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The Common Admission Test, the most important MBA exam in India commenced this morning.
There are three slots today
The first slot of CAT 2022 took place today between 8.30 am and 10:30 am.
The structure of CAT 2022 remained largely the same as in 2021. However, the DILR and Verbal
sections saw some changes in segmentation and the number of MCQs and TITA. Verbal Section
had 2 paragraph completion questions instead of the anticipated Odd Sentence questions.
Overall, Slot 1 of CAT this year was slightly more difficult than Slot 1 of last year.
The marking scheme was +3 for every correct and -1 for incorrect. There was no negative
marking for TITA Qs.
Based on the feedback received from several candidates who have appeared in the first slot,
our initial estimate of the percentiles and scores*** is as follows. These estimates will be suitably revised soon after the CAT releases the response sheets
Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension
The VA-RC section consisted of 16 Reading Comprehension questions and 8 Verbal
Ability questions. As in the past several years, there were no direct Grammar or Vocabulary
questions. The passages were of Medium difficulty level except for the one on Political
Philosophy. Overall, Comprehension was more difficult than the VA questions. However, 10 to
12 questions could be attempted with high accuracy. The 2 Para-completion questions, which
were new, consisted of a key sentence followed by a paragraph with four numbered blanks.
One had to identify the blank in which the key sentence would fit in correctly – grammatically
and logically. There were 3 paragraph jumbles in TITA format, and 3 summary questions as
MCQs. In VA, 5 attempts with high accuracy were possible. Overall the difficulty level was
comparable to the first slot of CAT 2021.
In CAT 2021 there were a total of 4 sets out of which two sets had 6 questions while the
remaining two had 4 questions each. This pattern has not been followed in CAT 2022, this year
the DI-LR section had a total of 4 sets of 5 questions each.
Two sets were of Easy to Medium difficulty level and the remaining two sets were Medium to
Difficult. Overall the Level of difficulty was Medium to Difficult and at par with the last year’s
slot – 1 of DILR
Quantitative Ability
This section was Medium in terms of Level of difficulty and was dominated by Arithmetic (8
questions), followed by Algebra (5 questions). There were 3 questions on Modern Math and 3
questions on Geometry. In Arithmetic, the questions were dominated by Averages and
Mixtures & Allegations and Profit & Loss,.
There were 8 TITA questions this year. Selecting the right questions to attempt was the key.
Students should have been able to attempt about 14/15 questions in the given time with 85-
90% accuracy.
This section was very much similar as last year’s slot 1. Number of TITA (8 questions) and MCQ
(14 questions) were the same as last year’s slot 1. Also area/topic wise distribution of questions
was more or less similar to last year’s slot 1.
THE PROCESS
No shoes and no metallic objects including metal jewelry were allowed. Only the admit card
and the ID proof were allowed. As in the previous years, the authorities took possession of the
admit cards. The candidates were given a small pad with IIM CAT Logo on the cover (32 pages)
for rough work and a pen – which were also taken away at the end of the exam.
TEST INTERFACE
The test interface was quite user-friendly and exactly the one provided in the official CAT Mock
Test. There were no subdivisions within each section. A simple calculator was provided, and not
a scientific one. There was an arrow provided near the question palette which when clicked
expanded the question window to full-screen view by hiding the question palette & vice versa
At the end of the test, a summary of the number of questions attempted, visited, and not
visited was displayed for each section.
There was a button marked ‘Question Paper’ that opened up a screen containing all the
questions of the section. This was used by students for planning their approach for the section.
*** The scores and percentiles mentioned in this analysis are indicators based on the
feedback from students and IMS experts
(The above analysis is provided by IMS Learning)