CAT Exam (Common Admission Test) is a computer-based selection test
conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) as a prerequisite for
admissions to their business admissions program. There are 3 sections in the
paper: Quantitative Aptitude, Verbal Ability, and Reading Comprehension, and
Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation. It has been analyzed from the past
papers that the VARC section has focused quite heavily on Reading
comprehension. There is a total of 34 questions out of which 20 to 25 are from
reading comprehension while 10 to 15 are from verbal ability. The VA questions
include both MCQs and TITAs. Expected MCQs are 4 while expected TITAs is 6. The important topics for VA include:
| TOPIC | NO. OF QUESTIONS | DIFFICULTY LEVEL |
| Para-summary | 2-3 | Moderate |
| Para-jumble | 2-4 | Moderate |
| Odd sentences | 1-2 | Moderate |
| Sentences completion and correction | 2-3 | Moderately easy |
| Word usage(vocabulary) | 1-2 | Easy |
| Fill in the blanks | 1-2 | Easy |
| Reading comprehension passages | 24 | Moderately difficult |
Let us now look in-depth at the VA part of the section:
Grammar Articles-
- A, An, The
- Parts of speech in English
- Sentence
- Punctuations
- Modifiers
- Subject-verb agreement
- Verbs tenses
- Sentence correction
- Word usage
- Phrasal verbs
- Idioms and phrases
Verbal Reasoning
- Logical deduction
- Statements and assumptions
- Courses of action
- Para-jumble- basic rules
- Para-completion
- Sentence exclusion
- Fact inference judgment
- Syllogism
- Summary based questions
- Different methods for sentence exclusion
- Jumbled paragraph questions
Critical Reasoning
- Basic assumption and inference
- Strengthening and weakening of argument
- Paragraph summary
- Method of reasoning and boldfaced
- Flawed and paradox
- Parallel, further application, evaluate
- Fallacies and strong-weak arguments
For the section of VA, you should focus mainly on grammar and try and learn
new words daily for improving vocabulary. Read as much as possible and increase
your stock of words. Dedicate at least 2 to 3 hours daily towards this section. Read newspapers, journals, articles, and novels whenever you can. Grammar and
comprehension are all about practice. Browse through the internet and you are
bound to get a lot of material and practice passages. Practice as much as you can
and as often you can.
For Reading comprehension the following topics are essential:
Different categories of passages, writing styles, tone of writing, types of
questions, reading skills, types of passages, accuracy in RC, inference based
questions, specific detailed questions.
Some tips for this section: read the questions carefully before attempting. Solve
those questions first which you think are not time-consuming and you can blindly
answer them without a second thought. The questions which have options tend
to be quite tricky, hence go through the options carefully after reading the
question. If you are not confident about a particular question attempt it at the
last hour. The same goes for other sections as well. I have been saying this
repeatedly to practice as often as you can. Read as much as possible and practice as
much as you can. Solve plenty of sample papers and attempt mock tests. They will
help you get to experience the model of questions that you may get.
I hope this article was helpful to you. All the best!
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