Mumbai: The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) -Lucknow today successfully conducted the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2023. This year more than 3.3 lakh candidates had registered for the exam, witnessing a surge of 30% from the last year.
The first slot was easy to moderate for Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC), However, the Quantitative Aptitude (QA) was difficult this time and Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DILR) was moderate.
In Slot 1, the overall 66 questions were distributed among VARC, DILR and QA with 24, 20 and 22 questions respectively. Slot 2 was tougher than the first slot.
The Free Press Journal talked to a few candidates who appeared for the CAT 2023 exam.
Sanchit Patil, a Mumbai-based CAT aspirant whose exam center was in Pune said that the overall exam was moderate. Patil whose aim is to secure a seat at the Indian Institute of Management -Mumbai said that this year's cut-off could go down a little less than the last year for the top B-Schools in India due to the high level of difficulty.
On his analysis of Reading Comprehension (RC), Patil said, “This section was not lengthy but the word count was from 400-500 words. Also one of the Comprehensions was lengthy which I was expecting.”
On the QA section, he said, “Overall Quant section was Moderate to difficult as I was not prepared for such tough paper." He added, "Out of 66, I attempted 19 questions. If all gets right then probably I could score more than 95 (percentile)."
On the difficulty level, he said that the toughest section was QA as many questions were asked from Algebra but candidates usually expect more questions from Arithmetic.
According to Renjith Joshua, a CAT Coach from Kerala, it was more difficult than last year and even more difficult than the 2021 exam.
He said, “In QA almost half the questions were from Algebra.” “For the last three years the trend has been they are reducing the Arithmetic Questions”, he added.
Most questions were from Algebra in Quant
He said that the Arithmetic topic was usually easier and most found it doable. In DILR it was tougher than last year for those who appeared in Slot 1 and 2. On asking about the changes in exam pattern Joshua said, “There was no change in the pattern this year in the VARC section and the overall section was easy. Somebody who had practiced only graphs or tables for Data Analysis would have found it difficult.”
Shlok, who studies in Mumbai and appeared for an exam in one of the centers in Pune said that VARC was easy to moderate. He appeared in the second slot and found the Quantitative Section very difficult. "There were no direct questions, they were all jumbled up."
"I found it difficult, I had prepared for it but it was much more difficult than my expectations", Shlok added.
On speaking about the DILR section Shlok concluded, “It was doable, I did my first set in 25 minutes. It was Moderate to Difficult. The questions were tricky but eventually, I was able to solve them.
