CAT

Part A:

Quantitative Ability+ Data Interpretation (27 Questions)

The section consisted of 6 questions of Data Interpretation, 2 questions of Data sufficiency and 19 questions on Quantitative Ability.

Data Interpretation was spread in two sets of 3 questions each. While one was standard DI set consisting of a bar and line graph; another one was a football tournament based set. Both of them were easy and can be solved by a well-trained student.

Quant part of the section was dominated by Arithmetic with 3 questions from numbers, 1 from percentage, 2 from Ratios, 2 from Time and Distance and 1 from Time and work. Algebra had its share of 2 questions – 1 on quadratic equation and other on inequality. Geometry had 4 questions – 1 on circle, 1 on 3-dimensional Height and Distance and 2 on mensuration. There were 2 questions on application of Maths, 1 question on probability and 1 question on application of Fibonacci series.

Overall this section can be called easy to moderate considering options were close in 3 to 4 questions and some 4 to 5 questions were tough.

Allocating 60 mins to this section, 20+ can be termed as Good Attempts and 15+ can be a good score.

Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning (26 Questions)

Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning section had 26 questions with 3 Vocabulary Sentence Completion, 1 Grammar Sentence Correction, 5 RCs with 15 questions which included a poem of 2 questions, and 5 Critical Reasoning questions. Sentence Completion was moderate with one tricky question using words like phillipic and ennui, and another, an interesting relief for the fans of Game of Thrones with the Lannisters, Tyrells, Jon and Daenerys thrown in! The lone Grammar question tested the correct use of conjunction and double negative.

3 of the 5 RCs were abstract with dense language making reading difficult. They were abstract discussions of belief and doubt, science and consciousness, and labour and capital. The RC on lessons of history was easy to read but had difficult questions and confusing options. Most RCs were about 400 to 450 and one RC of about 600 words. The poem on the theme of love with 2 questions was 12-14 lines long. The other RCs had 3 questions each and 1 RC with 4 questions. There were a number of most likely/least likely questions, a couple of inferences, one vocab-based question, two essence of the passage questions and the others detail-based. Critical Reasoning had a definitely interpreted, least likely, inference, most likely explanation and an unusual ‘Which assumption would make the argument redundant?’ questions.

A student could allocate about 55 mins to this section and attempt 20+ questions with 11+ correct.

Decision Making (21 Questions)

Decision Making had 7 caselets with 4 carrying 3 questions each and 3 carrying 2 questions each making for a total of 18 DM questions. Five of these caselets were business cases with 1 involving ethics and humanitarian decisions. One caselet was an interesting set of kingdoms and the decisions that the Queens and Kings of these kingdoms would need to take with regard to the security and sovereignty of their kingdom and another to do with economic justice. Though all caselets were around 150 to 350 words and easy to understand, the most likely not/least likely not nature of the questions and the close options made them challenging.

This section had only one set of data-related decision making with three questions with the data provided in a tabular form.

With 55 minutes allocated to this section, good attempts would be 18+ with 10+ correct.

PART B: General Awareness and Essay-Writing:

Part B had 25 questions of GK followed by an essay on the topic: Ethical Practices and Sustainability: Can they co-exist? GK was a good mix of static and current affairs topics and had questions about countries and their capitals, territories and prime ministers, space agencies and spaceships, Indian music festivals, cryptocurrency, video sharing platforms, product and companies, and dogfooding and showrooming.

Finding the essay topic easy to understand unlike last year’s must have come as a relief to test takers.  Ethical practice and sustainability being oft-discussed terms these days, there are businesses and business practices that ensure an enduring and balanced approach to economic activity, environmental responsibility and societal benefit ensuring that future generations are able to enjoy the same kind of lifestyles that people enjoy today. This naturally involves taking a long-term perspective on balancing the economic, environmental and social impact of business.

Sectional Synopsis:

Predicted Scores for different percentiles:

Predicted Cut-offs:

Overall, this section was Easy as far as difficulty level is concerned.

Considering that the Reasoning section was not a smooth ride, this section deserved a time allocation of 45 minutes. Good Score for this section should be around 27 marks.

Analytical & Logical Reasoning (35 Qs, 40 marks)

SNAP has a history of producing some weird variety of questions in this section which are not seen in other major entrance examinations. This year, again, they have continued with the legacy. A couple of questions on unfolding 3D shapes were interesting and tricky. The questions with Pendulum and Candles also surprised the test takers.

The section was still dominated by conventional AR/LR questions. A set of seven questions of arrangement was time consuming and reasonably risky for most of test takers. Four independent questions based on arrangements, three questions on coding-decoding, one question each on calendar, blood relation, set theory, analogy were also there. There were five questions of the variety of missing numbers and series. 2-3 of these questions were tricky and may have wasted time of test takers.

Considering presence of a seven question set which was difficult to break and 4 to 5 more questions of unfolding 3D shapes and missing number/series, the overall difficulty level of this section can be termed moderate to difficult. 35 minutes was ideal time allocation for this section in which a good score should be around 20 marks.

General English (Verbal Ability, Verbal Reasoning and Reading Comprehension) (35 Qs, 40 marks)

In General English section of SNAP 2018, the level of difficulty went down prominently from last year. The questions were mostly straightforward and pretty much doable. The section consisted of a total of 35 questions out of which 25 questions were from Verbal Ability and Verbal Reasoning and there were 10 questions based on Reading Comprehension.

Verbal Ability and Verbal Reasoning: – The questions primarily tested vocabulary and grammar. 10-11 Vocabulary based questions from a wide variety of topics like synonyms, antonyms, spellings and odd man out would comfortably fall under the category of easy to moderate. There were about 12-13 questions based on grammar. Replicating the trend of last year, SNAP this year again tested the aspirants on topics like active-passive voice, word usage and parts of speech. With three filling the blanks questions based on conjunction, preposition and conditional tense, there were two match the following questions on word usages according to parts of speech. The conventional question type of sentence correction and error detection had a fair presence in this section with 3-4 questions. The Verbal reasoning questions were limited to one rearrangement of jumbled sentence and two analogies.

Reading Comprehension: The RC questions were distributed evenly between two passages. The passage on Google’s location tracking system was moderate in length and easy enough to understand. Most of the questions from this passage were direct ones, except for one question on title. However, the second passage on Trade Liberalization was quite lengthy (850-1000 words), so reading that would have taken a long time. Students with an average understanding of verbal as a section would have skipped the passage as it was lengthy and had 2 inference based questions.

With no real expectations of which question type will be categorized as TITA (Type in the answer), aspirants were given a mixed question bank for special questions ranging from unscrambling the scrambled sentence, to past participle form of a word, from identifying the correct spelling to plural form of a word.

Overall, Verbal section was fairly manageable with a mix of Easy to Moderate questions. It could certainly be a morale booster for a well prepared student.

Allocating 30 mins to this section, around 26 can be termed as Good Attempts and 22 can be considered a good score.

Current Affairs (25 Qs, 30 marks)

SNAP creators by living up to their promise of testing the aspirants on current affairs based on last two year weren’t able to surprise the test takers much. However, asking questions as latest as the 2018 assembly elections they surely raised the happiness index of test takers. There was a good spread of questions from the different types like Sports, Politics, Business, Who’s who (Business as well as Government), Awards and Technology related news.

With a total of six questions from business, five on politics and government, four on Who’s who, three on awards and recognition and a question on sports, aspirants were given a comfort zone to perform.

TITA (Special Questions) in this section were based on India’s rank in Happiness Index, No. of total seats in Chhattisgarh assembly Elections 2018, No. of people winning noble prize in Economics in 2018 and No. of cities in Indonesia where Asian Games are held.

A test taker who has been following news regularly should surely have an edge over others.

An ideal allocation can be 10 mins for this particular section and 16-17 attempts with 13 marks can be considered as a good score.

Expected Cut off:

SIBM-P: 72+

SCMHRD: 70+

SIBM-B, SIIB: 54+

Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation (48 Questions, 60 minutes):

The section comprised of 20 questions of Data Interpretation and 28 questions of Quantitative Ability.

DI part of the section was, once again, time-consuming and mostly calculative. Five sets of four questions each were there to test an aspirant’s ability to interpret data. The set with the pie chart was the easiest of all. A good test taker should have given priority to one caselet based set and the set with a bar chart over the other two sets considering the moderate level of difficulty of the former ones.

Remaining 28 questions were from Quant area of aptitude with 22 independent questions and 6 questions of Data Sufficiency. Numbers dominated the section with 6 questions. A good representation of 4 questions was also there from each of Algebra, Percentage Application, Ratio Application, and Geometry. All the 6 questions of Data Sufficiency were the easiest to solve whereas the Ratio based problems (Time Distance, Partnership, Time Work etc) demanded time to get solved.

Overall, the section can be termed as easy to moderate and 36-38 genuine attempts with 90+ % accuracy should lead to a Good Score.

Reasoning (40 Questions, 38 Minutes):

12 Questions from Verbal Reasoning and 28 Questions from Logical Reasoning constituted the reasoning section.

Verbal Reasoning portion had a good variety of questions in form of Syllogism, Course of Action, Sentence Assumption, Strengthen-weaken and inference based question. All of the 12 Questions were easy to moderate. An aspirant with a reasonably good practice of such variety of questions should get 8-9 Questions correct.

Logical and Analytical Reasoning part was dominated by two sets of tabular arrangements based questions. All the 8 questions were easy to moderate. Just one manageable set of Input-output was a small surprise, however, the previous slot of the day tested the takers with a set of good difficulty level.  4-5 questions from Coding, 2 questions of Blood Relations, 3 questions of Series and patterns, 2 questions on set theory formed a major part of the remaining section.

Approximately 28-30 genuine attempts with a 90+% accuracy should be sufficient for a Good Score.

Verbal Ability (32 Questions, 22 minutes):

The section was dominated by Vocabulary based questions. There were 5 Questions of Synonyms/Antonyms, 6 Fill-in-the-blanks and 1 Analogy question, all of which demanded a decent command over vocabulary.

The rest of the section had 4 Questions of Para jumbles, 5 Questions of Spotting the errors, 3 Preposition based Fill-in-the-blanks and 2 Reading Comprehension of 4 Questions each. Both the RCs were of medium size with a possible turn-around time of 6 to 7 minutes and most of these questions were manageable.

As far as the conduction is concerned, Pearson has done a brilliant job. The verification process before the Test is very smooth, provided you carry the right documents. The interface is quite good and responsive, however, one has to take note that there is no question pallet in the test and one has to use “next” and “previous” buttons in order to navigate through a section.

Overall,

Test takers should reach the test center with all documents asked for.

Test takers should be mentally ready for a Speed Test which has no Negative Marking.

The sectional, in depth analysis is as follows:

Reading Comprehension (16 Qs of 1 mark each)

The RC Sectional made a stark departure from the last few years’ standard 4×4 RCs. This time with 5 RCs of  800 to 1000 words, the RCs not only challenged students with their length but also with their number and distribution of questions. 4 RCs had 3 questions each and  1 RC had 4 questions.

The questions were fairly direct and could be answered by skimming and scanning. The RCs on GDP and Utility of liberal arts graduates in the Second Machine age were easy as they had all direct questions. Two RCs-  one, on the Importance of Information and two, on Public Intellectuals had semi-inference question and could be answered easily by understanding the main idea from the first paragraphs. The last RC was on metamorphosis of culture, the questions were tricky because the options were close, but clear understanding of the first paragraph could make things easier. However, with return on investment on time (the realization is not more than 1 question per min) not being great, this  RC was not worth spending time on.

With 22 mins, making a comfortable 10 attempts with a net realization of 7 marks can be considered a good score.

Verbal Ability (20 Qs of 0.75 mark each)

The Verbal Ability sectional was on the same lines as last year, but with more question variety. The emphasis on language technicality continued. Both Grammar and Vocab questions offered diversity and the conventional Para-jumble made a return, much to the relief of the test takers! Of the 3 questions on arranging the jumbled letters to form a meaningful word that matched with one of the options, two were easy and moderate, one was really difficult. ‘Pernickety’ is certainly not a much used word. One of the two analogy questions was difficult. There were 3 questions of Sentence Completion, one of which was tricky. Grammar was back to its good old days of error detection and sentence correction. Of the 4 Grammar questions, only 1 was difficult. The two Para-jumble questions could be easily tackled by a trained student. Etymology-based questions continued their run for the third year, sending home the message loud and clear of IIFT’s interest in language origins and expectations from test takers. A very difficult set of words, the only easy one being ‘voracious’. The 2 match the following questions, one of which was Vocab-based and the other, Grammar-based, also used some difficult words.

Students with formal training in Vocabulary and strong Grammar training will have found a good number of questions for themselves. With 12-15 mins spent on this sectional and attempts of 12-13 questions, a student can hope to score about 7 marks.

Quantitative Ability (20 Qs of 1 mark each)

The section was more or less similar to last year with an exception of having 7 Qs of Geometry and Mensuration. Most of the problems were time consuming and demanded a test taker to demonstrate own Qs selection ability to find relatively easier Qs. Two questions of Logarithm and Time and Work were also part of this section with 3 to 4 Qs coming from Algebra.

We can classify this sections as Moderate to Tough. Ideal attempts in 25-27 minutes can be 12 and good score can be 8.

Data Interpretation (20 Qs of 1 mark each)

Once again the Data Interpretation section was the most challenging. IIFT has continued with its tradition of producing highly calculative Data Interpretation sets which tested calculation skills of all the test takers. Almost no set can be called an easy one. Test taker were forced to spend time in at least two sets to get the sectional cut off of this section.

Overall, we can classify this sections as difficult. Ideal attempts in 22 minutes can be 8 and good score can be 5.

Logical Reasoning (20 Qs of 1 mark each)

The section was divided into 3 sets of 4 questions, 2 sets of 2 questions, 1 set of 3 questions and a single question set. The paper evaluated areas like arrangements of 6 X 3 format, Data structure, Venn diagram and number puzzle. There was a clear emphasis visible on arrangement based puzzles ranging from circular arrangement, tabular arrangement to a grid-based matrix arrangement. Except for 1 set of 4 questions on friends and hotels and a single question on number puzzle, all the other sets were either time consuming or moderate to difficult. The set on Venn diagram was lengthy and just 2 question following it made it a time-consuming proposition, while the sets based on matrix and circular arrangement can be considered moderate to difficult. One set that was based on friends staying in rooms of different colour, required some assumptions to be made in order to solve the set. This certainly wasn’t a scoring section in the paper. Overall, 10-11 can be called good attempts and approximately 7 marks can be considered a good score in this section within 25 minutes.

General Knowledge (18 Qs of 0.5 mark each)

Continuing the last year’s trend, GK section this year too had 18 questions with 9 marks. Two of the three conceptual questions (i.e. Shell Company & Regressive taxation) were relatively easy. The rest 15 questions were factual, from areas viz. Sports, International Organizations, International Affairs, Business Trivia, Currency etc. True to the IIFT trend, there were 3 match-the-column questions and one pictorial question on Logo identification. In all, the GK section this year was easier compared to last few years. A well-prepared student should be able to attempt around 10 questions and 3 marks can be considered a good score in GK section.

Overall Analysis

Probable Cut off for IIFT Delhi and Kolkata: 30 Marks

Answer key for IIFT-18 can be found here.