CAT Exam Pattern and Syllabus

CAT Exam Pattern and Syllabus

Common Admission Test (CAT)

Common admission test (CAT) is an online computer based test conducted by Indian Institute of Management (IIM) for admissions in various management programs. This article gives an information about CAT exam pattern and syllabus. This will be helpful in your preparation for CAT. To know details of CAT click here.


CAT 2019 – Exam Pattern

The exam is computer based and conducts around 140 test cities around India. The duration of exam will be 180 minutes. There will be three sections in the examination: Section 1: Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC), Section 2: Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR), Section 3: Quantitative Ability (QA). A candidate is allowed to use exact 60 minutes in each section.

Total number of questions is 100 out of which 34 from Quantitative Ability (QA), 34 from Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC) and 32 from Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR). There will be multiple choice questions. But some questions in each sections may not be multiple choice, where candidate has to type answer on the computer screen. A candidate can use basic onscreen calculator in the exam for computation purpose.

There will be negative marking for wrong answers.

CAT exam paper pattern has changed several time in the past. This exam pattern is based on 2017 and 2018 CAT exams.


Syllabus for CAT

The CAT examination consists of three sections includes: Quantitative Aptitude, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning and Verbal Ability.

The main and prominent topics in each section are as follows.

Section 1: Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC)

Fill in the blanks, Grammar, Para Completion and inference, Reading Comprehension, Verbal Logic, Parajumbles, Verbal Reasoning, Syllogisms, Contextual usage, Analogies, Different usage of same word, Antonyms, Sentence Completion, Jumbled paragraphs, Foreign language words used in English, Sentence Correction, Idioms, One word substitution.

Section 2: Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR)

Blood Relations, Direction Sense, Puzzles, Data Arrangement, Seating Arrangement, Data Structures, Series, Coding-Decoding, Clocks and Calendars, Family Tree, Venn Diagrams, Syllogism, Proposition, Assumptions, Statements, Binary Logic, Sets.

Tables, Bars, Pie Charts, Line Graphs, Caselets, Data Sufficiency.

Section 3: Quantitative Ability (QA)

Geometry, Trigonometry, Mensuration, Ratios and Proportion, Number System, Work and Time, HCF and LCM, Algebra, Profit and Loss, In-equations Quadratic and linear equations, Geometric Progression, Percentages, Averages, Partnership (Accounts), Time-Speed-Distance, Surds and Indices, Inequalities, Logarithms.


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This article CAT exam pattern and syllabus is for informative purpose only.

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