CAT 2006: Surprise!!! Surprise!!!

Yes, indeed this year’s CAT was a surprise to all of us. Never thought that question numbers would be reduced to only 75!! Everyone of us expected a big big paper – now only 75 questions with 150 minutes! My bet is that this year you need quite high marks to get into IIMs. Given the level of difficulty in quants and DI portions – people will score very well – 100 percent in both the sections is on platter! Average won’t be very high because of the shock factor! Hence cutoffs will be:

QA = 12-14 questions or 40+

VA= 10 questions or 40+

DI = 9 questions or 36+

If in total you can get 110+ your percentile will be around 99!

Main changes in CAT this year:

• Reduction of questions to 75 – all time low!
• 4 marks per question
• 5 options per question
• Negative marking = 1/4^th per wrong answer

VA section:

Surprise! Surprise here! If you had looked at the 1994 question set – the paper won’t be a surprise to you. Critical reasoning revisited! If you had planned to leave RC altogether, the paper must have been a rude shock to you – 60 marks on RC!

In overall, if you had answered 16 questions with cent percent accuracy – you had done a very good job!

QA Section:

One of the easiest QA section I had seen ever! Attempting 12-14 questions here is a must to have any realistic chance of cracking CAT! I know guys who cracked all 25 questions in this section!

DI/LR section:

The DI/LR section was with usual difficulty level and anyone attempting over 12 questions correctly here has positive chances!

This year your VA and DI/LR attempts will be a deciding factor, assuming that everyone will do well in QA! If you had cracked DI/LR and VA (answered nearly 60% with 90% accuracy) – be sure – you are getting calls from the IIMs!

You can get the answer keys here:

PT was the first to come up with the key at:

http://www.ptindia.com/cat/analysis.php

Time has their analysis up at:

http://www.time4education.com/CAT2006/Cat2006_Analysis.ASP

Career Forum has their and analysis at:

http://www.cflogic.com/

Next week I’ll start the GD-PI strategy module. Keep watching for it!

Boss@IIMA