CAT 2018 Review: More Women take CAT this year; IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta to Improve Diversity

Moving ahead with the agenda to improve diversity in IIM classrooms, the IIMs are giving leverage to women to increase diversity in classrooms. Out of 2.41 lakh total registered candidates for CAT 2018, the number of women candidates has gone up to 84,350 as compared to 78009 last year. With the increase in number of candidates for CAT 2018, IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta have devised the strategy to improve academic and gender diversity in class rooms for 2019-21 batch. 

Post CAT Exam Review of CAT 2018, which was held on November 25, 2018 in Slot 1 and Slot 2 has revealed that IIM Calcutta who conducted Common Admission Test (CAT) 2018 kept up it reputation with offering a higher difficulty level exam especially the Quantitative Ability section.

CAT 2018 Analysis by TIME, CL, IMS: Likely Scores, Cut offs for 99 percentile

CAT test takers’ review post exam has revealed that most of them found the DILR and Quant section beyond their normal reach and could not go beyond a certain level in the exam. On the other hand, CAT preparation experts and mentors while sharing the CAT 2018 exam review have expressed the opinion that for MBA admission 2019 in top IIMs like IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow or FMS Delhi, the cut off percentile can be achieved at a lower raw score.

CAT 2018 Exam Review by Test Takers
MBAUniverse.com while speaking to the CAT 2018 test takers found that the exam put many off track. Glimpses of CAT 2018 Review and Analysis with key changes in the CAT exam are:

• Quant was found most difficult in CAT 2018 as compared to past 3 years of CAT exam
• Candidates coming from Arts, Humanities, Commerce and such bank grounds were not able to make a good break through in Quant section
• Candidates from Engineering background found Quant doable to a large extent
• DILR was a bit trickier and some of the DI questions were calculation intensive also

CAT 2018 Review by Experts
Experts’ CAT exam review reveals the following changes in difficulty level of the exam:

• CAT 2018 was more difficult as compared to CAT 2017
• The higher difficulty level in Quant will bring down the cut offs paving the way for admission in top IIMs at lower score than last year
• IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta can have cut offs at a moderate score of 140 to 150 marks in CAT 2018

We share below the CAT 2018 comprehensive Review by top CAT preparation Centres – T.I.M.E, CL, IMS. The CAT Review consists of following details:

• CAT 2018 Slot-1 Review
• CAT 2018 Slot-2 Review
• CAT 2018 Overall Review with expected cut off percentile and score range
• The Detailed CAT exam Review 2018 contains Overall and Section wise difficulty level, expected percentile viz-a-viz Raw Score in CAT 2018

CAT 2018 Slot 1 & Slot 2: Exam Composition
Both the slots in CAT 2018 had similar number of questions divided into MCQs with 1/3 negative marking and Non-MCQs without Negative marking:

CAT 2018 Slot 1 Review
The Slot 1 Review of CAT 2018 by T.I.M.E, CL and IMS is presented below:

Slot 1 Review by T.I.M.E.
Slot 1 of CAT 2018 didn't throw surprises but there were some changes, across sections.

• Number of lengthy questions in QA have gone up
• Order of the questions and the order of the options for various questions were different for different students
• QA proved to be much tougher than expected compared to CAT 2017 due to the lengthy and involved nature of the questions.
• VARC remained more or less at the same level and DILR a bit easier as compared to CAT 2017.
• The cutoffs this year are expected to move marginally upwards, compared to CAT 2017.

Section -1: Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC)

Section-2: Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DILR)

• DILR difficulty level has gone down in CAT 2018 slightly.
• Some of the DI sets were not difficult in terms of interpretation and the questions too in these sets were not tricky in nature.

Section 3: Quantitative Ability (QA) Review

• The number of questions on Geometry was on the higher side and some of them can be considered to be moderately difficult.
• The difficulty level of this section can be classified as being slightly higher than moderate level

Expected Cut off Percentile
85 is the minimum required sectional percentile in IIMs. T.I.M.E has shared following good attempts to score 85 percentile in each section in CAT 2018 slot 1 exam:

CAT Slot 1 Review by Career Launcher (CL)
IIM-C kept its reputation intact, with its emphasis on the QA section. So, the break-up of the paper was as follows:

CAT Review of VERBAL ABILITY AND READING COMPREHENSION

CAT Review of DATA INTERPRETATION AND LOGICAL REASONING

Overall,15-17 attempts, with accuracy of 90% would be considered good.

CAT Review of QUANTITATIVE APTITUDE:

An overall attempt of 18-20 with 85% accuracy would be very good.

Overall Percentile in Slot-1

• Overall, a 99 percentile score could reduce by about 15-18 marks as compared to last year.
• Thus, a score of 150-155 should fetch a 99 percentile.

This CAT 2018 Slot 1 Review is written by Mr Gautam Bawa (Group Product Head, Career Launcher). He holds a Master’s Degree from IIM Calcutta with CAT percentile of 99.97 in 2011.

CAT Slot 1 Review by IMS

Section 1: VARC

• The overall difficulty level of VA RC Section of CAT 2018 was easier than CAT 2017.
• A few questions were direct and very easy - about 6 questions. Inferential questions were first step inferences and were easy to medium.
• There were about 5 questions in RC, which looked like Critical Reasoning (or Application) questions.  
• The passages were also longer. The length of the passages varied from 450 words to 800 words.
• Another major deviation was in the Paragraph Jumbles Questions. 4 sentences to rearrange instead of 5 made the 4 Paragraph Jumbles questions refreshingly easy.
• Of the 10 VA questions 7 were TITA and 3 were MCQs.
• 3 Out-of-context sentence – TITA
• 4 Paragraph Jumbles – TITA
• 3 Paragraph summary/Author’s opinion questions – MCQs. (With negative Marks)

Section-2: DILR

• The DI-LR section had a total of 8 sets with 4 questions in each set.
• There were 3 sets of Data Interpretation and 4 sets of Logical Reasoning while 1 set was a combination of DI and LR.
• There were 4 easy sets, 2 easy to moderate and 2 difficult sets.
• Some of the sets were time consuming as they had questions which had additional information to be taken into account while solving. So Selection of the right sets to solve was key to a good performance in this section.
• Some of the sets that could have been definitely solved were the ones based on the multi layered  pie chart ,committee selection, magic square and  arrangement of 8 students (4 males and 4 females).
•  Just like last year, no Set was completely TITA - the TITA questions were dispersed across 4 individual sets with 2 TITA each. 4 sets were completely MCQ.
• There were a total of 8 TITA questions

Section-3: Quantitative Ability (QA)

• QA section was moderate to difficult. As per student feedback it seems to be amongst the toughest QA section in recent years.
• This section was dominated by Arithmetic with 14 questions  followed by Modern Math with 10 questions, Geometry with 6, with a couple of questions from Algebra and Numbers each.
• There were 12 TITA questions this year
• There were only 8 to 10 sitters for the taking while 6-8 questions that made students sweat.  

Expected Cut off Percentile: Slot 1

Section Wise

Overall

CAT 2018 Slot 2 Review by T.I.M.E., CL, IMS

CAT Slot 2 Exam 2018 has been reported as bit more difficult than the morning slot of CAT 2018. The detailed analysis for Slot-2 with expected cut off percentile score is shared below:

CAT Slot 2  Review by T.I.M.E

• No Surprise in the second slot of CAT 2018
• Overall, it turned out to be slightly tougher than the morning slot
• While the VARC section was more or less at the same difficulty level as that of the morning slot, the bump up in the difficulty level is largely on the back of relatively tougher DILR and Quant sections.

Section 1: VARC Review

• VARC section in Slot 2 saw a marginal increase in the difficulty level of the RC section compared to CAT 2017. The RC passages were from topics on Biology, Environment, Sociology, Science.
• In VA, the Para Formation Questions were simpler compared to those of CAT 2017.
• Same Question pattern as that of Morning slot was repeated
• The passages were not too straight forward to read
• The VA questions, on Para Formation/Para Odd-One-out were quite simple to crack
• The Odd-One-Out questions were relatively easy to crack and so were the Para Summary Questions.

Section 2: DILR Review

• The difficulty level of this section was slightly higher than the difficulty level in the morning slot.
• There were relatively easier sets such as the one with ‘room numbers’ and the one with ‘profitability and market share’ which should have been solved comfortably.
• Most of the sets were found to be lengthy and time-consuming.
• Some of them were quite difficult to comprehend, owing to the depth of reasoning involved.

Section 3: Quantitative Ability Review

• The Quant section had 22 MCQs and largest number of 12 questions of non-MCQ type.
• The low weightage trend for Numbers continued this year in the afternoon slot as well.
• Arithmetic was heavily favoured. There were a good number of questions from Geometry and Mensuration.
• The difficulty level of this section can be classified as being moderate to difficult level.

Expected Percentile Cut offs

CAT 2018 Slot 2 Review by Career Launcher (CL)

Students who went into the second slot expecting a similar paper as that of the first slot (or for that matter the CAT 2017 paper) were on the right track. It too started with an ‘easy’ VARC section. The passages were on similar lines as those of the first slot. The DILR section continued to give a sigh of relief to the students. However, some are of the opinion that it was slightly tougher than the first slot’s DILR section. Overall, it was of a moderate level of difficulty. And the reign of QA continued. It remained the toughest section in the second slot too.

The break-up of the paper was as follows:

Let’s take a look at the three sections individually.

CAT Review of VERBAL ABILITY AND READING COMPREHENSION

Review of DATA INTERPRETATION AND LOGICAL REASONING

Overall,15-17 attempts, with accuracy of 90% would be considered good.

Review of QUANTITATIVE APTITUDE:

An overall attempt of 18-20 with 85% accuracy would be very good.

Overall Percentile

• Overall, a 99 percentile score could reduce by about 15-18 marks as compared to last year.
• Thus, a score of 150-155 should fetch a 99 percentile.

This CAT 2018 Slot 2 Review is written by Mr Arks Srinivas (National Head MBA Prep – India and Abroad). He holds a Master’s Degree from IIM Calcutta.

CAT 2018 Slot 2 Review by IMS

• Level of difficulty in Slot 2 is on par with the level of difficulty of Slot 1 for the VARC and DILR sections
• There is a marginal difference in the difficulty level of the QA section in both slots. 
• The QA Section was reported as difficult in comparison to that of the QA section of the CAT of recent years.

Section 1: VARC Review

Section 2: DILR Review

Section 3: Quantitative Ability Review

• This section was on the difficult side and dominated by Arithmetic with 14 questions followed by Geometry and Modern Maths with 6 questions each, Algebra with 5 questions and Numbers with 3 questions.
• There were 12 TITA questions this year - compared to last year when there were 11
• The level of difficulty of this section was one notch higher than last year.
• Many of the questions in this section tested multiple concepts.

CAT Review on Expected Cut Offs

Overall CAT exam Review & Cut offs

• CAT 2018 Slot-1 and Slot-2 had a marginal difference in their difficulty level
• Quant in Slot 2 was rated slightly more difficult than Slot 1 exam
• A few questions in DILR were rated a little more difficult.
• VARC has remained easy in both the slots

Expected Cut Offs
Overall cut offs for CAT 2018 by T.I.M.E., CL, IMS are shared below:

CAT 2018 Percentile Cut offs by T.I.M.E.
Slot wise and Overall CAT 2018 percentile cut offs by T.I.M.E. are:

Slot 1 Sectional Cutoff Score

Slot 1 Overall Cutoff Score

Slot 2 Sectional Cutoff Score

Slot 2 Overall Cutoff Score

CAT 2018 Percentile Cut offs by Career Launcher (CL)

CAT 2018 Percentile Cut offs by IMS
IMS has predicted following CAT percentile cut offs at different range of scores:

Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on CAT 2018