The CAT exam was held on 26th November 2023 in 375 test centers across 167 cities in the country. The test was conducted for a total of 120 minutes, with each section (VARC, DILR, QA) having a time limit of 40 minutes. Out of the 3.3 Lakh applicants who registered for CAT this year, around 2.88 lakh candidates appeared for the exam conducted in three slots; the attendance percentage was approximately 88%.This means that we can expect approximately 2880 takers scoring the 99th percencentile. Last year, around 2.5 lakh candidates registered for the test, and 2.2 lakh candidates - approximately 87% - attended the exam.
Pattern and Difficulty Level
There were slight changes in the question pattern this year, especially in the VARC section.
VARC - The Non-RC questions in the VARC section last year followed a pattern of 3 Summaries, 3 Para Jumbles, and 2 Sentence Insertion questions. This year, the pattern switched to 2 Summary, 2 Para Jumble, 2 Odd One Out, and 2 Sentence Insertion questions. The difficulty level this year remained similar to the general difficulty level of the VARC sections of last year’s CAT. The difficulty level of the first slot this year was easy, while the level of the second slot was hard and the third slot was medium.
DILR – Compared to last year, there was a slight increase in the difficulty level in the DILR section this year. In the first two slots, the DILR sections were hard, whereas it was medium in the third slot. The DILR sections in the last two years had at least one DI (data interpretation) question, but this year, there were no DI questions in any of the three slots.
QA – There was a signficant increase in the difficulty level in the QA section this year as compared to last year. This section was also generally hard across all three slots, but the slot 3 quant section was even tougher than slots 1 and 2. This year saw an increase in the number of Algebra Questions, the Arithmetic questions were fewer than in previous years and the number of tougher questions was higher.
The breakup of the question pattern and the difficulty level for each section across the slots is given in the table below:
