CAT Papers : Common Admission Test Pattern
Common Admission Test (CAT) is multiple-choice based entrance exam, with negative marking for wrong answers. It comprises of three sections, which span the domains of arithmetical problem solving, geometry, statistics, data interpretation, logical reasoning, puzzles, and English language skills. Ever year, changes are also made in the total number of questions and the time duration of CAT.
Syllabus
There is no set or defined syllabus for the CAT exam. It is designed to assess the natural ability of a person towards their preferred field. Hence, it is designed to test the inclination of the applicant towards managerial tasks and roles. Mainly, the questions are asked from Quantitative Aptitude, Reading Comprehension & Verbal Ability, and Data Interpretation & Data Sufficiency.
Test Pattern
Common Admission Test – CAT is a 2 ½ hours test comprises of Four sub sections:
Quantitative Ability (QA)
The questions are designed to stress more on reasoning skills of the candidates, rather than on their computational skills.
The level of difficulty of this section is perceived to be higher because the questions are not only lengthy to read but at times require more effort in terms of understanding and solving.
Data Interpretation (DI)
As the name suggests, this section presents data to the candidate in forms such as caselets, pie diagrams, bar graphs, etc and questions are set to evaluate the candidate’s skills at analyzing the given information.
Data Sufficiency questions in this section are based on basic mathematics (at times Data Sufficiency is a part of the Quantitative Ability section).
Reading Comprehension (RC)
CAT usually has 6-8 passages in the RC section, with an overall length of 4500-5500 words and about 50 questions to answer in a span of about 30 minutes. However this too can vary according to the level of difficulty of questions.
Verbal Ability (VA)
This section explores your understanding of the English Language and also tests you on Reasoning Skills.
The questions in this section typically comprise sentence correction, sentence sequencing, verbal reasoning etc.


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