Another question that may arise is, what are the difficulty levels of a CAT question paper? There is the 'easy' question that we all know of. It takes less than 45 seconds on average if the problem clicks on the first read. However, in the exam, this time may vary from student to student, depending on their concentration level and exam practice. Moderately severe questions are the differentiators, perhaps the most sought after questions in CAT. Your percentile in CAT depends directly on how many problems of this type you can solve. The average time to answer these types of questions is 2 – 3 minutes, and they form a large proportion of each year's CAT paper. My suggestion is that students should practice these questions the most and try to solve them in examination with maximum accuracy. Finally, there the questions with a high level of difficulty that tests your ability to dig deep and get to the root of the problem. If you do get it right, it's a big bonus. However, I would suggest students beware of the time-killers. Selecting which questions to attempt and which ones to leave is an art that you must master if you want to move up in scoring. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts for this. The only way to learn this art is by practice, which is where 'discipline' comes into the picture.
What is discipline? Let me share an anecdote with you. Last year, I was working for TCS while preparing for my CAT. Every day, after ten hours of work, I come back to my room, cook my food while watching videos on various 'types' of questions and how to solve them – the traps and pitfalls of VA&RC, the do's and don'ts of DI&LR, and the tricks and shortcuts of quants. I would then spend hours on finding those types of questions, apply the concepts I learned, and see if my speed and accuracy improved. It's not an impressive work at all; in fact, most of us do study this way. But I did it, for one-years straight without fail. That takes perseverance and gut. Persistence is going to be your biggest challenge, not only for CAT preparation but at every juncture of your career in the future. I would recommend students to work on this part the most, for if you are disciplined, clearing CAT is just a matter of time.
Finally, we come to the examiner's intent behind a CAT problem. CAT questions are application-based problems that test how quickly and accurately students can identify the underlying idea. I would give a simple example. We know that there are 10C2 ways of selecting two items out of 10 identical items. An extrapolation of this simple concept can create a variety of questions. For example, if you are asked to determine the number of diagonals in a deacon, the problem can be answered by a simple formula 10C2-10 (subtracting the number of sides from all lines that can be formed by ten non-collinear points). If a student 'gets the idea,' the rest is just details. I would advise students that once they identify the problem, they must invest sufficient time and care while solving them. Calculation mistakes are unforgiving in an exam set-up. More than the number of problems, the accuracy determines your score in CAT.
With this, I want to conclude this monologue. I hope that you benefit from the advice and takeaways from the article. I would delve deeper into the questions that I raised at the beginning of the article in the coming days — all the best for your preparations.
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