Exams
The Common Admission Test (CAT) is a prestigious national entrance exam conducted annually by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) for admission into their MBA programs. Held on the last Sunday of November, the exam is administered in three time slots across more than 170 cities. There are 21 IIMs in total, comprising 7 established IIMs and 14 newer or "baby" IIMs. While the older IIMs use the CAT application form as both an exam and admission application, the newer and baby IIMs follow the Common Admission Process (CAP) to shortlist candidates for admission.
2023 Exam Analysis
MAT is conducted 4 times in a year. MAT exam paper is divided into 5 sections, each comprising 40 questions. The difficulty level of the exam is usually easy to moderate.
Test-takers can have a look at the MAT February exam analysis to get an idea about the exam pattern.
This section covered almost all the topics of Reasoning like – Linear/Circular Arrangements, Number/Alphabetical series, Blood Relations, Puzzles etc. Verbal Reasoning comprised questions on Analogy, Cause and Effect, Assertion and Reason and Statement Conclusion. The overall difficulty level of this section was easy to moderate.
This section included questions from Arithmetic, Number System, Geometry and Mensuration, Probability and Set Theory with maximum number of questions appearing from Arithmetic. Some questions in this section were ambiguous and left many students confused . Overall, it was of Easy to moderate level of difficulty.
This section consisted of 30 questions from Data Interpretation based of Line Graphs, Bar Graphs and Pie Charts. Remaining 10 questions were from Data Sufficiency, Data Comparison etc. I feel this section was relatively difficult compared to the other sections.
The section was dominated by questions from Current Affairs. The level of the questions was easy to moderate. The questions were from areas like Business Awareness, Politics, Sports, Books and Authors etc.
Overall, the paper was moderately difficult and an attempt of 130 to 140 questions can be considered a good attempt.