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CAT 2017 Exam Analysis – Expected Cutoff and Percentile Mapping

Sunday, November 26th, 2017

CAT 2017 Exam Analysis with Expected Cutoffs

CAT 2017 exam was conducted today (26th November). To publish CAT 2017 exam Analysis we spoke to a bunch of students of our online course. Based upon the feedback that we received, given below is the detailed analysis of the CAT 2017 exam.

Highlights of CAT 2017 Exam Analysis

There were no major surprises in the CAT 2017 exam. It was on the expected lines.
1) Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation was the toughest section by a huge margin.
2) Quantitative Aptitude was on the easier side with a focus on basic concepts. It was even easier that CAT 2016 exam.
3) Verbal Ability was on the easy side as well.
4) Overall the paper would end up being easier than CAT 2016 because the impact of difficulty level of LRDI would not be as much as the fact that QA was easy.

CAT 2017 Exam Analysis – Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension

Question Structure
Reading Comprehension: 24 questions
3 passages (with six questions) and 2 passages (with three questions)
Parajumbles: 4 questions
Odd one out: 3 questions
Summary: 3 questions

All Reading Comprehension and Summary questions were objective type questions.
Parajumbles and odd one out were Type in the answer / Fill in the Blanks type questions.

So, a total of 27 questions had negative marking for incorrect answers whereas the other 7 did not.

Summary The section was on the easier side. We could say that it was almost as hard or as easy as the CAT 2016 exam. You would need to do around 17-18 questions correctly for scoring 90%ile in the Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension section in the CAT 2017 exam.

CAT 2017 Exam Analysis – Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation

Question Structure
There were 8 sets of 4 questions each. We can say that there were 4 sets of Data Interpretation and 4 sets for Logical Reasoning but the Data Interpretation sets required a lot of logic to solve them as well. It would be better to put them in the ‘Logical DI’ category, if something like that exists.

A total of 24 questions had negative marking for incorrect answers whereas the other 8 did not. Also, these 8 Type-In-The-Answer type questions were distributed across multiple sets. There was no set that all 4 TITA questions.

As far as the difficulty level is concerned, it was quite out of whack. In my personal opinion, it is unfair to have one section significantly tougher than the other two. In a fair CAT exam, all sections would be of equal difficulty level. Clearly, that wasn’t the case in CAT 2017. As a matter of fact, that hasn’t been the case for at least the past 3 years since three sections were introduced.
In CAT 2015, Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation was the toughest section.
In CAT 2016, Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation was the toughest section. It was tougher than CAT 2015.
In CAT 2017, Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation was the toughest section. It was tougher than CAT 2016.
If the same pattern continues, it would be wise enough for students to develop a strategy which suits a paper like this. I hope this changes in CAT 2018.

Summary This section was really tough. It was even tougher than CAT 2016. You would need to do around 8 questions correctly to score 90%ile in the Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation section in the CAT 2017 exam.

CAT 2017 Exam Analysis – Quantitative Aptitude

Question Structure
Arithmetic dominated the Quantitative Aptitude section in the CAT 2017 exam. There were 12-13 questions on it.
Geometry, Algebra, Modern Maths were in the next tier with 5-7 questions.
There were almost no questions purely on Number System (may be you could put 1 or 2 in the Number System category). The importance of Number System has been decreasing over the years and it would be wise to keep that in mind while you are preparing for CAT 2018.

A total of 23 questions had negative marking for incorrect answers whereas the other 11 did not. The number of TITA questions is higher than what it was in the earlier years and it is definitely higher than the number of TITA questions in the other sections.

Summary This section was on the easier side. You could say it was almost as easy as the Verbal section. It was definitely easier than the Quantitative Aptitude section in the CAT 2016 exam. You would need to solve around 13 questions correctly to score 90%ile in the Quantitative Aptitude section in the CAT 2017 exam. Also, there were plenty of sitters / straight-forward questions in the CAT 2017 exam. If you followed the multiple-round approach of solving questions that I discussed in the strategy classes, you could have easily solved 10-12 questions in round 1 itself.

Expected Cutoffs for CAT 2017 Exam

To get a 90%ile, we believe you would need the following number of questions to be correct (0 errors) in the CAT 2017 Exam
Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension 17-18 questions
Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation 8 questions
Quantitative Aptitude 13 questions

From an overall exam perspective, we believe you would need to the following number of questions to be correct (0 errors) in the CAT 2017 exam
To get 90%ile 35-36 questions
To get 95%ile 42-43 questions
To get 98%ile 50-51 questions
To get 99%ile 55-56 questions

Score Vs Percentile
CAT16 and CAT 15