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Chat with Mr Arun Sharma. You may pose your query now. Please note that this is a
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Ashwani: What is the important topics in quant? What was the difficulty level?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: quants had a mix of numbers (block
1) and block 5 (logs etc). The questions- would be 5-6 tough remaining attemptable

Prasanna: Sir, Will getting an overall score of 60 with a higher percentage of

accuracy fetch me a better percentile than a score of 70, with lesser accuracy rate.
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: yes. higher accuracy is more valued
than a higher score. typically u should not make more than 10% errors.

Mohini: Hello Sir,What can you say about the overall difficulty level of today's
papers?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: Quants moderate, english tough, di/lr
lengthy with a mix of tough questions and easy ones.

ASWINI: which section was difficult in 1st day of cat exam and howmany questions
should be attended from that to get good percentile in following days in that
section.....
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: attempt at least 10-12 questions per
section with a maximum of 10% inaccuracy

Arvind: How does this test compare to previous CATs?

Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: It was a good test of intelligence, but
at the same time solvable. language is as good as it always has been

mohan: Does practicing questions from time aimcats and past cat papers sufficient..i
have 20 days for cat ?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: No comments

SRIKANT: Sir what will be the cutoff...i mean number of questions?

Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: I thin kif you do around 35-40
questions with 90% accuracy you should be fine

Sukriti: Good evening sir!! How was today's paper in terms of difficulty level?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: This has been already responsed,
please see the chat above.

SRIKANT: Was the paper easy???? can we expect the difficulty of the paper to be
similar in future dates...
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: The paper was not easy...although
since you get to see one question at a time you would be able to give more focus on
every question- hence there is definitely an illusion of simplicity in the online cat.
What would happen in the future only the future would be able to tell us- but i think if
they have to be fair they should be giving the same difficulty level.

Mohini: Hello Sir,What can you say about the difficulty level?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: This has been already responsed,
please see the chat above.

vikas: What to expect for sectional cutoffs dis year??

Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: I would think that around 10-12
questions - maybe max 14 at an accuracy of 90% should be good for a sectional
cutoff

SRIKANT: Sir how many questions will be sufficient to score 99.5%ile???

Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: I would tend to think you would need
a net score of around 90+ (@ +3 and -1) with a 90% accuracy should get you 99.5+.

sahil: What is a good attempt section wise?

Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: This has been already responsed,
please see the chat above.

Parin: Sir, is DI calculation intensive or logical?

Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: It is very calculation intensive. Similar
to the questions in my book on DI

Namit: How do you assess todays paper sir?

Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: This has been already responsed,
please see the chat above.

Parin: are there different papers in each slot?

Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: I dont think so.

sahil: i am good in QT and DI and Average in english so what should my attempts be

Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: I think you should target 15 +15 and
around 10 in english. Try to solve only questions you are sure of in english

chandan: Any major surprises in questions and pattern?

Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: not really. More or less the kinds one
has predicted. Also if you are thorough with the first 500 odd questions that you
should do in every area of quants (each block) and DI/ reasoning you should be fine
and not face any major problem. Remember to keep in touch with the time element-
and try to average 2 mins per question- one of the keys to the CAT is to be able to
see all the 60 questions.

tarique: sir there is a drop of 15% in cat 2010. How will this effect the percentiles?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: i think this is the easiest year to get
into the IIMs. its a big opportunity for alltest takers- the number of seats has gone up,
the number of test takers has gone down. Make it happen for yourself this year :)

Prasanna: Has the Emphasis on accuracy increased from CAT 09 onwards. Is scoring
a 55 or 60 with higher accuracy better than a 70 with more negatives?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: This has been already responsed,
please see the chat above.

himanshu: Sir, what was your number of attempts ?

Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: 57 with i think 1 or 2 errors max :). 2
questions were incorrect in my paper in quants

kanika: Sir, with DI, i get stuck . At time the sets seem totally undoable and DI eats
up most of my time. WHile it should be taking my scores up, i don't see it happening.
there is no lacking in practice !!
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: focus on your calculation abilities,
esp additions, % calculations and ratios. DI is more or less traditional DI- the kind you
would find in the initial part of my book on DI. Reasoning is also on traditional
patterns- the standard kind of reasoning questions you should encounter if you solve
200 questions in that area.

cat: sir, please suggest the topics I should focus on during these last 10 days...
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: dont do anything new. just revise all
the questions you have done. My take is this: In quants blockwise (on the opattern of
blocks mentioned in my qa book if you have solved the following number of questions
you should have come across the kind of logics they asked today. block 1- 500 block
2-3: 500 block 4 - 150 block 5 -500 block 6 -100. The kind of Di questions one saw
one should encounter their logic in the first 500 question sets of DI one would do and
for reasoning the number is 200

sahil: Based on today's experience, will there be any special strategy that needs to
be followed by those who are taking the test in the upcoming slots?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: see my answer to the previous
question. Also focus on improving your thinking in English. I would say that in
Reading comprehension- there was difficult passages, difficult questions but easy not
confusing options

himanshu: Was the verbal section tough because of the language or the ambiguity ?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: There was no ambiguity- at least i did
not face it

RAVI: Sir i am good at english and problem solving but my di is still poor, sir i take
lot of time to solve blocks problem hw many questions i can expect so suggest me so
dat i can score with flying colours.
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: flying colors is a subjective term- for
some people 99.8 percentile might be a failure too. However, I am assuming @ 99
percentile you need to target somewhere between 75-85 (+3,-1) marks overall with
max 10% errors

Sukhpreet: Sir,What is the criteria if two students get equal marks on same day?
What is the criteria of giving percentile to them?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: number of errors., the person with
more errors would get a lower score

Avinash: What strategy should we go for, straight 45mins to each section or should it
be like 30 minutes each section, n then in remaining 45 minutes, try doing the
section that we felt was tougher in order to clear cut offs?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: Thats a personal choice, but you can
use either depending on what suits you. or maybe even a mix of the two like 45, 30,
45,15 or even 45,30,30,20,10 etc. but key is time should be more or less evenly
distributed- if you have a strong section it should be strong enough to give you the
max score possible in 45 minutes. the max that you can realign could be 50,45,40.
Another strategy culd be 40,40,40 clear the cut offs and then 15 to maximise scores

Ashwani: is the arrangement of sections and questions oreder in them are different
for two persons..?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: i dont know. but the test environment
was very good this year- it was a wonder ful test taking expereince- you could not
lookinto the next person's screen (unlike last year) and hence you had nobody
irritating you by peeking into yours. Anyway what difference does it make what paper
pattern the other people got. What should matter is your performance and the
question in front of you.

saket: Any tips for Verbal Section? How helpful will it be to follow your book?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: I think my book should help you a lot
in preparing the verbal section- in fact for all three sections i did not see a logic which
has not been covered in my books. The verbal question types have all been covered
at approximately the same level that have been covered in my book

VINITA: my paper is on 10th n m really worried about d cat ..plz detail d topics covrd
by quant sectn dis year.....how can i improve...any tips??
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: I am not sure i can tell you that
without violating the Non discliosure agreement. I have answered the general pattern
questions earlier and what you need to do in every area in one of my earlier answers

MBAUniverse.com: Dear Participants, we are getting lot of questions, hence we are

extending the chat till 9 pm.
Mohamed Ali: By attempting 57 questions with min 1 or 2 wrong answers, aren't you
affecting the chances of a CAT aspirant.Not to offend, but requesting a clarification
from you.
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: i dont think so because in a samle
size of 2 lac people 1 performance does not affect overall percentiles. Also if you
know the logic of the normal curve there is something above 3 sigma levels which
are typically ignored while calculating

mohan: when you say quants is moderate ..which LOD level in your book does that
correspond?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: 1 to 2. Lod 3 in some instances
(maybe 2-3 questions). The lod 3 in my book has been created just to give the
student a feel of how questions can be framed at a higher level. In every forum that i
speak about, i always tell students that LOD 3 questions in my books you should just
read and learn the kind of language patterns etc that can be asked in those chapters.

mohan: sir, how many questions per a di set?are there singlets in di as last year?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: Yes there are. 1 to 2 questions per di
set. max 3 questions in a reasoning set. otherwise everything is 1 or 2 questions

aryan: What were the topics in verbal section and what was the level of difficulty?
Were there any odd question types?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: para jumbles, fill in the blanks, last
sentence, word usage, grammar . all standard questions. no surprises

Ashwani: Sir, I have come to know that quant is more logic based..what are your
comments on this
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: yes definitely. the questions were
drawing out algorithms of thinking which you definitely would have seen if you had
solved the number of questions in every block I had talked about earlier in this chat.
But then the quants has always been logic based hasn't it?

aryan: What were the topics one should also prepare except logarithms and
probability u had mentioned?
Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: i think i have given a list of number of
questions one has to solve in each area to be comfortable about each logic and know
every algorithm that they may ask you.