CAT 2017 Exam Analysis and Expected Cut-offs

The CAT exam is India’s top management entrance exam and it is a gateway to 20 IIMs and over 8000 other business schools in India.

The CAT 2017 exam was held in two sessions on Nov 26, 2017. The first session was held from 9 am to 12 pm and the second session was held from 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm. There were no changes to the CAT exam structure in terms of the number of questions and time.

The question paper consisted of 100 questions. There were 34 Quantitative Ability (QA) questions, 34 Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) questions and 32 Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DI-LR) questions.

The first slot of CAT 2017 was towards higher difficulty level as compared to the second slot. DI-LR section was most difficult and time consuming. The most significant twist this year was over emphasis on DI with only 8-10 questions based on LR. This time the number of Type In The Answer (TITA) questions was more especially in the QA section.

MBA expert Rahul Singh, Director CATKing, told Shiksha,"Verbal being easy to moderate; high focus was on Reading Comprehension and Type In The Answer questions from para-jumbles. DI-LR questions were of moderate to difficult level with no conventional DI questions. Data Interpretation dominated with only 8 to 10 reasoning questions. QA was easy with direct formula application and concept based questions dominated by Arithmetic and Algebra than the usual Geometry."

In the QA section of CAT 2017, there were 11 MCQs with more Arithmetic questions, while in DI-LR section was equally divided between DI and LR questions. 16 questions were on DI and 16 on LR. There were 8 MCQs out of 32 questions in this section. The difficultly level in DI-LR section was moderate to high while, in QA section it can be termed as easy to moderate.

The VARC section of CAT 2017 was of easy to moderate difficulty with 24 questions on RC (5 passages). 10 questions were from grammar out of which 7 were non-MCQs.

Here's the section wise analysis of CAT 2017 by Rahul Singh

Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC):

There were 4 to 5 RC s plus a couple of questions from Odd One Out (sentence) and Critical Reasoning.

In both the slots, the RCs were based on Technology, Social Sciences, History Geography and Humanities in the broader perspective. The Reading Comprehension section did not have any TITA questions. The section was more aligned towards inference based questions like the central idea of the passage which were not too difficult.

The para-jumbles were TITA so adequate practice would have ensured good results.

Overall Difficulty: Easy to Moderate

Good Attempts: 25-28

Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR):

In the Logical Reasoning section there were 8-10 Analytics puzzles and 8-10 data based puzzles while DI section had 8 sets of caselets. The caselets focused on reasoning and analytical ability. One of them had TITA type questions. This section also had a bar graph which can be termed as difficult.

The Logical Reasoning section of second slot was easier than the first slot as it had basic seating arrangement, puzzles and less exhaustive data calculations. In, fact it was on the lines of the CAT official mock test released by IIM CAT.

Overall Difficulty: Difficult

Good Attempts: 15-18

Quantitative Ability (QA):

Out of all the three sections, QA was easy as about 16-17 questions were formula and concept application based. See break-up of the section below:

Overall Difficulty: Easy to Moderate

Good Attempts: 20-25

VARC being easy to moderate; DI-LR being moderate to difficult and QA being easy to moderate, overall good attempts will be 75-80.

Keeping both slots in focus a 99%ile would be an ideal attempt. 75+ with 90% accuracy so somewhere around 155 should bag a 99%ile and a 105 to get you 90%ile.

Expected cut off for 2018-2020 admissions:

Expected cut off for 2018-2020 admissions (non-IIMs):

About our 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.

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