CAT 2019 was held on Sunday, November 24, 2019. The exam was conducted in two slots that is Morning (9:00-12:00) and Afternoon (2:30-5:30). It was a Three hours exam divided into three sections of 1 hour each. You could not change the order of sections. You also could not go back to a previous section or jump the section. The first section is VARC (Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension), the second section is LRDI (Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation) and the third section is QA (Quantitative Aptitude).

Section 1 (VARC)

VARC Section of both the Papers was average and roughly of the same difficulty level. But, the level of difficulty of VARC section was definitely tougher than VARC section of CAT 2018 and CAT 2017.

The pattern of VARC section was same as CAT 2018 and CAT 2017. There were no changes in the pattern compared to the previous 3-4 years. There were four RC passages of 5 Questions each and one RC passage of 4 Questions with 10 questions based upon Verbal Ability including 4 Para Jumbles, 3 Odd One Out and 3 Para Summaries.

Section 2 (LRDI)

LRDI Section of both the Papers was average to difficult. LRDI Section of Afternoon slot was slightly tougher than morning slot. The level of difficulty of LRDI section was roughly same (Slightly easier) when compared to that of LRDI Section of CAT 2018 and CAT 2017.

The pattern of LRDI section was same as CAT 2018 and CAT 2017. There were a total of 32 Question across 8 Sets of 4 Questions each.

Section 3 (QA)

QA Section of both the Papers was average to difficult. QA Section of Morning slot was slightly tougher than evening slot. The level of difficulty of QA section was definitely easier than the QA section of CAT 2018 but slightly difficult than CAT 2017.

In QA Section, There were a total of 34 Questions including 11 questions for which answer needed to be typed. There were around 12-14 Questions of Arithmetic, 8-10 Question of Algebra, 6-7 questions of Geometry and 5-6 Questions from Numbers and Modern maths.

Overall, CAT 2019 did not give any attack major in terms of pattern or format. This year, VARC section was slightly tougher when compared to that of CAT 2018, CAT 2017 or even CAT 2016. The DI & LR section was slightly easier compared to the previous years and QA Section was easier than CAT 2018 but slightly difficult from CAT 2017.

Detailed Analysis of Section:

Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC)

RC’s featured a total of 24 questions and were 5 in number; 4 RC’s with 5 questions each & 1 RC’s with 4 questions each. These 24 RC questions were broadly of 3 categories, a) Fact based  b) Exception based (What is not true according to the passage) c) Inference based. Most of the questions were inference based. Interestingly there were no questions on identifying tone of the passage.

Verbal Ability had a total of 10 questions with 3 types: a) Summary of a passage, b) Odd one out, c) Parajumbles. Of these 3 categories, Summary of a passage was MCQ type and Odd one out and Parajumbles were non MCQ type. No questions based upon Vocabulary, Grammar, Logical Continuation & Critical Reasoning were asked.

Detailed Analysis of Section:

Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation (LRDI)

LRDI was an average to difficult section. LRDI Section was a good mix of pure LR, pure DI and LRDI Sets. There were a total of 32 questions across 8 Sets of 4 Questions each. LRDI saw roughly the same or slightly decreased level of difficulty as compared to CAT 2018 or CAT 2017 or even CAT 2016.

When every national player was claiming a new spider web/chart type of DI set, you can find the exact same DI set in AnkGanit Sectional test of DI (Question 11 to 14 of DI Sectional Test 2)

Detailed Analysis of Section: Quantitative Aptitude (QA)

QA Section was an Average to Difficult section of CAT 2019. QA Section of Morning slot was slightly tougher than evening slot. The level of difficulty of QA section was definitely easier than the QA section of CAT 2018 but slightly difficult than CAT 2017. 

Last year in CAT 2018, QA section reduced some students to tears because even Arithmetic questions were time consuming and tricky. But this year in CAT 2019, Arithmetic questions were easy and most of the students were able to solve these. 

The QA section was definitely easier compared to that of CAT 2018, because there were enough number of doable questions, which weren’t that much time-consuming. AGites, who can follow the strategy of leaving difficult one, can easily manage to solve around 20 questions in given time.

The QA section was dominated by Arithmetic with 12-14 questions including 2 Questions from Percentages, 1 from PLD, 1 from SI CI, 2 from Time & Work, 2 Questions from TSD, 1 from ratio,& proportion, 2 from Average and 2 from Alligation & Mixtures. There were 8-10 questions of Algebra including 2 question from Modulus, 2 questions from sequence, 2 from functions, 2 from LOG and 1 from equations. There were 6 Questions of Geometry and 5-6 Questions from Modern Maths and Number System. Around 23 Questions are objective type with 4 options and  11 TITA questions are there. TITA type questions means for which answer needed to be typed. 

 Net Right Attempts/marks Vs Expected Percentile: