BENGALURU: Analysing the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2017 which was held on Sunday, experts inferred that though the pattern was similar to that of CAT 2016, the basic cut-off score for different sections will differ this time.
As pointed out by many, the Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation (LRDI) out of the total 100 questions was ‘most challenging’ for candidates in both forenoon and afternoon test sessions.
Mr Gautam Puri, vice-chairman and managing director, Career Launcher, said that a candidate will be able to secure 99 percentile if he/she gets 12 out of 32 questions right in the LRDI section. Analysing the forenoon session, he said that the questions in the Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC) section were easy. “Candidates would have easily breezed through the five passages, even though one or two questions from each of them turned out to be tricky,” he said. Scoring 68-69, 36-38 and 62-63 marks in VARC, LRDI and Quantitative Ability (QA) respectively will ensure 99 percentile, which is the cut-off for candidates under general category to make it into top IIMs.
Analysing the afternoon slot, Mr Srinivas Belvi, Academic Head, T.I.M.E, said that the similarity of the question pattern with 34, 32 and 34 questions asked for VARC, LRDI and QA sections was a ‘huge positive’ as any surprises would have made them redraw their test-taking strategies. On the difficulty in the LRDI section, he said, “While a couple of sets were regular LR models, the others were not and were instead replaced by reasoning-based DI. There were some sets which could not be cracked, and those who spotted the tough ones soon enough would be the ones who managed to attempt a good number of questions.
Tackling such unfamiliar sets would have been a lot easier for those who took AIMCATs regularly.” According to experts, while the cut-off for QA is expected to be higher than that of CAT 2016, the cut-off will be on the lower end for VARC and the ‘most challenging’ LRDI sections.
Third-time candidate Ambuj G. said that the difficulty level of LRDI questions has been increasing every year, with the latest being the toughest since CAT 2015.
Of the 2.31 lakh candidates who signed up for the test, 1.99 lakh appeared on Sunday. The results are expected by the second week of January 2018.
