The CAT sprung a surprise one more time – this time with ‘differential’ number of Qs in sections and a higher ‘weightage’ for the Verbal section. It would have taken students a little bit of time to figure out the ‘right’ time allocation strategy. The Quant was of a higher level of difficulty than last year. The Logic & DI section proved to be deceptive and thankfully the Verbal section was far less ‘ambiguous’ than last year.

Quantitative The QA section would have given the jitters to most test takers today. The section was bereft of any ‘easy’ Qs and the ones that looked easy turned out to be quite deceptive. The QA section had numerous ‘higher math’ questions and Arithmetic Qs were difficult to find! This would have made this section quite a tough nut to crack for most students. The cut-off is expected to be around 17-19.

Logic & Data Interpretation The L&DI section of CAT2008 can be classified as a ‘Difficult’ paper. It was a classic as there was a mix of both Data Interpretation and Logic puzzles. Barring the set on the ‘arrangement of houses’ which was do-able all other sets were tricky to solve and students could have easily made a mistake or two. The set on ‘Share prices’ would have stumped anyone who dared to get into it. The cut-off is expected to be around 28-30

Verbal A sense of relief would be the first reaction of the students primarily because there was a reduction in the number of questions of ‘ambiguous’ nature. There were quite a few questions which were easy enough for well prepared students to get right. The RCs were easier to read and had quite a few direct questions. The Vocabulary based Qs were very difficult and demanded a very high level of varied reading. If you add the higher number of overall questions, there would be higher attempts and consequently a higher score. The cut-off is expected to be around 41-43.

The overall cut-off is expected to be around 120-124 (Estimated mark for 97.5 percentile).