Overall, CAT 2021 was conducted in a smooth manner with almost no major incidents or problems being reported across the country. The IIMs can be applauded for having arranged and pulled off the entire exercise in a meticulous and professional manner. Students have shared positive experiences with regards to the physical arrangements and the infrastructure provided. With dedicated labs at most places and a streamlined process being followed, the experience was certainly glitch free and pleasant. While this was the second CAT to be held under the shadow of the pandemic, the COVID effect would have remained in the background and gone almost unnoticed, if it were not for the ubiquitous masks and the empty chairs that reminded one of the social distancing that had to be followed.

Coming to the pattern and the content of the exam, as shared beforehand by the IIMs, the duration of the exam remained as 2-hours, the same as last year, with 40 minutes per section. The number of questions in each section, however, were reduced slightly when compared to last year. This was in line with what the IIMs had hinted in advance. The total number of questions in the exam fell from 76 to 66, a decrease of 10 questions, which should have reduced the time pressure that the students would have otherwise faced, given the shorter 2-hour version since last year. The sectional split up of the number of questions this year was 24-20-22 in the VARC, DILR and QA sections respectively, as compared to the 26-24-26 split up last year.

T.I.M.E. students would definitely have had an edge given that they were exposed to multiple AIMCATs comprising 66 questions. Also, the approach to cracking the tough DILR sets that appeared in CAT was very similar to the different kinds of approaches that the student would have learnt from the AIMCATs and AIMCAT-SAs.

The pattern across the three slots this year is as below

Section	Total No. of Questions	Area	No. of Questions	Pattern
VARC	24	RC	16	4 passages of 4 questions each
		VA	8	3 Para Formations 2 Odd One Out 3 Para Summary
DILR	20	DILR	20	2 Sets of 6 questions each 2 Sets of 4 questions each
QA	22	QA	22	22 Individual Questions
Total	66

Difficulty level analysis

The reduction in the number of questions translated to a reduction in the choice of questions available to the students. This was particularly acute in the DILR section where the number of sets dropped to four from five last year. The reduction in choice would have contributed to increased pressure for some of the students and could have pushed the difficulty levels up across sections.

Adding to this, the sets/passages from LRDI and VARC (in the morning and afternoon slots in particular) also were, overall, on the tougher side compared to the CATs of the recent past. In VARC, the RC part saw tougher passages to read and very involved questions with many of them containing double negatives, involving phrases like 'all…..except', "refutes…except".

In the VA part too, the Odd-one-out and the Para-formation questions were relatively tougher. The odd-one-out questions were particularly tough. However, the fact that these were non-MCQs could have helped a little. The para summary questions ranged from moderate to difficult across the slots, being relatively easier in the morning slot compared to that of the evening and afternoon slots.

Finding the right strategy to navigate the LRDI section was a bigger challenge this year. In particular, one should have definitely attempted the easy bar graphs set, one of which was present across the slots. The 6-question sets continued to be traps this year as these were the toughest sets and also quite time consuming.

In the QA section, the biggest surprise was the importance given to Arithmetic over the other areas, across slots. This should have come as a huge relief, especially to the students from the non-maths background. Absence of questions from the Numbers topic was another surprise, particularly because many would have spent a lot of time preparing for this area. This is in fact a trend that has continued from the last CAT, which also saw a lower representation from Numbers. Geometry & Mensuration, and ERPV seemed to have hogged the limelight this year. Concepts like Logarithms, inequalities, Functions & Graphs, AMA, Percentages etc were fairly represented.

Cutoffs

The cutoffs across slots are expected to be as below.

VARC Percentiles
Percentile	Morning	Afternoon	Evening
85	23	22	24
95	32	32	34
99	43	43	45

DILR Percentiles
Percentile	Morning	Afternoon	Evening
85	17	18	18
95	23	23	23
99	29	31	30

QA Percentiles
Percentile	Morning	Afternoon	Evening
85	23	23	20
95	31	32	28
99	40	42	38

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

Overall Percentiles
Percentile	Morning	Afternoon	Evening
95	76	79	76
97.5	85	89	85
99	95	101	96

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