Test Analysis - WIN CAT 05

Overall Brief

On the whole the level of the test was tough. The test contained only moderate and difficult questions and hence the important factor was selection of appropriate questions to attempt. The quant section was slightly manageable as only it had a few easy questions. Reasoning section was the toughest in this exam and verbal too did not have even a single easy question. One peculiar thing in this paper was that there were clusters of medium and difficult questions, so one had to skip the difficult cluster and to move to medium level cluster quickly. Verbal section was moderate to tough. The key to getting a good percentile was time management and selection of questions.

Verbal Ability

The first passage (1-4) based on ‘discussion on rationality and why it is so scarce as shown in Steven Pinker’s book on the same’. The passage touched an interesting topic and discussed many tangents associated with topic in discussion. The second passage (5-8) based on ‘patrimony laws meant to protect artefacts’ discussed various aspects on these laws. This was altogether new area for the test takers. The third passage (9-12) was based on ‘understanding romantic aesthetics’ was difficult to understand. The fourth passage (13-16) based on ‘understanding global warming with totally new perspective’ was again interesting to read. The most interesting part of this paper & verbal section, including non – RCs questions, was that there were no easy questions. Hence it was very important to select the RCs & other questions wisely to solve. However,one could have scored 90+ percentile by attempting 17-19 questions with 75-80% accuracy.

DI & Reasoning

The difficulty level of DI was very tough. There were 0 easy, 10 medium and 10 difficult questions in this section. By attempting a couple of questions from rest of the blocks, one could have fetched a very good percentile.

In this section, one couldhave fetched90+ percentile by attempting 6 - 9 questions with approx. 80 % accuracy.

Quantitative Ability

Easy Questions:

56, 58, 63

Students found this section easier than DI this time. The Quantitative section had 3 easy, 10 medium and 9 difficult questions. Selection of questions was important to crack this section. There were questions from varied topics like Geometry, Basic Numbers, Basic Algebra, Progression and Series, Arithmetic (Percentages/Time and Work/Mixtures/Percentages/SI-CI/Ratios).

A good student could have scored 90+ percentile by attempting around 8-11 questions with approx. 80% accuracy.

Strategy & Tips

The overall feel of the paper was tough, though for the students who knew how to manage the time available to the best i.e., not wasting much time in lengthy and difficult questions, could easily manage an overall good attempt. Most of the questions in quant section were from Arithmetic, Algebra, Number system and Geometry. For verbal section, one should have good reading speed & comprehension skills as there were 4 RCs based on different areas and also a few questions based on other areas such as summary, SR, best-fit & odd one out. One must focus on contextual vocabulary to understand and score well in passages &summary-based questions. Questions such as sentence rearrangement and Best-fit require analysis and knowledge of tricks to answer the questions. It is not advisable to spend too much time on TITA questions especially in the verbal section.