CAT 2014 – How I Attempted New Pattern Mock CAT 10

I took “CAT 2014 – Mock CAT 10” on 4th Oct and like Mock CAT 7 recorded the attempt which is available in test analysis available in SIS and can also be accessed by clicking here, however due to sessions I could not go through the video, analyse the performance and write the summary of my attempt. A bit delayed but let me share my analysis of the paper.

Overview:

Scan the paper: Approximately 3 minutes
I went through the paper (the printout) to understand the structure of the paper and found that the paper had a slightly different structure as compared to the earlier Mock CATs. It had lesser DI, no DS and more QA questions and in VALR section the LR had not only reduced but also had a few single questions, this along with increased RC was not good news for me but the presence of cloze test (fill in the blanks in a paragraph) made me a bit comfortable. The break up

  • Approximately 9 questions of DI in 3 data sets
  • Approximately 41 questions of QA
  • Approximately 9 questions of LR in 2 data sets and a few single questions
  • Approximately 15-16 questions of RC in 5 passages
  • Approximately 25 questions of verbal logic and English usage.

While the paper structure was different from what I had seen so far I stuck to my standard time allocation of 80 minutes to VALR and 90 minutes to QADI and also did not see any reason to change the sequence of attempting the sections as given below:

  • Verbal Logic and English usage
  • Reading Comprehension
  • Logical Reasoning
  • QA Round 1 Questions
  • DI
  • QA Round 2 Question
  • QA Round 3 Questions

However with fewer LR questions I was mentally prepared to attempt at least 3 RC passages as compared to my normal of minimum of 2 RC passages.

VALR Round 1:
In this round I attempted 16 attempts out of 20 questions from Verbal Logic and English Usage. I also identification of the RC passages and LR sets to be attempted.

36 minutes for this round and total time elapsed 39 minutes.
Attempted: Q 51, 52, 53, 60, 62, 63, 64, 77, 78, 81, 92, 93, 96, 97, 99 & 100
Answer not marked as I was not sure: Q 62, 82, 94 (time wasted) & 98.
Noted the following on my rough sheet for RC passages and LR sets:

LR Sets:
Q54-55, 2 questions on arrangement, to be attempted
Q69-71, 3 questions, arrangement/mathematical set, 8 statements, likely to be difficult
Q75-76, 2 questions arrangement – cars, to be attempted
Q79, 85 & 97 – individual questions

RC Passages:
Q56-59, 4 questions, psychiatrist, 4 slides, could be difficult
Q65-68, 4 questions, Universities, 3 slides, to be attempted
Q72-74, 3 questions, Keats +. Maths, 3.5 slides
Q83-86, 4 questions, Agriculture, 2.5 slides, to be attempted
Q88-91, 3 questions, Chess, 3 slides, to be attempted..

VALR Round 2:
RC passages, 12 attempts from 3 passages with 12 questions in 19 minutes.
Total attempts 28 and total time elapsed 58 minutes.
I started with the passage on “Universities” followed it with the passage on Agriculture and finally attempted the passage on Chess. In each passage I had to go back and verify the facts whiles answering a couple of questions.

Q65-68 (Universities), found the passage easy to read and attempted all four questions in about 6 minutes.
Q83-86 (Agriculture), this passage too was easy to read and comprehend and I was able to attempt all 4 questions. This passage also took me around 6 minutes.
Q88-91 (Chess), this was another easy passage and I was able to attempt all 4 questions, here also I had to go back to the passage to verify the facts. This passage took me 7 minutes.

VALR Round 3:
LR sets, 4 attempts from 2 sets with 4 questions, the independent reasoning question number 79 and 2 RC questions (Q55 & 58). I attempted 7 questions in this round leading to a total of 35 attempts.

21 minutes for this round and total time elapsed 79 minutes.
I decided to start with the data set on allocation of ministries because I am comfortable with selection/allocation data sets. I attempted Q55 first since I felt it would be easier to solve and then went back to Q54. The 2 questions of this data set took me just 3 minutes.

Next I moved to the set on Guns (Q69-71) and spent about a minute trying to understand it but found it complicated along with large data, hence I decided to leave it and moved on to the data set on arragngement/colour of cars (Q75-76). Here too I decided to solved Q76 before Q75 because in Q76 all the choices were about A while in Q75 the choices had a different person and colour in each choice. Got the answer for both questions but this took me almost 8 minutes.

I now moved to the three individual reasoning questions (Q79, 87 & 95), while I was able to solve Q79 in about 2 minutes I decided to leave the other two after reading them since they appeared to be time consuming, this process took me another 2 minutes.

I was in the process of moving on to QADI with 5 extra minutes but decided to go through the passages that I did not attempt earlier and see if there were a couple of factual questions that I could attempt without reading the passage or by scanning the passage and while this process took me about 6 minutes I was able to attempt Q 56 and 58.

Thus in 76 minutes of VALR I had attempted 35 questions and since the initial 3 minutes had been used for scanning the paper I had about 91 minutes for QADI.

QADI Round 1
QA questions that can be solved in about 2 minutes and identification of DI sets to be  attempted in Round 2. I attempted a total of 13 questions in this Round.

Time taken for this Round 34 minutes, time left after this Round 57 minutes
Attempted: Q2, 3, 8, 17, 20, 29, 30, 31, 32, 39, 44, 48 & 50
Applied SQC technique in: Q2, 3, 17, 20, 32, 48 & 50
Identified that Q 11, 38 & 49 should not be attemptedTried solving Q 20 but realized that it would take time and hence left it after about a minute and moved to the next question.

Noted the following on my rough sheet for DI sets:
Q12-15, 4 questions, Pie & Bar chart, easy percentages, to be attempted
Q25-27, 3 questions, Marks, complicated data, not keen on attempting
Q45-47, 3 questions, easy percentages but large data, preferable to Q25-27

QADI Round 2A:
One DI set for 4 attempts. Total QADI attempts – 17
Time taken for this Round 9 minutes, time left after this Round 48 minutes

I started this Round with the DI set on government employees (Q12-15), found it easy and was able to solve all the questions in approximately 6 minutes.

Next I moved to the DI set on Criminal Gangs (Q45-47) as I was not keen to attempt the DI set on marks (Q25-27). However after spending about 2 minutes on this set I realized that this will be calculation intensive and hence decided to check if Q 25-27 were attemptable but after going through the data and the questions in about a minute decided that my initial estimate was correct and this data set is not worth attempting. I now decided to forget about any more DI and attempt only QA questions in the remaining time.

QADI Round 2B:
In this Round I attempted 12 questions. Total QADI attempts – 29 Time taken for this Round 37 minutes, time left after this round 11 minutes.

Started this Round by trying Q1 (Geometry) but was not sure of how to solve and hence decided to move on after spending about a minute. Went on to Q2 and then sequentially attempted the questions that I had marked for R2. In this round I had lapse of concentration in made mistakes in Q7, 16 and 40 but fortunately was able to identify the errors and corrected the error, but this meant I had to spend more time in each of these three questions.

Attempted: Q 5, 6, 7, 10, 16, 18, 23, 34, 37, 40, 42 & 43
Attempted by SQC: Q 5, 37 & 42
I identified that I should go back to Q1, 9 and 41 if I get time in the end.

QADI Round 3
In this Round I attempted 3 questions. Total QADI attempts – 32
Time taken for this Round 11 minutes, time left after this round 0 minutes.

I went back to the three questions that I had kept for R3 – Q 1, 9 & 41 but realized that I had no clue of how to solve Q1 hence moved on and solved Q41& Q9 in about 7 minutes. With 4 minutes left I went through the questions sequentially to check if any other question could be attempted, I found Q 24 was possible and hence attempted it. Still had a little over a minute available but with no more questions to attempt I decided to close the test.

Attempted: Q 9, 24, 41
Overall performance in QADI is 32 attempts in 91 minutes and a total of 67 attempts in the paper.

All the Best!
GP

44 Comments

  2. Sir, I am scoring 90-100 marks in the mock tests. In section 2 I am scoring around 65-70 but in section 1 , its around 30 marks.Even after practicing so much I am not able to improve my score in Section 1.What is the strategy I should take to improve my score?

    • Sovan, if ater the paper while analysing you find about 25 attemptable questions than it is possibly an issue of improper question selection and you need to choose your questions carefully. If you have less than 20 attemptable questions then it is a question of lack of concepts and you will need to quickly identify question types that you can attempt and practice them.

      • Sir,
        I am watching the videos for the mock cat solutions and I feel that it would be a lot easier to browse through the solutions if there were hyperlinks for each question in the video itself.

    • Akash, SQC technique refers to methods of solving questions using common sense and logic without applying any high level mathematics.

  4. Hi sir,
    In the last 4-5 mocks, I attempted 30-32 questions in VALR in 90 minutes and got about 25-27 right.
    18-22 attempts in QA with about 16-17 right. Quant is a relatively weak area for me, hence i try and do 2 DI sets.
    Usual score is between 110 to 120. Highest score till now has been 131. My target is 140.
    How do i increase the number of attempts since I can’t seem to improve upon the accuracy?

    • Abhay, please go through your last four Mocks and try to answer the following:
      1. where can you save time? Are there questions in QA, DI & LR that you try to solve but are unable and hence leave them unmarked or mark any choice because you have spent so much time? If yes what is common to these questions?
      2. how do I improve my accuracy? How many errors in each questions type (not section)? What is the reason for these errors – can they be rectified or some of these question types should not be attempted in the future.
      3. what is my marks per minute score? How much time do you give to each sub section,what is your attempt in each and how many correct? The sub sections are – QA, DI, LR, Verbal Logic, English Usage and RC? Which of these give you a better return on investment of time?
      Answer the above questions based on your last 4 mocks and you should be able to get the path to 99%ile.
      For the schedule to be followed for the next 4 weeks, please follow the post 4 Weeks to CAT’14 – Ab billi door nahin

  5. Hello sir,
    1. In QA my arithmetic is good but algebra,geometry,PnC and numbers is not good sir suggest me some easy concepts from these topics in which ques. are likely to come in Cat
    2. In VA while doing para jumble,para completion,RC,critical reasoning I get confused in two options from which one is always right and I frequently mark the wrong option.
    thank you

    • Chirag, if you are comfortable with Arithmetic then DI should also be on for you. For the other topics suggest that you go through a few Mocks and identify the questions types that you can solve and focus on them rather than on topics. In general questions on inequalities (and equations) can be solved by substitution of choices/numbers, you can also consider questions from progressions and mensuration.
      Please go through the posts on Para Completion, Inferential Reasoning and RC on this blog to get over the problem of getting stuck with two choices in Verbal Logic.

  6. Sir,

    I have been getting around 80-90 in the first section till now and around 60 in the second part. But suddenly in this mock things changed. qa di i got 50(19 c 7 w), 92 percentile; Va lr 82 (30c 8 w), 99 percentile. overall 132.
    I analyzed the paper and in the fiorst part it were some basic errors and what i saw was that i spent some unneccesary time on difficult questions. Please help as to what to do.

    • Ankur, it appears to be a case of lapse of concentration while attempting the QADI section or a not so good choice of questions which has led to to 7 wrong answers in this section. The good thing is that it has happened now and you know what to take care of in the paper.

  7. Sir,
    Just when i thought i was improving, the last 2 proc mocks of mine have gone bizarre. My scores have hovered only around 85-90s. I sort of felt let down. However in couple of unproc mocks like mock-4, i scored 114 with 54 attempts. And then just to see where I stand in old CAT papers, I took a full length test of old cat and I scored 115 with 50+ attempts. Where do you think I currently stand? How pc can I expect in CAT-14 with a score of 115?

    • Gopal, a score of 115 is likely to be between 90-95%ile in CAT’14.
      In your preparation you will have such ups and downs but stay focussed on your plan of practice, analysis and revision. Keep identifying & rectifying the areas of concern and things will fall in place.

  9. Sir,
    I take I.M.S.Mocks regularly with a gap of 2-3 days in every mock.My performances till now:
    Mock 1:Score 104
    Mock 2:Score 132
    Mock 3:Score 103
    Mock 4:Score 100
    Mock 5:Score 108
    Mock 6:Score 137
    Mock 7:Score 114
    Mock 8:Score 104
    Mock 1-Mock 5 percentiles:90-95
    Mock 6 percentile:99.33
    Mock 7,Mock 8 percentile:96.5,96
    Suggest me a way to shoot my percentiles to 98-99 in every upcoming mock…..I do around 55 questions in every mock.I have revised these mocks also!But accuracy is not fixed in Verbal section…Sometimes its around 65-70% and sometimes its around 77-80%.

    • Karan, not having seen the IMS mocks I will not be able to comment on your performance however in my limited knowledge IMS mocks are usually easier than CAT and hence may not be the best reflection of your performance in CAT. Please check the Percentile Predictor for an estimate of your CAT performance and update me on the same.
      The good thing is that you are consistently doing well in the papers and a couple of extra correct answers in each sections could take you to the next level. 55 attempts should ideally also increase to around 60. The starting point should be identify:
      1. where can you save time? Are there questions in QA, DI & LR that you try to solve but are unable and hence leave them unmarked or mark any choice because you have spent so much time? If yes what is common to these questions?
      2. accuracy – how many errors in each questions type (not section)? What is the reason for these errors – can they be rectified or some of these question types should not be attempted in the future.
      3. marks per minute. How much time do you give to each sub section,what is your attempt in each and how many correct? The sub sections are – QA, DI, LR, Verbal Logic, English Usage and RC? Which of these give you a better return on investment of time?
      Answer the above questions based on your last 4 mocks and you should be able to get the path to 99%ile. Give me a call at 9811155160 after you have done the above in case you need to discuss.

  10. “Then spent a minute in deciding whether to attempt the set on pie charts or the one or cricket?”
    Sir, I saw your mock solving video and you only attempted the government employee DI set and there was no question which used the background of cricket anyway, so I think there has been some mix up with the write up, please rectify it.

    • Dexter, perils of using the previous article as the base for the new one.
      Thanks for pointing out the miss, it has been corrected.

  11. Hi Gautam Sir,

    1.I am pretty underperforming in LR section.
    My overall score goes 80-85 in CL mocks but i hardly score in LR… may be it is due to my fear that i did not appear for any coaching(owing to work pressure).. so i am weak wid LR… any suggestion as to how to improve?I am already attempting past mocks on LR but finding them way bit difficult.My friends “97 in CAT” always tell me “LR mehnat hai”.. but what this mehnat is all about in LR… they cant decode.

    2.I attended your SQC in Delhi last month…feeling motivated

    3.My vocab is not very good.But i can handle RCs.Any point working on vocab now?If yes,how?

    Thank You sir.

    • Mukul, in the limited time available you should practice the LR sets in Mock CATs and in old CAT papers as these together will cover almost all the types of LR sets that you can expect in CAT.
      Vocab may not be possible at this point of time and you should focus on RC, LR and Verbal Logic.

  12. Hello Sir, how realistic are my chances at XLRI given that I have 49% in B.Com? I have 80%+ scores in 10 and 12. What %ile do I need for BM? Is it possible to make it?

    • Gaurav, your chances will be a function of your XAT score and the performance in the interview. You will be questioned on the your B.Com performance but will not be a reason for rejection. How you handle this question will be critical for your selection.

  13. Hello sir,

    Sir, I am facing accuracy problem in Para jumbles – ODD SENTENCE OUT questions .

    Kindly tell me sir , how to go about these types .

    Thank You

  14. Hello Sir,

    Thanks for the analysis. It really helps. I have a question.

    Can we get the time spent on each question in the mock in our SIS analysis as it would help us in identifying what went wrong or took more time during the mock?

  15. GP Sir,

    The e-SQC on 11 Oct was greatttt!!!!

    i find real time application of all these techniques and my scores in QA have gone up from around 40-5- to 75-80

    I CANT BELIEVE 3 HOURS COULD REALLY DO THIS MUCH

    I know its a lot to ask but Could you “please” arrange for an E session on Smart Verbal Cracker (if there is one) and also for DI and LR

    Being My 3rd and last attempt i dont want to leave any stone unturned (As im sure there are several other students too who wud benefit from this)

    and one last thing..
    Gejo Sir had said he;d upload the e-SQC session video recording on the SIS. Could you tellme by when wud it be online

    Thanks in advance for your immense help , always.

    • Rushil, will see if we can do a Smart Verbal and DI Creackers.
      The recordinf should be available in your SIS shortly.

      • I got the video in the SIS Sir.

        I know im maybe asking for a lot…
        But the E-Smart Cracker Session on DI/VA/LR would be too too helpful for me.

        With the help e-SQC has done i am very very grateful and strongly hope the others will be done soon too

        Looking forward to those.

        Thank you sir.

  16. Sir, Why is it that the Lr and Di of the mocks specially, are of another level altoghter…I did Di from previous year Cat papers, and every Di seemed doable, My accuracy was also around 80-85%, Lr was admittedlly a little tougher, but still a level or two down from what we are facing in the mocks. WillThe actual Cat Lr and di will be a level easier? Because that is what i have seeing in the Cat papers… Also i have been getting around 115-120. Is that decent marks for somebody who wanta to get 98.5 + percentile in Cat.

    • Niraj, I expect DI in CAT to be similar to that of CAT 1990 – 99. The DI and LR in mocks is of higher level of difficulty to create the pressure that you will face in the actual CAT.
      A score of 115-120 at present should lead to a 98.5%ile in CAT and I expect that you will be able to increase your score by the time you hit CAT.

  18. Hi Sir,

    I followed your CAT Mock 7 analysis, it was very helpful.In the previous year i have appeared for CAT and got 95 + percentile,but this year my marks is not moving above 70 in any of the mocks , though i have attempted only 4-5 mocks because of work pressure.After completing the paper i see that most of the questions i am being able to solve but could not do it within the time frame.I think my concepts on Quants are clear.Can you please help me with a strategy to improve my CAT score ,how many mocks should i attempt in the upcoming one month before CAT exam.

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