CAT 2022 was on expected lines in the morning slot. While there were a few changes in the paper compared to the last year, the paper retained its overall structure/pattern.

The following was the pattern of examination in the first slot:

Section	Number of Questions	MCQs	Non MCQs	Sectional time limit
Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension	24	21	3	40 Minutes
Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning	20	14	6	40 Minutes
Quantitative Ability	22	14	8	40 Minutes
Total	66	49	17	120 Minutes

The evaluation scheme remained the same as that of the earlier years - Three marks for a correct answer and a negative mark for a wrongly marked MCQ. There were no negative marks for non-MCQs.

The difficulty, overall, for CAT 2022 in the morning slot was slightly on the higher side compared to that of CAT 2021.

Section-wise analysis

The VARC section had 24 questions in the morning slot, 16 from Reading Comprehension and 8 from Verbal Ability. The same break-up was observed last year too.

The RC passages were four in number, with four questions per passage. Most of the passages had questions which involved double negatives – “do not follow + except”, “cannot be inferred + if false”. This contributed to pushing the difficulty level of the section up.

One of the RC passages, the one on Human rights & Technology was the toughest of all. It was tough to read and comprehend and the questions were no easy let offs either. Those who got this passage as their first and continued with it may have drained their valuable time into this for a return that could have been a lot more if it were invested in the other passages or in the VA questions.

Another RC passage (On Emotions/Stoicism) was not a very easy read, but not so tough either. A well-read student could have found this to be not too challenging. To add to this, the options in this passage were not very close, helping students to zero-in on the answer with a moderate effort.

The passage on Chinese/Eastern Art Philosophy was a delight to read with no heavy sentences. This passage and the one on Undeads/ghosts were the easy passages to read. Questions too were not very involved. The options of a good number of questions in these sets too were easy to eliminate. These two sets would, hence, be the must-attempt RC sets in this slot, despite a couple of tough questions, overall, from them.

Passage	Number of Questions	Readability	Overall Difficulty Level
Undeads/Ghosts	4	Moderate	Moderate
Emotions/Stoicism	4	Moderate	Moderate
Chinese/Eastern Art Philosophy	4	Moderate	Moderate
Human rights & Technology	4	Very Difficult	Very Difficult

For those who were flabbergasted by the tough RC passage on Human rights & Technology the VA questions would have provided a welcome relief as overall, they were not very difficult.

The Verbal Ability questions this year had a surprise in terms of the new question type introduced. The Odd-one-out question gave way to what could be termed as “Sentence Placement” questions. These questions had a sentence that is to be placed at one of the four locations in a given paragraph. The options to be selected indicated the location where this sentence is to be placed. Two such questions were present in the morning slot. While the placement was not straightforward, it was not too tough either, placing both these questions in the moderate level of difficulty.

The Para Formation Questions (3 in number) were all four-sentence questions. The level of difficulty was moderate, enabling those with a decent amount of practice to be able to crack them with not too much effort. All these three questions were non-MCQs.

There were three Para-summary questions in this slot. All of these had not-so-tough-to-read passages

The distribution of the questions in the Verbal Ability area is as below

Question Type	Number of Questions	Difficulty Level
Para Formation Questions (PFQs)	3	Moderate
Sentence placement	2	Moderate
Para Summary	3	Moderate

A net score of 22-24 would be a decent score for a test-taker to be able to get 85 percentile (sectional cut-off).

Logical Reasoning & Data Interpretation

The LRDI section of the morning slot was distinctly higher in difficulty level, overall, compared to the overall difficulty of LRDI of the last year. The number of sets remained at four. However, the distribution of the number of questions within the sets has been changed. While there were two four-question sets and two six-question sets last year, all the four sets of the morning slot paper this year had five-questions each. This distribution removed one factor from the mind of the students – which set to start evaluating to attempt first. As all the sets had the same number of questions, it was now the type of set and the amount of data that students had to look for, before attempting the set. One could also have taken the easy way out by checking the sets in the order of appearance, provided one was more or less equally well-versed with all the set types.

There was also a big change this year. The paper did not have the one definitely-easy and must-attempt set, which was a common feature in almost all the slots last year.

This would contribute to pushing the difficulty level up this year.

The set-wise details are as below

LRDI	No. of Questions	Difficulty level
Boys & Girls (Venn Diagram)	5	Very Difficult
Funding Tokens (LR Puzzle)	5	Difficult
Goals (Games & Tournament)	5	Moderate-Difficult
Metro (Routes & Networks)	5	Very Difficult

The set on Boys & Girls attending their get-together was a very difficult set. It was a venn diagram set with very little concrete information to work with. That it was a venn diagram set would not dawn upon the students immediately. Students would have done well to skip this set after realising that the data was very unwieldy, and this decision would have saved them a lot of time.

The set on Funding tokens did not have too much data to work with - just three lines of info along with the totals. This would have perplexed many a student who attempted to solve the set as the table was not even half-filled and there was no more data to work with. Those able to identify that the value of funds is where the additional info lies would have been able to proceed to crack the set. This pegs this set at a ‘Difficult’ level.

The set on Goals by four people had a fair amount of info to work with. Cross-checking the info, ensuring all the conditions are matched and all of them have been accounted for, for all the possible options that the set throws at us are the time-taking factors in this set. This set can also be pegged at “Difficult” level.

The set on Metro routes should have been an easy set given that it is majorly an observation/calculation-based set and could be solved using minimal logic. However, the sheer amount of info to be kept in mind – different timings, number of routes, halts, etc, pushes the level of the set to a very high level of difficulty. This is one set that one could wish that he/she should not get as the first set in the paper as this is attractive enough to pull a student into attempting it, thereby making the student spend a lot of time.

A net score of 11-13 would be a decent score for a test-taker to be able to get 85 percentile (sectional cut-off).

Quantitative Ability Section

The Quant section retained the exact structure from last year, including the non-MCQs. The paper had 22 Questions, with 8 non-MCQs.

Many questions in the section appeared very doable at the outset. But the amount of information present in the seemingly easy Arithmetic questions and the kind of numbers that that one had to deal with meant that the time required to solve these questions was going to be high. Students would have ended up investing too much time in questions where they did not expect that to happen and this may have prevented them from reaching the end of the section, thereby missing out on some easy questions.

Numbers came back into reckoning with three questions in this slot, after the apparent snub that it took last year. Geometry and ERPV continued their reign joined by AMA this year.

The distribution of questions in this section across topics is as below

Topic	No. of Questions	Difficulty Level
ERPV	2	Easy
Percentages, Profit & Loss	2	Moderate - Difficult
SI-CI	1	Easy
Time & Distance	1	Moderate
Numbers	3	Moderate-Difficult
Geometry	2	Moderate
Progressions/Series	2	Moderate
Sets	1	Moderate
Quadratic Equations	1	Difficult
Inequalities & Modulus	2	Difficult
Averages Mixtures & Alligations	3	Easy-Moderate
Coordinate Geometry	1	Moderate
Permutations & Combinations	1	Difficult

A net score of 13-15 would be a decent score for a test-taker to be able to get 85 percentile (sectional cut-off).