CAT 2021, in the morning slot, was on expected lines with not many surprises as far as the pattern goes. As announced by IIM Ahmedabad, the number of questions were reduced across all the sections.

The following was the pattern of examination in the first slot.

Section	Number of Questions	MCQs	Non MCQs	Sectional time limit
Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension	24	19	5	40 Minutes
Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning	20	15	5	40 Minutes
Quantitative Ability	22	14	8	40 Minutes
Total	66	48	18	120 Minutes

The evaluation scheme remained the same as that of the earlier years. Three marks for a correct answer and a negative mark for a wrongly marked MCQ. There were no negative marks for non-MCQs.

The difficulty, overall, for CAT 2021 in the morning slot was slightly on the higher side compared to that of CAT 2020 overall, which also was a two-hour paper.

Section-wise analysis

Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension

The VARC section had 24 questions in the morning slot, a reduction of two questions from the last year. The RC passages were four in number, similar to last year's papers. The number of RC questions, however, dropped to 16 from 18 of last year. The number of VA questions remained at 8.

The RC passages this year were not easy to crack. Selecting a passage to answer was not easy either, as almost none of the passages made for easy reading. One only had to implement a method of eliminating the tougher passages and attempting the passages that are left over.

The questions were also very involved, with many of them asking the students to choose the options "except". The options were close and many of them were not easy to relate directly to the passage/question. The distribution of the passages is as below

Passage	Number of Questions	Readability	Overall Difficulty Level
Mayan Civilisation	4	Difficult	Difficult
Utopia and Dystopia	4	Difficult	Very Difficult
Marshmallow experiment	4	Moderate	Difficult
Evolution of Tea as a drink	4	Moderate	Moderate

The verbal ability questions, on the other hand, can be said to have provided some relief to the students who were stumped by the RC passages/questions. There were a couple of easy ones in the PFQs that the students should have attempted, due to their short length and simple comprehension that was needed. Links connecting the sentences were clear and apparent.

The OMO questions, however, were tough, but students could afford to take a guess with these as they are non-MCQs.

The distribution of the questions in the Verbal Ability area is as below

Question Type	Number of Questions	Difficulty Level
Para Formation Questions (PFQs)	3	Moderate
Odd One Out	2	Difficult
Para Summary	3	Moderate

A net score of 22-24 would be a decent score for a test-taker to be able to get 85 percentile (sectional cut-off).

Logical Reasoning & Data Interpretation

The LRDI section of the morning slot was at least as difficult as that of the papers last year. Some may have found it more challenging due to the number of sets now being only four instead of the five last year. The 20 questions in the section came from just two four-question sets and two six-question sets. The reduction of one set caused a drop in the choice of sets available to the students. Combined with this, that there was only one easy set out of the four, made matters tough for the students in terms of which other set to select – this is of course, after one has identified the easy set (the set on the bar graph) to do upfront.

The set-wise details are as below

LRDI	Set Type	No. of Questions	Difficulty Level
Bar graph on sales	DI	4	Moderate
Friends & Acquaintances	LR	6	Difficult
Smoothies	DI	4	Difficult
Journals	LR	6	Very Difficult

The set on bar-graphs could be considered the easiest across the CAT LRDI papers over the past few years. The data was straight forward and easy to understand with no logical complications. Reading the graph was slightly tough. But this difficulty was easily offset by the direct and simple questions in the set. This is the set in this paper that one should not have missed, even though it had only four questions.

The set on Friends & Acquaintances needed the students to work with an 8x8 grid and check for additional variations/cases. However, once the given information is input into the grid after understanding it thoroughly, applying some amount of reasoning makes the set crack-able.

The set on smoothies, though having numbers that are not so complex to handle, can be classified as difficult. While a couple of the questions in the set can be solved with some moderate effort, the remaining two demanded exertion, pushing the difficulty level of this set higher.

The two sets above could be the sets that the students should pick up to solve after having solved the set on bar graphs.

The set on Journals had multiple data points and many may have dropped this set due to the sheer complexity of the information available. However, those who persisted with it would have found out that the information falls into place after having put in some effort. This, though would have been very time consuming and hence, makes this set a prime candidate be dropped or left to be dealt towards the end of the section.

A net score of 16-18 would be a decent score for a test-taker to be able to get 85 percentile (sectional cut-off).

Quantitative Ability Section

The Quant section surprised students with a lesser number of questions compared to the VARC section. 22 questions were present in this section, two lower than that of the VARC section.

Many questions in the section appeared very doable at the outset but demanded increased effort and conceptual clarity from the students for them to be able to eventually solve them successfully. Several question could have proven to be more time consuming than expected initially.

The topics of Geometry and ERPV had the highest representation in this slot with three questions each. Numbers, a popular topic, was conspicuously underrepresented in contrast to the usual expectations.

Questions were cleverly framed to test conceptual clarity and smartness in approach. A few questions also allowed substitution from the options to help students save time.

The distribution of questions in this section across topics is as below

Topic	No. of Questions	Difficulty Level
ERPV	3	Moderate
Percentages, Profit & Loss	2	Moderate
SI-CI	1	Easy
Time & Distance	1	Easy
Time & Work	2	Moderate
Numbers	1	Moderate
Geometry	3	Easy - Moderate
Progressions	2	Difficult
Logarithms and Indices	1	Moderate
Functions & Graphs	1	Moderate
Quadratic Equations	2	Moderate - Difficult
Inequalities & Modulus	1	Moderate
AMA	2	Moderate

A net score of 22-24 would be a decent score for a test-taker to be able to get 85 percentile (sectional cut-off).