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CAT 2020 Syllabus – Quantitative Aptitude Complete Details

Saturday, August 22nd, 2020

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Quantitative Aptitude is an important part of the CAT exam. If you look at the pattern of the paper for the last few years, it has had a weightage of roughly 1/3^rd since CAT went online in 2008. From 2015, Quant has had 34 questions out of 100. The same pattern is expected to continue in 2020 as well.

Broadly speaking, Quantitative Aptitude can be further divided into 5 sub sections:

• Arithmetic
• Algebra
• Geometry
• Number System
• Modern Maths

While the exact number of questions in these topics changes every year there are some broad patterns that can be noticed. We looked at the papers of CAT 2017, CAT 2018, and CAT 2019 and some patterns started to emerge. We could see that Arithmetic consistently gave us the most number of questions whereas Number System gave us the least. Unfortunately, a lot of students don’t take this into account while they are preparing for CAT.

Based upon these 6 papers, because there are two papers every year, we made a list of which section gave us the most questions and this is what emerged. Please note that the chart given below is an average over 6 papers. It is indicative of what to expect in the CAT 2020 exam.

When we made this, we thought it would be a better idea if we also did a chapter wise distribution of this data. So we went through the six papers once again and categorized each question to a chapter. Now keep in mind that often a question uses concepts from multiple chapters and it becomes hard to classify. This list is, once again, not exact but indicative of what the distribution was over the last 6 papers.

A – Represents the CAT paper in the morning slot

B – Represents the CAT paper in the afternoon slot

CAT Syllabus – Quantitative Aptitude – Chapters in Arithmetic

Arithmetic gave us a total of 71 questions over 6 papers.

 

CAT Syllabus – Quantitative Aptitude – Chapters in Algebra

Algebra gave us 54 questions over 6 papers

 

CAT Syllabus – Quantitative Aptitude – Chapters in Geometry

Geometry gave us 39 questions over 6 papers

 

CAT Syllabus – Quantitative Aptitude – Chapters in Modern Math and Number System

Modern Math and Number System gave us 40 questions over 6 papers.

We have also identified some important blogposts from CAT syllabus related to Quantitative Aptitude that can help you prepare for the same.

• Divisibility Rules
• Successive Division
• Divisibility and Factors
• Factor Theory
• Highest Common Factor and Lowest Common Multiple
• Finding Out Last Two Digits
• Number of trailing zeroes
• Sum of all numbers formed from given digits
• Special cases of Factorials – Highest Power in a prime, rightmost non zero digit
• Finding out Remainders
• Base Systems
• Averages
• Mean Median Mode
• Percentages
• Ratio and Proportion
• Partnerships
• Simple and Compound Interest
• Installments
• Profit and Loss
• Mixtures and Alligations
• Time Speed and Distance
  • Basic Concepts
  • Linear and Circular Races
  • Boats and Stream
  • Relative Speed
  • Escalator Based Questions
• Time and Work
  • Pipes and Cisterns
  • Relative Efficiencies
• Problems on ages
• Number of integer solutions
• Quadratic Equations
• Descartes Rule of Signs
• Inequalities
• Logarithm
• Functions
  • Modifications of graphs
  • Smallest value in a maximum function
• Lines and Angles
• Triangles – Basic Concepts
• Circles
• Solids / Mensuration – 3D Geometry
• Sequence and Series
• Set Theory
  • Venn Diagram based on 2 / 3 sets
  • Maxima and Minima related to values in a set
  • ‘At least n’ type of problems
• Fundamental Principles of Counting
• Distribution of Objects
• Division and Distribution of distinct objects
• Problems on Grids, Paths, and Chessboards
• Rank of a word in a dictionary
• Probability

Hope this will help you prepare for CAT 2020 and score well in the exam.

We have also made a video on the same. You can watch it here:

CAT 2020 Syllabus – Quantitative Aptitude – Video

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