How Many Attempts to Score 99 Percentile in CAT 2015 - Practical Assessment

Hello friends I hope your preparation for CAT 2015 would be in full flow as now around three and a half months are remaining in the run up to the Common Admission Test 2015. I know many of you would be disappointed at the reckless attitude of IIM Ahmedabad as this year it has intentionally tweaked the criteria to throw out the engineers who have been in majority till now in almost every PGDM Batch of IIM AHMEDABAD. But what had happened we can not change now and now you all have to focus on options that you still have in your hand. There are still 6 old IIM'S remaining who are no less better than IIM A.

So friends we all know that the test pattern of Common Admission Test 2015 has changed. The old pattern of having three sections in the exam has returned and the number of questions had been fixed at 100. The pattern is something like this -

#In all three section would be there. These three sections are Quantitative Aptitude (QA), Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DILR) and Verbal and Reading Comprehension (VRC).

#In the QA Section there would be 34 questions.

# In the DILR Section there would be 32 questions.

# In the VRC Section there would be 34 questions.

# For every section a fixed time of 60 minutes will be given and inter transfer between sections is not allowed i.e. if you are attempting DILR then only after finishing it you can move to the next section. Till now there is no clarity about which section will come first and which one will come later. That would depend on your luck as everyone would want that section first which is his or her strong point.

# One more surprise, not all the questions are objective. According to the notification is has been said that in some questions answers have to be typed in. Now here comes the catch - there are full possibilities that this year you will get questions to be typed in all sections balanced evenly with the objective type questions. Also the notification is not clear about how many negative marks will be deducted if your answer is wrong in an objective and subjective(answer writing) question.

Now comes the most Important Question - 

HOW MANY QUESTIONS YOU NEED TO ATTEMPT TO SCORE 99 PERCENTILE OR MORE IN CAT 2015 -

Last year when I attempted CAT 2014, I went into the exam hall without any preparation and as I was not well prepared my attempts last year were obviously low. I attempted only 71 questions (40 questions in the Quantitative Aptitude and Data Interpretation Section and 31 questions in the Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning Section). Only one thing I did well in the examination was that I tried to maintain my accuracy. As I was sure that I have not done well enough in CAT 2014, I was not very enthusiastic about my results. The results came, I scored 99.09 percentile(98.99 in Quantitative Aptitude and Data Interpretation Section with a scaled score of 111.85 and 94.48 percentile in Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning Section with a scaled score of 76.44)

I know a guy who scored 99.99 percentile this year. I talked to him about his approach in the paper. He told that he attempted 91 questions in the paper and he was not sure about the answer of approximately 14 questions so analysing this fact we can definitely say that attempts do matter but this year conditions are a bit different.

IIM's now a days are looking for candidates of diverse backgrounds and not just engineering background so they are consistently changing criterias and are trying to make it easier for non engineering students to make it to the IIM's. So looking at this trend we can predict with more than 80 percent probability that the questions of Quantitative Aptitude Sections and Verbal Ability Sections will be of moderate difficulty level. In order to balance the paper both for the engineering and non engineering streams they are going to make the questions of Reading Comprehension, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning a bit tougher in comparison to other questions as in these particular questions it is the intellect that matters. So it is very important for everyone to practice prepare more and more the DATA INTERPRETATION AND LOGICAL REASONING section. The Comprehension Passages can also be a game changer as cracking them depends on how much the particular student is in the habit of reading and specially if he can read between the lines.

And finally how many questions to be attempted. This question can not be answered as we do not know how many objective questions will be there, how many subjective questions will be there, how many marks will be deducted for attempting a question wrongly......we do not know anything and when we do not know about a particular subject/topic/condition we should not speculate. Do not listen to anyone who says attempt this much or that much as this is not going to help. Always keep one thing in mind that never waste your time trying to solve one question which you are not able to solve. If you can not solve it in the first instance, leave it, return back to it after some time with a changed mind....this will ease off the exam pressure slightly.

I am open to answer all your questions, your apprehensions about the exams. You can clear your any doubt in the comment section below.