case. There were about seven or eight elementary questions, some evidently easy and some others, disguised to seem �not so easy�. Identifying and correctly solving even five to six of these questions would have been sufficient to scrape through the paper � needless to say that another couple of questions in addition to these seven or eight would put one in a very high percentile range.
Some of the questions in this section that one should have identified and attempted were: the question on average of even and odd integers, the one on average age of a family, all the four questions on Data Sufficiency, the one on n teams of k players each, the prices of two varieties of tea, the two intersecting circles, and even the question on the maximum value attained by a quadratic function. Some of the other questions that seemed difficult, but could possibly have been �cracked� within a reasonable amount of time (under the exam pressure) were the kind which involved numerical substitution. Some such questions were the set on �friends� and enemies� of members in a set and the set of questions on a and b, defined as recursive functions of p and q.
On the whole, a student with an average ability in QA could have managed just about 14+ marks in this section and any score from 19 to 30 can be considered to be good. Any score from 31 to 50 would be very good, and 50+, excellent.
The cutoff for this section is expected to be in the range of 19-21 marks.
Logic and Data Interpretation
The L & DI section of CAT2007 was a distinct departure from the trend of reasoning based DI sets, observed over the past few years. The questions in this section were, contrary to most expectations, not very reasoning intensive. Almost all the sets involved considerable calculations. Also, there would have been a certain sense of discomfort felt by most students due to one or two sets which seemed to call for one�s judgment to be exercised in understanding and manipulating the data given. The one major relief in this paper was that in most of the sets, the data did not take much effort to understand but the calculation intensive nature of the sets sort of made up for this concession.
The set on the �Actual costs incurred by a company� was tricky and would have required quite a bit of effort to solve. Students would have been wondering as to where the catch was when they saw the set on �Students in a school� � but one has to believe that CAT is not all about the difficult questions, there always are sitters in every CAT and this was no exception. The set on �Cost of major surgeries� was very easy and students should have been able to solve at least two of the four questions. The set on �Low Cost Airline� had a lot of guile and deception and, if one was not careful, could have resulted in quite a few errors. The set on the �Health drink company� involved very tedious calculations and at the end of it all, one could have still picked up the wrong answer, if the question was not understood properly. Over the years, Data Sufficiency had always provided succor to the students and it was no different this time, with three of them being absolute sitters.
On the whole, a student with an average ability in DI could have managed a score of about 22+ marks in this section and any score from 30 to 44 can be considered to be good. A score in the range of 45 to 60 would be very good, and 60+, excellent.
The cutoff for this section is expected to be in the range of 30-32 marks.
Verbal Ability
After the nightmare of CAT2006, students this year were seen praying fervently for a deliverance from this monster. Their prayers were definitely answered in that the FIJ questions were nowhere to be seen, but alas this joy was short-lived. The laconic monster of 2006 was replaced by the very verbose and very �abstract� devil called �Reading Comprehension�. If there is any word to describe the RC passages in this section, it would be �excruciating�. The passages were very painful to read and almost impossible to comprehend; added to this were five very close choices which would have forced many students to give up the ghost!!
All those who had counted on the Verbal area to salvage this section would have been thoroughly mauled (for the sheer lack of a more sinister word). The grammar questions would have stumped even the best experts of grammar and the Paragraph completion questions were tricky in the choices. The saving grace were the Para Jumble questions and the questions on �words/phrases�.
The four RC passages on �Paradigms in Scientific Traditions�, �Expressions of Experience�, �Ethnology� and �Sociology� were straight from hell(!) with most of them being so dense as to give serious competition to the densest element on this planet!! The students would have found that reading the philosophical treatises of Plato or the Psycho Analysis of Freud to be child�s play compared to what was on offer today! None of the four passages can be classified as �easy� or �doable�. The very fact that the experts have had to slog it out for many hours to generate the key to these passages would attest to the difficulty level, and hence low cutoff, of this section and surely, it was by no means �easy� as some would have it. All said and done, attempting around six to seven questions in two out of the four passages, with a strike rate of about 60%, would be quite an achievement � translating into a score of around 10 to 12 marks.
On the whole, a student with an average ability in VA could have managed a score of about 10+ marks in this section and any score from 18 to 30 can be considered to be good. A score in the range of 31 to 40 would be very good, and 40+, excellent.
The cutoff for this section is expected to be in the range of 18-20 marks.
The overall cutoff for at least one IIM call would be around 88-90 marks.
