8/8/2019 Arun Sharma Chat

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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 (block1) 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 ofaccuracy 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 valuedthan 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'spapers?Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: Quants moderate, english tough, di/lrlengthy with a mix of tough questions and easy ones.

ASWINI: which section was difficult in 1st day of cat exam and howmany questionsshould be attended from that to get good percentile in following days in thatsection.....Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: attempt at least 10-12 questions persection 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, butat 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..ihave 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 35-40questions 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 besimilar in future dates...Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: The paper was not easy...althoughsince you get to see one question at a time you would be able to give more focus onevery 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 ifthey 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 10-12questions - maybe max 14 at an accuracy of 90% should be good for a sectionalcutoff

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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 needa 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. Similarto 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 beMr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: I think you should target 15 +15 andaround 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 onehas predicted. Also if you are thorough with the first 500 odd questions that youshould do in every area of quants (each block) and DI/ reasoning you should be fineand 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 tosee 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 getinto 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 scoringa 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 :). 2questions were incorrect in my paper in quants

kanika: Sir, with DI, i get stuck . At time the sets seem totally undoable and DI eatsup 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 youwould find in the initial part of my book on DI. Reasoning is also on traditionalpatterns- the standard kind of reasoning questions you should encounter if you solve200 questions in that area.

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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 allthe questions you have done. My take is this: In quants blockwise (on the opattern ofblocks mentioned in my qa book if you have solved the following number of questionsyou 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 sawone should encounter their logic in the first 500 question sets of DI one would do andfor reasoning the number is 200

sahil: Based on today's experience, will there be any special strategy that needs tobe 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 previousquestion. Also focus on improving your thinking in English. I would say that inReading comprehension- there was difficult passages, difficult questions but easy notconfusing 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 takelot of time to solve blocks problem hw many questions i can expect so suggest me sodat i can score with flying colours.Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: flying colors is a subjective term- forsome people 99.8 percentile might be a failure too. However, I am assuming @ 99percentile you need to target somewhere between 75-85 (+3,-1) marks overall withmax 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 itbe like 30 minutes each section, n then in remaining 45 minutes, try doing thesection 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 canuse 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 evenlydistributed- if you have a strong section it should be strong enough to give you themax 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 differentfor two persons..?Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: i dont know. but the test environmentwas very good this year- it was a wonder ful test taking expereince- you could notlookinto the next person's screen (unlike last year) and hence you had nobodyirritating you by peeking into yours. Anyway what difference does it make what paperpattern the other people got. What should matter is your performance and thequestion in front of you.

saket: Any tips for Verbal Section? How helpful will it be to follow your book?

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Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: I think my book should help you a lotin preparing the verbal section- in fact for all three sections i did not see a logic whichhas not been covered in my books. The verbal question types have all been coveredat 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 thatwithout violating the Non discliosure agreement. I have answered the general patternquestions earlier and what you need to do in every area in one of my earlier answers

Mohamed Ali: By attempting 57 questions with min 1 or 2 wrong answers, aren't youaffecting the chances of a CAT aspirant.Not to offend, but requesting a clarificationfrom you.Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: i dont think so because in a samlesize of 2 lac people 1 performance does not affect overall percentiles. Also if youknow the logic of the normal curve there is something above 3 sigma levels whichare typically ignored while calculating

mohan: when you say quants is moderate ..which LOD level in your book does thatcorrespond?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 thestudent a feel of how questions can be framed at a higher level. In every forum that ispeak about, i always tell students that LOD 3 questions in my books you should justread 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 diset. 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, lastsentence, word usage, grammar . all standard questions. no surprises

Ashwani: Sir, I have come to know that quant is more logic based..what are yourcomments on thisMr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: yes definitely. the questions weredrawing out algorithms of thinking which you definitely would have seen if you hadsolved 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 andprobability u had mentioned?Mr Arun Sharma, IIM B alumnus & CAT Guru: i think i have given a list of number ofquestions one has to solve in each area to be comfortable about each logic and knowevery algorithm that they may ask you.