CAT 2023 Afternoon Slot Analysis

The afternoon slot was slightly easier overall compared to the morning slot, although the difference in difficulty was not that significant. Almost all the sections were close to the morning slot in terms of difficulty. There was a small surprise in the VARC section in the afternoon slot that those in the morning slot did not see. There were no other surprises in any other section.

The following was the pattern of examination in the second slot:

Section	Number of Questions	MCQs	Non MCQs	Sectional time limit
Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension	24	20	4	40 Minutes
Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning	20	12	8	40 Minutes
Quantitative Ability	22	14	8	40 Minutes
Total	66	46	20	120 Minutes

The evaluation scheme was the same as that of the earlier years - Three marks for a correct answer and a penalty of a mark for a wrongly marked MCQ. Non-MCQs had no negative marks.

The difficulty, overall, for CAT 2023 in the afternoon slot was slightly on the higher side compared to that of all of the slots of the two previous CATs.

Section-wise analysis

Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension:

The VARC section had 24 questions in the afternoon slot, 16 from Reading Comprehension and 8 from Verbal Ability. One surprising thing that students in the afternoon slot noticed was a Para Odd Man Out question that was highlighted as mandatory. This question had a * symbol beside the question number in the Question palette. There is no clarity yet on the implications of this. But otherwise, it was very similar to the afternoon slot in terms of the difficulty.

The RC passages were four in number, with four questions per passage. There were a good number of questions hypothesis and further application questions, which meant there were additional layers of reasoning. The afternoon slot paper also had a good number of questions of the nature “which of the following are true EXCEPT” and questions with double negatives of the nature “all of the following weaken … EXCEPT.” While three passages were easy to read, they were difficult at a question level. There were very few questions that could be directly answered after rereading the relevant parts.

The passage on Fast Fashion was an easy read and the theme was familiar. The questions were easy to moderate in terms of difficulty, and students could have answered 2-3 of them correctly.

The passage on History-Interpretation of facts, was deceptively easy to read, but the options in a couple of questions were quite close and difficult to eliminate. Students who attempted this passage first may have ended up losing time on these questions. However, a couple of questions were detail-based and could have been answered by carefully rereading the relevant parts of the passage.

The passage on Netflix and European culture, was the easiest passage to read. The language and the content of the passage did not pose a lot of trouble. This was a passage that students should have attempted in the exam.

The Passage on Liberalism was quite abstract and difficult to read. The ideas discussed were complex and understanding it would have required multiple readings, which would have taken up a lot of time. Most of the questions were of the type “All…EXCEPT” and these had options that were difficult to eliminate. This was a passage that students should have skipped or saved for the end.

Passage	Number of Questions	Readability	Overall Difficulty Level
Fast Fashion	4	Moderate	Moderate
History – Interpretation of Facts	4	Moderate-Difficult	Difficult
Netflix and European Culture	4	Moderate	Moderate
Liberalism	4	Difficult	Difficult

In the Verbal Ability section, there were two questions each on Para Formation, Para odd man out, Para Summary, and Sentence Placement. Overall, the VA part was of moderate difficulty level, with a few easy questions. All the Para Formation and Para Odd Man Out questions were non-MCQs.

The Para Formation questions were moderate to difficult, and students should have strategically attempted both, as they were both non-MCQs.

The Para Odd Man Out questions were of moderate difficulty, where students could figure out the right answer by trying to solve the sequence of the contextually connected sentences.

The Sentence Placement questions were moderately difficult. One of the questions was easy to answer while the other one was a little tricky. The Para Summary questions were moderately difficult, with the themes being not too difficult to read.

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

Question Type	Number of Questions	Difficulty Level
Para Formation Questions (PFQs)	2	Moderate-Difficult
Sentence Placement	2	Moderate
Para Summary	2	Moderate
Para Odd Man Out	2	Moderate

A net score of 17–19 would be a decent score for a test-taker to be able to get 85 percentile (sectional cut-off).

Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning:

The DILR section of the afternoon slot was slightly easier than the morning slot paper. It had the same pattern as the morning slot paper. Selecting the right sets was the key to scoring high.

There were two sets that were doable and these sets did not have a lot of information for students to process. So students who chose these sets based on the length of information managed to have scored well.

The set-wise details are as below:

DILR	No. of Questions	Difficulty level
3 People drawing numbers	5	Moderate
5 Firms raising money – founded and closed in different years	5	Moderate-Difficult
9 Boxes in 3 x 3 tray	5	Difficult
Theme Park – 3 friends – 4 rides	5	Difficult

The set on ‘3 people (Akhil, Bimal and Chatur) drawing numbers on 5 days’ was a Quant-based reasoning set. This seemed to be a difficult set to some students but it was a doable set. The condition “Chatur always drew numbers that are multiples of 3” made the set easier as this had only a few possibilities. Those who picked this condition would have solved it without investing too much time. This was a set that students should have attempted.

The set on ‘5 firms raising money – founded and closed in different years’ was not too difficult to solve. Students had to figure out the amounts raised in different years for the 5 companies. There were multiple possibilities for a couple of companies. Students could have understood this from the question “for how many companies can…be determined”. Although it seemed like there was a lot to do, this set was also doable but a little time consuming.

The set on ‘9 boxes arranged in 3 x 3 tray’ was slightly lengthy and students would have had some trouble understanding the two tables in the first reading. The way one had to read the table was not straightforward and this would have consumed a good amount of time. While solving the entire set would have been time consuming and difficult, a couple of questions could have been attempted based on partial solutions. But the smart thing to do would have been to skip or save this set for later.

The set on ‘Theme park – 3 friends – 4 rides’ was a difficult set to solve. Students had to figure out who took which rides, how many rides they took, and they also had to calculate the amounts spent on the rides for each person. There was a lot of reasoning involved and it was time consuming. This was a set that students should have saved for last or skipped altogether.

In this slot as well, students who took a good number of AIMCATs would have come across such sets multiple times, which would have definitely helped in reducing the novelty/surprise factor of these sets.

A net score of 11–13 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 was on par with the morning slot in terms of difficulty.

The observation of Algebra-heavy content was similar to that of the morning slot. Those who were mentally prepared, after having heard the feedback from the morning slot candidates, would have had a slight advantage in managing their time and nerves better. The distribution of questions across topics and the difficulty level of individual questions was more or less the same between the morning and afternoon slots. While the morning slot had 1 question from Numbers and 4 questions from Quadratic Equations, the afternoon slot had 3 questions from Numbers and 2 questions from Quadratic Equations. There were no questions from Modern Maths in this paper. Similar to the morning slot, most questions required the student to go beyond simply substituting values in formulae. Because many of these questions required students to invest a good amount of time, most students might not have gone through all of the questions. Even students who are strong in QA would have found it difficult to attempt more than 10-12 questions.

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

Topic	No. of Questions
ERPV	2
Percentages, Profit & Loss	2
SI-CI	1
Time & Distance	1
Numbers	3
Geometry	2
Progressions/Series	2
Quadratic Equations	2
Averages Mixtures & Alligations	2
Coordinate Geometry	1
Special Equations	1
Logarithms	1
Inequalities	2
Time and Work	1

A net score of 8-10 would be a decent score for a test-taker to be able to get 85 percentile (sectional cut-off).

Overall, a net score of 52-55 should be sufficient to fetch at least one IIM call.