CAT

Introduction :-

CAT or Common Admission Test, is an Entrance Test conducted in India by the Indian Institutes of Management or IIMs. To gain admission to their prestigious full time 2 year Post Graduate course in Management (MBA), a pass in this test in the prescribed manner is necessary. Apart from the IIM’s, a lot of other reputed Management institutions of our country also accept CAT scores for their admission process. A complete list of these institutions can be had from the CAT bulletin. CAT is usually conducted during November-December. Now that CAT has gone online, the test is conducted in several phases and even stretching upto January.

CAT Test Structure and Duration

Like the name it implies, CAT is really a test to evaluate your abilities in management by asking you questions that is based mainly on English and Mathematics. The ideas needed to face CAT questions are based on English and Mathematics on the same level as your 10th class. CAT questions are divided into the following:

1. Verbal Ability & Reasoning: The candidate’s grasp of the English language as well as his/her reasoning skills are tested here. The question consists of sentence correction and sequencing as well as verbal reasoning. In this section data is presented in several forms like case lets, bar graphs and pie charts so that the candidate’s skill in analyzing the data provided can be evaluated. Data Sufficiency questions are based on basic mathematics.
2. Quantitative Skills: Here the questions are planned by emphasising on mathematical and computational skills of a candidate.
3. Logical & Analytical Reasoning: Here the questions are planned by emphasising on logical and analytical skills of a candidate.
4. Reading Comprehension: This section consists of about 4 to 5 passages of 4500 to 5000 words each with total of around 35 questions to be answered in a time span of about 30 minutes. But these questions are of various kinds according to their level of difficulty.
5. Verbal Ability & Reasoning: The candidate’s grasp of the English language as well as his/her reasoning skills are tested here. The question consists of sentence correction and sequencing as well as verbal reasoning.

Actually, the topic areas are divided into sections. These sections as well as their composition can change from one year to another. This means that there is no certain, clear cut structure to the CAT. So the students should be very careful and patient while answering questions. Test is usually of 2.5 hours duration. At first there were only four possible choices to every question but it has been increased to 5 in recent years.

The Test Structure is as follows:
Overall Test with 3 Sections of 90 questions
1st Section: Problem Solving of 25 questions
2nd Section: Logical Reasoning & Data Interpretation of 25 questions
3rd Section: Reading Comprehension and Verbal Ability of 40 questions

Syllabus

AThere is not any prefixed syllabus pattern for the CAT as the syllabus keep evolving every year to maintain the unpredictability of CAT. The following syllabus is derived from the experience of CAT Examination Papers of previous years. The following list might not be an exhaustive one but the whole gamut of topics covered is given below.