CAT 2015: Decoded the number of Questions & how to attempt to get your target 99 percentile; by CL Experts

Confidence level boosts up, if you come to know how many questions you should solve in how many attempts to get the desired score in CAT 2015. For the benefit of CAT 2015 aspirants going to appear in the exam on Nov 29, 2015, this exercise has been done by the Career Launcher, pioneer in providing preparation guidance for CAT and other exams.

99 percentile at 193 marks CL experts share that in terms of the pattern, CAT 2015 can be best compared with CAT 2014 wherein a 99 percentile required 193 marks while 99.5 percentile was at 205 marks out of a maximum of 300 marks.

Testing room strategy Assuming the same difficulty level CL experts have decoded the number of questions to be attempted in CAT 2015 to achieve the same high percentile of 99 and above. Sharing with MBAUniverse.com the exam room strategy for CAT 2015 CL experts are of the view that Students should consider CAT 2015 as a string of 3 sectional tests of 1 hour each. Now a candidate should only be looking forward to maximize the number of attempts.

Assuming the same level of difficulty as CAT 2014, the initial estimate by CL experts for the score required for a 99 percentile in CAT 2015 is:

CAT 2015 Section
Target score (Net marks out of maximum marks 300
Number of questions attempted
Total number of questions

VARC
55-60
20-22
34

DILR
65-70
22-24
32

Quant
70-75
23-35
34

Overall
175 (Net score)
-
-

According to Gautam Puri, Co-Founder, Career Launcher The correct strategy would be to not ignore any area and regularly practice all questions types. RC and DI which are routinely ignored will now become important and should be practiced daily.

Attempt all Non-MCQs: Expect low difficulty level In view of Gautam Puri Since there will be no negative marking for these types of questions, a student should attempt each and every non-MCQ question in the exam. The non-MCQ questions should not be seen as a problem. The absence of choices might be inconvenient for some but whenever a new question type is introduced; the level of difficulty is low.

Utilize On-screen Calculator The on-screen calculator is another introduction in the CAT pattern for 2015. Over the years CAT has transformed itself to be a logic based paper and the calculations in the QA section are never very difficult or lengthy. Even in DI, the problem area for students is what to calculate instead of how to calculate. However it might be a bit useful in this area. Introduction of the online calculator reflects the fact that IIMs require students who can interpret the data well and need not be great at calculations.

Although the calculations in CAT are never expected to be extremely difficult, a student should not refrain from using the calculator in times of dire need. Calculator might prove to be useful in DI questions with extremely close options.

Time limit: Good for test taker Another important testing room clue for the benefit of CAT 2015 aspirants shared by CL experts is that the introduction of the sectional time limits will have positive effects on the test taking of the students. Due to the restriction of switching between the sections a student does not have to worry about the time management.

Analyse the mocks in next 3 days CL experts advise that the students should analyze each and every mock and sectional test that they have taken. This will help them ascertain what worked or did not work for them. The analysis basically is about finding the questions that were easy but were not attempted and about realizing why did a particular question wasnt answered correctly. All the difficult and important questions should be marked. These important questions should be revised regularly.

The changes announced for the Common Admission Test2015 may make this edition of CAT appear to be significantly different from CAT 2014 but in reality most of the changes are in the structure and will not affect a well prepared student at all. The point to be noted is that the kind of questions that will be asked has not changed.