At this juncture of your preparation, it is extremely important for you to have complete clarity with regards to the trends in the CAT exam in the last three years. This forms an important guide for your preparation strategy and will help you plan what to do in the next few days.
Before we get into the analysis bit, let us have a look at the two sections and their individual break-up:
Quantitative Aptitude and Date Interpretation:
Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning:
A look at the two charts above does point out a few things:
1. In terms of question types, the exam has been remarkably similar in the last few years
2. The number of questions of particular topics have been almost the same for most question types.
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- Algebra and Geometry are very important parts of the exam.
- Reading Comprehensions are never going to go away
- Logical Reasoning can be a bail-out for those who are weak in Verbal Ability
- Grammar (though important for other exams) should be studied in moderation. The reason why we suggest is that since only 1 to 2 questions have been appearing from this topic, it does not make sense to spend a huge amount of time on it. Grammar can take a lot of time, and its intricacies are immense. You are advised to study it but keep things in perspective vis-à-vis its contribution to the exam.
- Para-completion and Para-jumbles form bulk of the Non-RC portion. Make sure you give sufficient attention to these two topics.
- Ensure you cover basic concepts for majority of CAT mathematics topics. You need to do this to ensure that you don’t miss out on easy questions in the exam.
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Make your study plans and schedules according to the break-up given above and make sure you are studying the right topics for CAT.