I took “CAT 2014 – Mock CAT 10” on 4th Oct and like Mock CAT 7 recorded the attempt which is available in test analysis available in SIS and can also be accessed by clicking here, however due to sessions I could not go through the video, analyse the performance and write the summary of my attempt. A bit delayed but let me share my analysis of the paper.

Overview:

Scan the paper: Approximately 3 minutes
I went through the paper (the printout) to understand the structure of the paper and found that the paper had a slightly different structure as compared to the earlier Mock CATs. It had lesser DI, no DS and more QA questions and in VALR section the LR had not only reduced but also had a few single questions, this along with increased RC was not good news for me but the presence of cloze test (fill in the blanks in a paragraph) made me a bit comfortable. The break up

  • Approximately 9 questions of DI in 3 data sets
  • Approximately 41 questions of QA
  • Approximately 9 questions of LR in 2 data sets and a few single questions
  • Approximately 15-16 questions of RC in 5 passages
  • Approximately 25 questions of verbal logic and English usage.

While the paper structure was different from what I had seen so far I stuck to my standard time allocation of 80 minutes to VALR and 90 minutes to QADI and also did not see any reason to change the sequence of attempting the sections as given below:

  • Verbal Logic and English usage
  • Reading Comprehension
  • Logical Reasoning
  • QA Round 1 Questions
  • DI
  • QA Round 2 Question
  • QA Round 3 Questions

However with fewer LR questions I was mentally prepared to attempt at least 3 RC passages as compared to my normal of minimum of 2 RC passages.

VALR Round 1:
In this round I attempted 16 attempts out of 20 questions from Verbal Logic and English Usage. I also identification of the RC passages and LR sets to be attempted.

36 minutes for this round and total time elapsed 39 minutes.
Attempted: Q 51, 52, 53, 60, 62, 63, 64, 77, 78, 81, 92, 93, 96, 97, 99 & 100
Answer not marked as I was not sure: Q 62, 82, 94 (time wasted) & 98.
Noted the following on my rough sheet for RC passages and LR sets:

LR Sets:
Q54-55, 2 questions on arrangement, to be attempted
Q69-71, 3 questions, arrangement/mathematical set, 8 statements, likely to be difficult
Q75-76, 2 questions arrangement – cars, to be attempted
Q79, 85 & 97 – individual questions

RC Passages:
Q56-59, 4 questions, psychiatrist, 4 slides, could be difficult
Q65-68, 4 questions, Universities, 3 slides, to be attempted
Q72-74, 3 questions, Keats +. Maths, 3.5 slides
Q83-86, 4 questions, Agriculture, 2.5 slides, to be attempted
Q88-91, 3 questions, Chess, 3 slides, to be attempted..

VALR Round 2:
RC passages, 12 attempts from 3 passages with 12 questions in 19 minutes.
Total attempts 28 and total time elapsed 58 minutes.
I started with the passage on “Universities” followed it with the passage on Agriculture and finally attempted the passage on Chess. In each passage I had to go back and verify the facts whiles answering a couple of questions.

Q65-68 (Universities), found the passage easy to read and attempted all four questions in about 6 minutes.
Q83-86 (Agriculture), this passage too was easy to read and comprehend and I was able to attempt all 4 questions. This passage also took me around 6 minutes.
Q88-91 (Chess), this was another easy passage and I was able to attempt all 4 questions, here also I had to go back to the passage to verify the facts. This passage took me 7 minutes.

VALR Round 3:
LR sets, 4 attempts from 2 sets with 4 questions, the independent reasoning question number 79 and 2 RC questions (Q55 & 58). I attempted 7 questions in this round leading to a total of 35 attempts.

21 minutes for this round and total time elapsed 79 minutes.
I decided to start with the data set on allocation of ministries because I am comfortable with selection/allocation data sets. I attempted Q55 first since I felt it would be easier to solve and then went back to Q54. The 2 questions of this data set took me just 3 minutes.

Next I moved to the set on Guns (Q69-71) and spent about a minute trying to understand it but found it complicated along with large data, hence I decided to leave it and moved on to the data set on arragngement/colour of cars (Q75-76). Here too I decided to solved Q76 before Q75 because in Q76 all the choices were about A while in Q75 the choices had a different person and colour in each choice. Got the answer for both questions but this took me almost 8 minutes.

I now moved to the three individual reasoning questions (Q79, 87 & 95), while I was able to solve Q79 in about 2 minutes I decided to leave the other two after reading them since they appeared to be time consuming, this process took me another 2 minutes.

I was in the process of moving on to QADI with 5 extra minutes but decided to go through the passages that I did not attempt earlier and see if there were a couple of factual questions that I could attempt without reading the passage or by scanning the passage and while this process took me about 6 minutes I was able to attempt Q 56 and 58.

Thus in 76 minutes of VALR I had attempted 35 questions and since the initial 3 minutes had been used for scanning the paper I had about 91 minutes for QADI.

QADI Round 1
QA questions that can be solved in about 2 minutes and identification of DI sets to be  attempted in Round 2. I attempted a total of 13 questions in this Round.

Time taken for this Round 34 minutes, time left after this Round 57 minutes
Attempted: Q2, 3, 8, 17, 20, 29, 30, 31, 32, 39, 44, 48 & 50
Applied SQC technique in: Q2, 3, 17, 20, 32, 48 & 50
Identified that Q 11, 38 & 49 should not be attemptedTried solving Q 20 but realized that it would take time and hence left it after about a minute and moved to the next question.

Noted the following on my rough sheet for DI sets:
Q12-15, 4 questions, Pie & Bar chart, easy percentages, to be attempted
Q25-27, 3 questions, Marks, complicated data, not keen on attempting
Q45-47, 3 questions, easy percentages but large data, preferable to Q25-27

QADI Round 2A:
One DI set for 4 attempts. Total QADI attempts – 17
Time taken for this Round 9 minutes, time left after this Round 48 minutes

I started this Round with the DI set on government employees (Q12-15), found it easy and was able to solve all the questions in approximately 6 minutes.

Next I moved to the DI set on Criminal Gangs (Q45-47) as I was not keen to attempt the DI set on marks (Q25-27). However after spending about 2 minutes on this set I realized that this will be calculation intensive and hence decided to check if Q 25-27 were attemptable but after going through the data and the questions in about a minute decided that my initial estimate was correct and this data set is not worth attempting. I now decided to forget about any more DI and attempt only QA questions in the remaining time.

QADI Round 2B:
In this Round I attempted 12 questions. Total QADI attempts – 29 Time taken for this Round 37 minutes, time left after this round 11 minutes.

Started this Round by trying Q1 (Geometry) but was not sure of how to solve and hence decided to move on after spending about a minute. Went on to Q2 and then sequentially attempted the questions that I had marked for R2. In this round I had lapse of concentration in made mistakes in Q7, 16 and 40 but fortunately was able to identify the errors and corrected the error, but this meant I had to spend more time in each of these three questions.

Attempted: Q 5, 6, 7, 10, 16, 18, 23, 34, 37, 40, 42 & 43
Attempted by SQC: Q 5, 37 & 42
I identified that I should go back to Q1, 9 and 41 if I get time in the end.

QADI Round 3
In this Round I attempted 3 questions. Total QADI attempts – 32
Time taken for this Round 11 minutes, time left after this round 0 minutes.

I went back to the three questions that I had kept for R3 – Q 1, 9 & 41 but realized that I had no clue of how to solve Q1 hence moved on and solved Q41& Q9 in about 7 minutes. With 4 minutes left I went through the questions sequentially to check if any other question could be attempted, I found Q 24 was possible and hence attempted it. Still had a little over a minute available but with no more questions to attempt I decided to close the test.

Attempted: Q 9, 24, 41
Overall performance in QADI is 32 attempts in 91 minutes and a total of 67 attempts in the paper.

All the Best!
GP