S. Vishnu Sharma
2020 CAT Exam date is nearing and the best thing candidates can do is to stick to their preparation.
While those who have finished preparation for 2020 CAT Exam can begin their revision.
2020 CAT Exam is a competitive exam going to be held on 29 November this year, candidates who pass the exam will be able to get admission in Indian Institute of Managements (IIMs).
Apart from IIMs, many other prestigious B-Schools in this country also conduct admission into management programmes offered by them based on scores obtained in 2020 CAT Exam.
Getting a good score in 2020 CAT Exam is a must if one aspires to study management courses in a prestigious institute.
2020 CAT Exam: Know how to prepare for the great test
Study in a prestigious institute has its own benefits, one of that is brightening of job prospects.
2020 CAT Exam is being conducted by IIM Indore this time and CAT Centre there has already released CAT official mock test for this year with many changes made to it.
Applicants for 2020 CAT Exam have to go to the official website of the exam at ‘https://iimcat.ac.in/per/g01/pub/756/ASM/WebPortal/1/index.html?756@@1@@1’ and scroll down the page.
After scrolling down the page, candidates can find a menu titled ‘Quick Tour of CAT 2020’ they can click button titled ‘CAT 2020 mock test link’ PwD candidates whose vision is low can click another link below it titled ‘CAT 2020 Mock Test Link for PWD Candidates with low vision’
Clicking any one of these two links will download another page where they will have some description about the mock test and below the description they can find a url.
Applicants have to click that url and enter their username and password and then begin the mock test.
The link to directly access the mock test of normal candidates is ‘https://www.digialm.com/OnlineAssessment/index.html?756@@M12’
The same for candidates with low vision is ‘https://www.digialm.com/OnlineAssessment/index.html?756@@M14’
While the mock tests will strengthen their chances for passing the exam, there are other things that applicants of 2020 CAT Exam must remember.
Among the things that 2020 CAT Exam aspirants have remember is the way the exam is being conducted this time.
Knowing this will also help the candidates prepare for the test effectively. Unlike the previous year, 2020 CAT Exam will be conducted in three shifts this year.
Three shifts for 2020 CAT Exam are morning, afternoon and evening.
Morning session is from 8:30 am to 10:30 am, afternnon session is from 12:30 pm to 2:30 pm and evening session is from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm.
Applicants can know after observing the above timings for 2020 CAT Exam that duration for answering questions in each session has come down.
Earlier, CAT Exam used to have two slots with a duration of three hours each.
Now, candidates sitting for 2020 CAT Exam will be having two hours only to answer questions.
If this situation is taken into consideration, candidates attending 2020 CAT Exam will have to practice answering questions in as less time as possible.
2020 CAT Exam will have three sections, Section-1 will have questions from Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension, Section-2 will have Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning and Section-3 will have Quantitative Ability.
Earlier, students appearing for CAT exam used to get a duration of 60 minutes in each section to answer questions.
Which meant three hours for all three sections put together.
However, for 2020 CAT Exam, the candidates are likely to 40 minutes for each section. Which means the duration for the three section will be two hours.
All the above things once again mean that candidates for 2020 CAT Exam have to make themselves ready for answering questions in less time.
As the time has reduced for each section, certain experts feel, the number of questions could be brought down.
However, experts are quick to caution that reduction in number of questions doesn’t mean the exam will become easier.
Even though the number of questions could come down in 2020 CAT Exam, the test will still remain quite challenging for the candidates.
Also read ‘Know how will CAT 2020 exam be this time? Is it going to be hard or really very easy?‘
So, this means, there should be no relaxation in preparation for 2020 CAT Exam.
The syllabus
Another great step in effective preparation is knowing the syllabus of 2020 CAT Exam.
2020 CAT Exam will have questions related to Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC), Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR) and Quantitative Aptitude (QA).
Knowing the syllabus will help candidates focus on what is required for the exam.
It is with this view that topics to be covered under each subject mentioned above are being highlighted.
The details about the topics under each subject is given below for the sake of students:
VARC
$ Fill in the blanks
$ Verbal Reasoning
$ Sentence completion
$ Grammar
$ Syllogisms
$ Jumbled paragraphs
$ Para Completion and inference
$ Contextual usage
$ Foreign language words used in English
$ Reading Comprehension
$ Analogies
$ Sentence correction
$ Verbal Logic
$ Different usage of same word
$ Idioms
$ Parajumbles
$ Antonyms
$ One word substitution
There are about 7 to 11 questions from Verbal Ability and these are non-multiple choice questions (MCQ) which means candidates have to type in the answer (TITA-Type in The Answer).
Since, the questions are non-MCQ, there will be no negative marking here. As far as Reading Comprehension is concerned, the number of questions asked from this topic range from 24 to 28.
Questions related to Verbal Ability are in MCQ format, which means there is a negative marking here. A wrong answer will lead to deduction of one mark.
There will be usually about three or four long passages which are about 900 words. There will be about two to three short passages, short passages are about 600 words.
The topics for Reading Comprehension are from history, politics, environment, society to literature, mythology and abstract topics.
DALR
$ Blood Relations
$ Series
$ Proposition
$ Direction Sense
$ Coding-Decoding
$ Assumptions
$ Puzzles
$ Clocks and Calendars
$ Statements
$ Data Arrangement
$ Family Tree
$ Binary Logic
$ Seating Arrangement
$ Sets & Caselets
$ Syllogism
$ Venn Diagram
$ Data Structures
$ Tables& Pie Charts
$ Data Sufficiency
$ Bars & Line Graphs
The number of questions from Data Interpretation are 16 and the same for Logical Reasoning is also 16. Both these subjects have non-MCQ and MCQ questions.
As usual, non-MCQs will not have negative marking if answered wrongly. However, the negative marking exists for MCQ type questions.
QA
$ Geometry
$ Trigonometry
$ Algebra
$ Mensuration
$ Partnership (Accounts)
$ Profit & Loss
$ Ratios and Proportion
$ In-equations Quadratic and linear equations
$ Surds and Indices
$Time-Speed-Distance
$ Number System
$ Geometric Progression
$ Inequalities
$ Work and Time
$ Percentages
$ Logarithms
There are about 34 questions related to QA in the CAT Exam. This section also has question in MCQ and non-MCQ format.
There is negative marking for MCQ questions in this section also.
The number of questions
The questions from VARC are 34, questions from DILR are 32 and questions to be answere in QA are 34. The total number of questions would be 100.
The number of questions in each of these sections may range from 22 to 24 with regards to 2020 CAT Exam. Which means the total number of questions could be from 66 to 72.
About 70 to 75 percent of the questions in the exam will be having negative marking, about 25 to 30 percent questions will not be having negative marking.
This year, the questions with negative marking could be around 46 to 52, questions having no negative marking could be around 16 to 22.
Each correct answer will get three marks, wrong answer will lead to deduction of one mark.
A few more sources point out that 2020 CAT Exam may not have grammer or vocabulary based questions, questions in Verbal Ability will likely be confined to jumbled paragraphs, para summary, picking the odd sentence out of the jumbled sentences.
Similarly, Quantitative Aptitude are likely to have more questions on arithmatic like percentage, profit and loss, time and speed, work/days, compound interest.
Conclusion
Despite changes, the levels of difficulty may remain the same as it was in the previous years. This only means, preparation should be as good this time too.
Candidates must have a planned study schedule which ensures all the topics get equal time for study.
Study does not mean study alone, there should be enough time for rest and recreation.
NCERT Maths books of classes 6 to 10 would be best source for preparation for mathematics. ‘Quantitative Aptitude for Competitive Examinations’ by Abhijit Guha is good one for preparing for QA.
‘How to Prepare for Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension for CAT’ by Arun Sharma and Meenakshi Upadhyay/Arihant is fine source for preparing for VARC.
Out of all, the most important thing is to stay stress free. Only stress free mind can prepare for exam with maximum level of confidence.