Comprehensive Analysis

On the whole, CAT 2020 can be said to have gone very smoothly, with students reporting a very positive experience from across the country. The COVID related processes also seem to have been managed very comprehensively with enough distancing between candidates.

Coming to the content of the exam, the 3-hour to 2-hour reduction in the duration of the exam did result in a reduction in the number of questions, though not proportionately, in line with the expectations of T.I.M.E. which gave all its AIMCATs with similar number of questions after the new pattern was announced in September.

CAT has 26, 24 and 26 questions in the VARC, LRDI and the QA sections respectively this year. The many AIMCATs which were given in the 24-24-24 range, in the 25-25-25 range and a few in the 27-26-27 range would have prepared students well for the pattern that they saw this year.

The pattern across slots was uniform and as below:

Difficulty level analysis

The reduction in duration did contribute to increased time pressure in the students' minds and played a big role in pushing up the perceived difficulty levels across sections.

To add to this, the sets/passages from LRDI and VARC themselves also were tougher compared to what was seen in the CATs of the recent past.

In VARC, the RC part  saw more number of the tricky question types involving phrases like 'all…..except' and also double negatives. While the Para-formation questions were similar in difficulty level to earlier, it would not help to know that the difficulty level if these questions always remained high in the earlier years as well due to the questions being of non-MCQ type.

The odd-one-out  questions were also tough, as was the case earlier. It may also be said that they were a tad on the tougher side this year.

The para summary questions were a bit doable out of the VA part, and must have been attempted  this year.

Though the number of sets in LRDI was only 5, finding the doable sets in the LRDI section was a bigger challenge this year compared to previous years. The 6-question sets would have been a big trap for many who only would have rued later after spending valuable time on them. Across slots, such sets would have been best left for the last. To add further trouble, the presence of non-MCQs in these sets pushed up the difficulty level even more.

The quant section was a relative relief in all the three slots, though it was a surprise this year with many more questions from algebra which pushed the difficulty level up.  Numbers did seem to get a lower representation overall this year, while P&C was conspicuously absent. Concepts were spread across the familiar range of topics that we teach students. However, Geometry & Mensuration, Time & Distance, ERPV can be said to have hogged the limelight this year. Concepts like Logarithms, inequalities, Functions & Graphs, Coordinate Geometry etc were also fairly represented.

The fewer number of questions available to select from did make the section tough compared to last year, though students who were able to identify the easy questions may feel that the section is slightly easy. The section had its share of tough questions, pushing the cutoff down

Cutoffs

The cutoff across slots are expected to be as below

The overall scores for various percentiles across slots are expected to be as below

Disclaimer: All information on cut-offs, analysis, and scores are based on independent analysis and evaluation made by T.I.M.E. We do not take responsibility for any decision that might be taken, based on this information.