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CAT 2018 Exam Analysis – Expected Cutoff and Percentile Mapping

Sunday, November 25th, 2018

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CAT 2018 exam was conducted today (25th November). To publish CAT 2018 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 2018 exam.

Highlights of CAT 2018 Exam Analysis

There were no major surprises in the CAT 2018 exam. It was on the expected lines.
1) Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation was the toughest section. But it was easier than previous years.
2) Quantitative Aptitude was on the tougher side. The questions were lengthy and calculative. There were a lot of TITA questions as well.
3) Verbal Ability was on the easier side, as it has been the case for past few years
4) Overall the paper would end up being tougher than CAT 2017 because the impact of the difficulty level of Quant.

Slot 1 Vs Slot 2 Comparison

The paper was more or less the same in slot 1 and slot 2. The expected scores and cutoffs are the same for the slots. Slot 2 students had a marginal advantage because some of them had an idea that Quant is going to be tougher than expected. That might have given a certain edge to a few students but it will not be significant enough to make a dent at the scores required for a particular percentile or the cutoffs.

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CAT 2018 Exam Analysis – Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension

Question Structure
Reading Comprehension: 24 questions
4 passages (with five questions) and 1 passage (with four 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. The Parajumbles questions in CAT 2018 were a little bit easier than earlier years with smaller sentences and only 4 sentences. It made sense to attempt them because it would not take too long and hopefully you would get couple of them right. Even if you didn’t, at least it won’t have any negative marking.

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 slightly easier than the CAT 2017 exam. You would need to do around 17-19 questions correctly for scoring 90%ile in the Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension section in the CAT 2018 exam.

CAT 2018 Exam Analysis – Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation

Question Structure
There were 8 sets of 4 questions each. We can say that there were 2 sets of Data Interpretation and 6 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 on the difficult side. It was definitely easier than CAT 2017 where a few sets were doable. In my personal opinion, it is unfair to have one section significantly easier than the other two, which was the case with this year’s Verbal section.

Summary This section was really tough. It was easier than CAT 2017 but still tough. You would need to do around 9-11 questions correctly to score 90%ile in the Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation section in the CAT 2018 exam.

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CAT 2018 Exam Analysis – Quantitative Aptitude

Question Structure
Arithmetic dominated the Quantitative Aptitude section in the CAT 2018 exam. There were 12-13 questions on it.
Geometry, Algebra, Modern Maths were in the next tier with 5-7 questions.
There were only 2 questions purely on Number System.

A total of 22 questions had negative marking for incorrect answers whereas the other 12 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 tougher side. You could say it was almost as tough as the LRDI section. People expect it to be much easier than LRDI but that wasn’t the case this year. It was definitely tougher than the Quantitative Aptitude section in the CAT 2017 exam. You would need to solve around 11-13 questions correctly to score 90%ile in the Quantitative Aptitude section in the CAT 2018 exam.

Expected Cutoffs for CAT 2018 Exam

To get a 90%ile, we believe you would need the following number of questions to be correct (0 errors) in the CAT 2018 Exam
Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension 17-19 questions
Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation 9-11 questions
Quantitative Aptitude 10-12 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 2018 exam
To get 90%ile 35-37 questions
To get 95%ile 42-44 questions
To get 98%ile 48-50 questions
To get 99%ile 53-55 questions

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Survey Results for CAT 2018 Exam Analysis

When was QA section tougher – CAT 2018 or CAT 2017

Which section was the toughest in CAT 2018 exam

When was VARC section tougher – CAT 2018 or CAT 2017

When was LRDI section tougher – CAT 2018 or CAT 2017

Which exam was tougher – CAT 2018 or CAT 2017

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