After the fiasco that CET was last year, it sprung quite a surprise this time around. The difficult QA and LR sections caught a lot of candidates off guard. Having said that, there were quite a few sitters and an aspirant would have been well off devoting her/his time to these questions. The questions were the usual CET questions with no questions on mirror/water image, stocks and shares, etc. Without further ado, let’s head over to the details of the test.
Test Structure and Interface
As was mentioned in the official brochure, the questions were split section wise in the format mentioned below:
| Topic | Number of Questions |
| Abstract Reasoning | 25 |
| Quantitative Aptitude | 50 |
| Verbal Ability/Reading Comprehension | 50 |
| Logical Reasoning | 75 |
| Total | 200 |
Also, as mentioned in the brochure, there were 5 options per question. As the test was apparently conducted by IBPS, the interface was similar to other IBPS tests. The image below will give you a fair idea of the interface.
ibps interface
In the section area shown in the image above, the 4 sections were displayed with the ability to move to any section as desired. On hovering over the section however, you couldn’t see the individual performance in each section (number of questions attempted, not attempted, marked for review, etc.) You had to click on each section and on the right hand side of the interface just above the question numbers, there was a display showing all details related to number of questions attempted, number of questions marked for review, etc. There was no option to view the question paper.
Let’s head over to the individual sections now:
1. Abstract Reasoning
This section contained 25 questions of Visual Reasoning. The question types asked were mainly on series completion with a few on analogy and missing figure. As compared to previous years, this section was relatively easy. Someone who had gone in with a set strategy of not attempting Visual Reasoning questions would have missed out on quite a few sitters here.
In fact, some of the questions seemed to have the same logic as the ones asked in a few earlier CET papers (2007-11). A candidate who had solved all questions from these papers would have found it easy going in this section.
A good candidate could easily have had 20 genuine attempts in this section. With a tough QA section and time-consuming arrangement sets, a candidate would have found this section to be a safe haven.
2. Quantitative Ability
Quantitative Ability was a bit of a shocker to me and to other candidates as well it seems! The QA section contained questions mainly on arithmetic with algebra questions hardly existent. Also, there were only 1-2 questions on geometry and probability. The QA section also contained 3 DI sets of 5 questions each. In fact the first question in my section was a DI set. Unfortunately, the DI set had the entire data table missing without which the question was impossible to solve. I don’t know if this was a problem only with my paper. Others may please confirm. The other 2 DI sets were relatively easy with calculation being the only bugbear. There were very few easy quant questions as is usually the case with CET quant. A candidate would have been better off attempting the 5-8 easy quant questions plus the DI sets and then moving on to other sections.
On the whole, a good candidate would probably have 25-30 genuine attempts in this section.
3.Verbal Ability/Reading Comprehension
This section was easily the saving grace for a candidate. The verbal ability section had a good mix of vocabulary and grammar questions. The vocabulary questions were on finding synonyms/antonyms for a given word i.e. for a given word the options had either the synonym or the antonym of the word. Except for 1 question, the others were easily attemptable. The grammar questions, again, were not that difficult. The sentence correction questions were sitters.
The ‘Sentence starter’ questions type made a comeback after 2014. However, the questions were not very difficult and at least 3 out of 5 could easily have been attempted. The parajumble question was the usually CET type with 6 jumbled sentences given. There was another question where among the 5 options, you had to choose one option which was not presenting the idea that the other sentences when arranged would convey. The cloze passages were simple and there for the taking.
The 2 reading comprehension passages were moderate in length and easy to comprehend. The first passage was on the ‘infrastructure of Indonesia’ whereas the other was on ‘sarcasm’. There were mostly factual questions with hardly any inference questions. Again, the questions could have solved easily without taking up a lot of time.
On the whole, the VARC section was the face saver and someone who devoted her/ his time to answering all questions would see her/his score shoot up. On the whole, a good candidate would have 45-50 genuine attempts in this section.
4. Logical Reasoning
The Logical Reasoning section had 4 sets on arrangements – circular arrangement, arrangement with blood relations, arrangement with direction not specified (north/south) and floor arrangement (i.e a building has x number of floors. G stays on the 1st floor, etc.) On the whole, all the sets had a lot of conditions and it would have been a nightmare for someone to attempt all of them. The floor arrangement was probably the easiest among them and could have been attempted.
There were 6 questions on syllogisms which were extremely simple. There were 5 questions on input-output where the logic was a little complex as compared to the usual simple ascending/descending arrangements that we encounter. However, all the questions were based on the same input and hence attempting these 5 questions made sense. The blood relation questions were simple and should have attempted. The data sufficiency questions were also easy to moderate in terms of difficulty and should have been attempted.
This section also had questions on verbal reasoning such as inference, conclusion and a few questions on strengthening/weakening the argument. These questions were easy to moderate in difficult but should have been attempted considering the difficulty of the arrangement questions.
On the whole, a good candidate would have 30-35 genuine attempts in this section.
Summary
Overall, the exam was moderate to high in terms of difficulty. Unfortunately, the problem with CET being a difficult exam is that the proportion of luck then goes up (as there is no negative marking). If good candidates are genuinely able to attempt only 140-150 questions, then the number of questions which have to be guessed randomly will make a huge difference to the final score.
On the whole, a score of 150-155 should fetch a 99.99 percentile in my opinion.
Boost your CAT 2016 preparation by joining this group (for serious aspirants only)
How I attempted the test
Now that I have finished talking about the nature of questions and the level of difficulty, let me write a few words on how I attempted the test. My test center was in the far off village of Kopar Khairane (sorry Kopar Khairane folks!). After a tiring journey of 1.5 hours, I reached the center at 12:45 – precisely 30 minutes before the time mentioned in the hall ticket. After whiling away 30 minutes, we were finally allowed to proceed inside. Fortunately, there was no biometric scanning of the eye, hands, nose (:P), etc a la CAT. However, my relief was short lived as the invigilator wanted a thumb impression of every candidate using a stamp pad. Kudos to old technology! What DTE will do with the thumb impressions, I have no clue.
Coming back to the lab, the seats and the computer arrangements were pretty good. Around 1:45, we were told to login using the password given in the hall ticket. However, when we signed in, an error message popped up on all machines due to which we had to restart our computers and do the whole process again. A minor snag but a snag nonetheless. An error free CET is as rare as a SNAP paper with relevant GK questions.
After entering the details, I had a few minutes to read the instructions. Nothing out of the ordinary here except for the rule on negative marking which stated that there was no negative marking. However, in the same breath, it also told us to refrain from random guessing! (Sure!! J)
At 2 pm, a pop up ..er.. popped up on my screen intimating me that the test had started. I decided to start off with my strength i.e. VA. I quickly attempted the initial few vocabulary questions and moved on to grammar. I skipped the RC passages as well as the sentence starter in the first round. When I reached the end of the section, I had attempted 35 questions in around 10 minutes.
Happy at my speed, I moved on my arch nemesis – the QA section. The first DI set had the data missing (as I have mentioned in the review above). The first QA question was on probability and it was certainly not easy. After spending a little time on this and not getting an answer among the options given, I decided to move onto other questions. However, the easy questions were few and far in between. I also skipped the other 2 DI sets. By the time I was done with this section I had attempted around 10 questions and spent some 15 odd minutes.
I decided to head over to the Visual Reasoning section next. Luckily, I was able to decipher the logic for most of the questions without spending a lot of time. On the whole, I spent around 25 minutes for 20 questions now.
I now moved on to the Logical Reasoning knowing that I still had ample time. The first set was on circular arrangement. I tried it for a minute before deciding to revert to it again later. I could attempt the set on the person living on each floor easily. The other verbal reasoning questions didn’t eat up a lot of time. I also attempted the other non-verbal reasoning questions on blood relations, input-output, syllogisms, etc. By the time I was done, I had spent around 50 minutes and attempted around 50 questions.
Now I had a lot of time to attempt the remaining questions. I decided to finish off the pending questions in VARC first and took around 15 minutes attempting them. After this, I went back to VR but after spending some time I could get the logic of only 2 out of the remaining 5.
With around 50 minutes remaining, my attempts looked like this: QA: 10, VA: 50, VR: 22, LR: 50.
In the next 15 minutes, I finished off 10 DI questions. In the next 15 minutes, I decided to attempt the other QA questions and got around 7-8 of them. I still had 20 minutes to go, so I decided to attempt the blood relations arrangement logical reasoning set for fun. However, after spending around 7-8 minutes, I was not able to get the logic and decided to leave the set. With only 12 minutes to go, I decided to randomly guess (in spite of reading the instructions!) the other questions. (Just a hat tip: Marking answers takes some time with the online interface so be sure to leave some time at the end to mark the answers.)
At the end of the test, I had around 150 attempts with 50 guesses. As I have already mentioned, guessing so many questions ultimately turns into a game of luck.
Parting shot:
For candidates taking the test tomorrow, take this review with a pinch of salt. It is not necessary that the LR arrangement sets will have the same difficulty as today or that the VA/VR section will be as easy as today. Keep a flexible strategy and estimate the difficulty of each section. Obviously, spend the most amount of time on the easiest section.
Also, don’t do the cardinal sin of not marking all answers. In a difficult paper, guesses matter a lot. So take some time (5-8 minutes) to mark the answers to all the unattempted questions.
All the best 🙂
Boost your CAT 2016 preparation by joining this group (for serious aspirants only)
Do post your scores/attempts/expectations/queries on our newly launched forum: Learningroots Forum
We at Learningroots celebrated our first birthday a few days back. As a thank you gesture, for those of you targeting CAT 2016, we have a huge discount on all our courses. Do check out the courseware here.
