CAT 2023 Evening Slot Analysis

The evening slot was slightly easier overall compared to the morning slot, despite a relatively tougher Quant section. However, the difference in difficulty was not that significant. Almost all the sections were close to the morning slot in terms of difficulty. This slot did not have any mandatory question, as was seen in the afternoon slot. Some are speculating that this could have been a technical glitch or an error, but we do not have any conclusive information on it yet.

The following was the pattern of examination in the evening 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 evening 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 evening slot, 16 from Reading Comprehension and 8 from Verbal Ability. This section did not have any questions that had a * symbol beside the question number in the Question palette.

There were four RC passages, with four questions per passage. Overall, the difficulty level of this paper was moderate to difficult. This slot too had a good number of “all…if true/weaken…EXCEPT” questions. Most of the questions were inference-based questions. A relief for the students was that there were a decent number of questions where the answers were not too close, making it relatively easier to answer those questions. Two passages were relatively easier to read but even these had questions that were not straightforward.

The passage on Pinker’s Rationality was moderate to difficult with respect to the readability. But the questions in the passage were difficult. The questions were difficult but there were 1-2 questions which could have been attempted.

The passage on Museum Artifacts and Patrimony Laws was the easiest passage to read. Reading and understanding the passage would not have been challenging to students. Students could have attempted 2-3 questions from this passage. This was a passage that students could have attempted in the beginning of the section.

The passage on Romanticism was very difficult to read. The ideas discussed in the passage were difficult to comprehend. While the questions were not difficult, the understanding challenge made it hard to answer questions confidently. This was a passage that students should not have attempted in the beginning of the exam.

The passage on Climate Change and Nutmeg’s Curse was difficult both in terms of reading as well as the questions. The primary challenge was in understanding some of the ideas presented in the passage. This was a passage that students should have skipped or saved for the end.

Passage	Number of Questions	Readability	Overall Difficulty Level
Pinker’s Rationality	4	Moderate-Difficult	Difficult
Museum Artifacts and Patrimony Laws	4	Moderate	Moderate-Difficult
Romanticism	4	Very Difficult	Very Difficult
Climate Change and Nutmeg’s Curse	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. The Para Summary questions were moderately difficult, with the themes being relatively easier 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 18-20 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 evening slot was on par with the afternoon slot paper. Students who were able to identify the right sets would have scored well.

The overall difficulty of the section was difficult to very difficult. This was tougher than last year’s DILR. Three out of the four sets were Quant Based Reasoning sets. There were no sets that were purely LR based. There were two sets that were doable and even these two were time consuming and a little challenging. Like one of the sets in the morning slot, there were two sets in this slot that required students to have prior knowledge of certain statistical terms. This would have increased the difficulty level of the sets a notch for most students who were not so familiar with the terms.

The set-wise details are as below:

DILR	No. of Questions	Difficulty level
AC – Split/Window	5	Moderate-Difficult
Offline and Online Test Takers	5	Moderate-Difficult
Patrolling Routes	5	Difficult
Scores and Weightages	5	Difficult

The set on ‘AC – Split/Window’ was a Quant-based reasoning set. This was a moderate to difficult set. The set involved a lot of intricate reasoning, primarily based on numbers. Compared to the other sets, this was still doable.

The set on ‘Offline and Online Enrolments’ was also a Quant-based reasoning set and it was moderate to difficult. It was relatively straightforward to solve. This set was also doable and should have been attempted first.

The set on ‘Patrolling Routes’ was lengthy and students would have had some trouble understanding the context. This made coming up with an approach a little difficult. Students should have skipped this set or attempted this in the end.

The set on ‘Test Scores and Weightages’ was a difficult set to solve. Students had to figure out the weightages along with the distribution of the scores. There was a lot to do in this set and therefore, was challenging. This should not have been attempted by students in the beginning of the section.

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 12–14 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 in Slot 3 was slightly tougher than the other two slots. This paper was a little different compared to the other two slots in the sense that the questions in this slot needed slightly more conceptual understanding than elaborate working out, which was the case in the other two slots.

Despite the students in this slot being mentally prepared for a tougher Quant section after having heard the feedback from the other two slots, the paper still ended up being really difficult, even for the well-prepared ones. There were no easy questions in the section and more than half of the questions could be categorized to be difficult. There were several questions where the required approaches were dense or involved multiple layers of reasoning/conceptual clarity. Majority of the questions were from Algebra and Arithmetic, something that was seen among the previous slots as well. The distribution of questions across topics and the difficulty level of individual questions was more or less the same between the three slots. While the morning slot had 1 question from Numbers and 4 questions from Quadratic Equations, the afternoon slot had had 3 questions from Numbers and 2 questions from Quadratic Equations, and the evening slot had 1 from Numbers and 1 from Quadratic Equations. There were no questions from Modern Maths in this paper.

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.

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

Topic	No. of Questions
ERPV	2
Percentages, Profit & Loss	3
Functions	1
Time & Distance	1
Numbers	1
Geometry	3
Progressions/Series	2
Quadratic Equations	1
Averages Mixtures & Alligations	2
Coordinate Geometry	1
Permutations & Combinations	1
Logarithms	1
Time and Work	2
Indices	3

A net score of 7-9 would be a decent score for a test-taker to be able to get 85 percentile (sectional cut-off).

Overall, a net score of 53-56 should be sufficient to fetch at least one IIM call.