CAT 2011 Test Experiences......

Common Admission Test (CAT 2011) started on 22 October 2011, Saturday across the country with 5,690 candidates appearing on the first day.

Candidates were asked to report 90 minutes before at the test centers. CAT 2011 has adopted a new format with only two sections instead of three. The first section had questions on quantitative ability and data interpretation (DI) while the second was based on verbal ability and logical reasoning.

A tutorial for 15 minutes about the new format helps students to familiarize themselves with what is required to be done in the 140 minutes of the test.

CAT on the first day was smooth sailing with no errors at most of the centers across the country. Some centers admitted very few technical issues like login errors.

Some students shared their experience about CAT 2011 on the first day.

• Most students stated that the Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation section to be slightly difficult. This section was given 70 minutes to answer 30 questions in each section.
• Verbal Ability, Reading Comprehension and Logical Reasoning section was termed moderately easy in difficulty level compared to first section, as there were enough sets of Logical Reasoning, which were easy and scoring.

Many candidates finished the first section early and had to wait for the completion of 70 minutes before they could begin the next set of questions. This made students feel that they would have had more time, if they were allowed to attend next section/other questions immediately.

Overall CAT 2011 on the first day was termed moderate in difficulty level. 

REAL EXAM EXPERIENCES 

1)The first section, as disclosed earlier by the IIMs, was QA and DI. The split of the questions was very good. The difficulty level of this section is very manageable in my opinion for a well prepared student. Do not expect any Erdos kind of equation to come in. Standard application, basic concepts were tested succinctly. Regulars like Number system, basic algebra, geometry etc made their presence felt. Please do your basic books and concepts. You would not regret.
Questions in Data Interpretation area were also pretty straight forward. What made this experience better was the numbers were easy to relate to in the question unlike some of the previous years when a line chart could be more difficult to read. Overall- Very intelligent paper.

Remembering quick calculations would help

The second section- VA and LR. There had been a lot of apprehension with respect to what constitutes LR. Is it Reasoning based, ala DI, questions or hard core Critical reasoning questions. If, today's patters has anything to go by, what the IIMs and Prometric meant by Logical Reasoning is what you understood- simple reasoning based questions minus any scope of language intricacy. The start of the section was wonderful with questions from almost every area in VA. What has not changed with CAT is its intimacy to RCs. Passages were of manageable length and made for a good reading. 

 

 

2)Attempts- 46( 16(qa+di) +30(va+lr)

1st section- It was split as 20qa+10di
di sets were solvable, but calculation intensive, 1 set was simple calculations while rest two were a lengthier.
In quants they touched almost all the topics..and 1-2 questions were asked from each topic. To my surprise there weren't any questions from remainder.
quants was manageable for any aspirant with decent preparation.
I was not completely in groove but still managed to solve 12 in it. But took a lot of time so was left with only 10 minutes for DI sets, and ended up solving only 4 there.
No rocket science as the mocks tends to show, was involved here in this section.

2nd section- It was almost a cake walk. We often practice tough LR sets, but all here was moderate to easy. RCs were really good and not much conceptual questions. and almost every topic was touched in va.
It was the easier section and I guess only sentence corrections were a bit tricky.

Tips- Though repeaters must be knowing, but still for the first timers-kindly start the test early so that to save yourself from the noise, which others make on completing the test earlier
And to everyone don't worry about the exam, the paper will be doable, and very very different from the mocks. I can assure you that even if you are getting 40%iles in mocks next 5-7 days of smart study can take you up to 99.

Here is analysis by PT education & CL...

CAT_2011_Experience_Precautions_Strategy.pdf

First%20impression%20of%20CAT%202011.pdf

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