
CAT 2023 slot 1 question paper was moderately tough in terms of difficulty level. IIM Lucknow, who conducted the exam in 2023, had prepared the paper on the same lines as past years CAT papers. The VARC section of CAT 2023 slot 1 was not too difficult but was not too easy either. There were a total of 24 questions, out of which 16 were RC based. Thus, candidates preparing for the CAT 2026 exam, must practice RC passages extensively.
CAT 2026 will be conducted on November 29 and the best time to practice official question papers is after completing the CAT syllabus. It is important that you practice previous years’ CAT question papers to be well in control of all types of VARC passages. Aim to complete the syllabus latest by October to get atleast a month of practice.
- CAT 2023 Slot 1 VARC Questions with Solutions
- CAT 2023 Slot 1 VARC Question Paper: Topic wise Breakup
- CAT 2023 Slot 1 Reading Comprehension Topics
- CAT 2023 Slot 1 Question Paper Analysis: VARC
- CAT Question Paper FAQs
CAT 2023 Slot 1 VARC Questions with Solutions
CAT 2023 Slot 1 VARC Questions
Check below a few original CAT 2023 VARC questions asked in the first slot of the exam. The questions are followed by answers. You will also find a downloadable PDF of CAT 2023 Slot 1 question paper for VARC. Pratice these CAT questions to gain control on the topic.
DIRECTIONS for the question: Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
Question 1
1. In English, there is no systematic rule for the naming of numbers; after ten, we have "eleven" and "twelve" and then the teens: "thirteen", "fourteen", "fifteen" and so on.
2. Even more confusingly, some English words invert the numbers they refer to: the word "fourteen" puts the four first, even though it appears last.
3. It can take children a while to learn all these words, and understand that "fourteen" is different from "forty".
4. For multiples of 10, English speakers switch to a different pattern: "twenty", "thirty", "forty" and so on.
5. If you didn't know the word for "eleven", you would be unable to just guess it - you might come up with something like "one-teen".
Answer:- 3
DIRECTIONS for the question: Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
Question 2
1. Having an appreciation for the workings of another person's mind is considered a prerequisite for natural language acquisition, strategic social interaction, reflexive thought, and moral judgment.
2. It is a 'theory of mind' though some scholars prefer to call it 'mentalizing' or 'mindreading', which is important for the development of one's cognitive abilities.
3. Though we must speculate about its evolutionary origin, we do have indications that the capacity evolved sometime in the last few million years.
4. This capacity develops from early beginnings in the first year of life to the adult's fast and often effortless understanding of others' thoughts, feelings, and intentions.
5. One of the most fascinating human capacities is the ability to perceive and interpret other people's behaviour in terms of their mental states.
Answer:- 2
DIRECTIONS for the question: Read the passage and answer the question based on it.
Many human phenomena and characteristics - such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things - are influenced both by geographic factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people. . . . [T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea cannot be attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] They are instead due entirely to the different [government] policies.....At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic, rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography....... Aboriginal Australia remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming or herding [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all non-native (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don't react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing "cultural determinism," "historical determinism," or "individual determinism," and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing "geographic determinism"...
Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today.
Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted......But often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason. A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of geography and other fields of scholarship ......Most historians and economists don't acquire that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.
Question 3: All of the following can be inferred from the passage EXCEPT:
A) several academic studies of human phenomena in the past involved racist interpretations.
B) agricultural practices changed drastically in the Australian continent after it was colonised.
C) while most human phenomena result from culture and individual choice, some have bio-geographic origins.
D) individual dictat and contingency were not the causal factors for the use of fur clothing in some very cold climates.
Answer:- C
Question 4: The author criticises scholars who are not geographers for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
A) the importance they place on the role of individual decisions when studying human phenomena.
B) their outdated interpretations of past cultural and historical phenomena.
C) their labelling of geographic explanations as deterministic.
D) their rejection of the role of biogeographic factors in social and cultural phenomena.
Answer:- B
CAT 2023 Slot 1 VARC Question Paper: Topic wise Breakup
Check the below table for the break up of VARC section of CAT 2023 slot 1 question paper set wise difficulty level.
| VARC Topics |
No. of Questions |
Difficulty Level |
|---|---|---|
| Reading Comprehension |
16 |
Overall: Difficult |
| Verbal Ability |
08 |
Overall: Difficulty |
| Para jumble |
2 |
Easy to moderate |
| Para completion |
2 |
Easy |
| Para summary |
2 |
Easy to moderate |
| Odd sentence out |
2 |
Easy to moderate |
Also Read: CAT exam pattern
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CAT 2023 Slot 1 Reading Comprehension Topics
CAT RC topics were as usual tough to comprehend. Those who 'd practiced enough were able to crack them, but those who weren't wrll prepared found the RC passages time taking. Given below are the topics and word count of RC passage of CAT 2023 Slot 1 VARC question papers:
| CAT RC Topics |
No. of Questions |
Word Count |
|---|---|---|
| Passage 1: Return of wolves’ predation in a French region |
4 |
400 to 450 |
| Passage 2: Current economies of North and South Korea |
4 |
400 to 450 |
| Passage 3: Indian Ocean Literature |
4 |
400 to 450 |
| Passage 4:Modern materialism versus ancient societies |
4 |
400 to 450 |
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CAT 2023 Slot 1 Question Paper Analysis: VARC
The VARC section of CAT 2023 slot 1 was on the similar lines as slot 1 and 2. Check below key highlight of this section:
- The difficulty level of CAT 2023 slot 1 VARC section however, was higher than the other two slots
- The four RC passages were long, of about 400 to 450 words, with about 2-3 questions doable in each set
- Out of 16 questions, 4 were non-MCQs
- Verbal Ability consisted of para summary, odd sentence, para completion and para jumble
- The Verbal Ability questions were easy and mostly doable
Also read: CAT 2023 exam analysis
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CAT Question Paper FAQs
Check below some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on CAT question paper:
In CAT Quantitative Aptitude, Arithmetic has the highest weightage with 7-8 questions in every shift. In VARC, Reading Comprehension has the maximum weightage with about 16 questions. In DILR, the number of questions are equally distributed.
Difficulty level in CAT exam is not specific to any of the three slots. The difficulty level across slots may vary every year. Know how the CAT scores are normalised: https://www.shiksha.com/mba/articles/understanding-cat-normalization-process-blogId-9386.
While it is not mandatory to attempt all sections in CAT, the IIMs and all top B School consider sectional percentiles too for selecting candidates for admission. Thus, you cannot afford to skip a CAT section all together. You can skip some questions though.
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CAT Exam
Student Forum
Answered 22 hours ago
CAT frequently tests concepts based on relative speed, linear and circular races, trains passing platforms or other trains, boats and streams, and escalators.
V
Contributor-Level 7
Answered 22 hours ago
Typically, 1 to 3 questions are asked from Time, Speed, and Distance in the Quant section of CAT exam. It is one of the high weightage topics within Arithmetic.
L
Contributor-Level 7
Answered 3 days ago
Some frequent traps in CAT exam are:
- Confusing the counts of original and new members in replacement vs. inclusion problems.
- Weighting by values instead of quantities or frequencies in weighted average setups.
R
Contributor-Level 7
Answered 3 days ago
Yes. Most CAT-level problems involving replacements, group additions, or combinations are designed to test logical shortcuts rather than heavy calculations.
N
Contributor-Level 7
Answered 3 days ago
Direct questions on Averages typically range from 1 to 2 per slot in the CAT exam. However, the concept appears across several other topics, including Mixtures & Alligations, etc.
R
Contributor-Level 7
Answered 4 days ago
Candidates can refer to How to Prepare for Logical Reasoning for CAT by Arun Sharma and DILR for CAT by Nishit K. Sinha.
P
Contributor-Level 10
Answered 4 days ago
Yes, Routes and Networks is an important topic for CAT DILR. It tests logical thinking, visualisation and the ability to analyse connections and pathways.
P
Contributor-Level 10
Answered 4 days ago
CAT does not have a fixed number of questions from Routes and Networks. The topic may appear as part of a DILR set, usually comprising 4-5 questions.
P
Contributor-Level 10
Can I solve CAT TSD questions without complex algebraic equations?