The CAT exam, in the eyes of some, is not a cat but a tiger. This is because they are under this myth that the CAT has very high-level questions. The fact is, thankfully, to the bewilderment of many, very different. The CAT Quantitative Ability (QA) section has, as mentioned earlier has school-level questions. While a few of these questions need deeper thinking, they are, overall, from Class X syllabus.

The marks needed in this section is not very high. To clear the 85-percentile sectional cut-off required for Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), takers of CAT 23 needed only around 11 marks out of a maximum score of 66 in the section.

Even at the top-end, to score 99 percentile, the marks needed were around 24-26. That would mean getting around four questions right out of 22 to clear the sectional cut-off and getting eight to nine questions right to get to 99 percentile.

Will the CAT paper have eight to nine doable questions? It has a lot more. In fact, the difficult questions are fewer in number than the doable ones. The trick lies in identifying the doable questions and getting them right without getting stuck with the difficult ones. This requires practice and correct test-taking strategy.

While the number of right answers needed to get a certain percentile may vary slightly from year-to-year, based on the difficulty level of that year/slot, the fact to remember is that the goal post is not alarmingly high but is much lower and reachable plus achievable.

Many students go by the myth that the CAT QA is tough and end up not even attempting the CAT. Many of those who manage to cross this barrier and attempt it do not put in the necessary preparation and end up adding to the myth that the
CAT QA is tough.