CATATHON

XAT Previous Question Papers

2009-12-06T13:00:00.002+05:30

Given XAT is around the corner, I am uploading some hard-to-get question papers of XAT.

XAT 2009

XAT 2009 PDF

XAT 2008

XAT 2008 RAR

XAT 2007, 2006 and 2002 Papers have already been uploaded in this post

The CAT User Interface & Some pointers to help in Online CAT 2009

2009-12-01T22:25:00.005+05:30

The CAT User Interface:

Many people have had a doubt about the CAT user interface. So, here goes a sample UI. The question info and the demarcation line appear only in case of DI caselets or RC passages.

The 'End' button and 'Next' button are placed quite close and the computer might or might not give you a prompt to end the test or not. So, it is important that you don't click on the 'End' button by mistake.

Click on image for larger Image

Also, remember that the questions will be in order of section. They will NOT be jumbled.

However, they might be jumbled inside a section, like in Verbal Ability the order might be 3 RC questions, 1 para jumble, 1 sentence corection , 1 para jumble and so on.

Important Points:

Initially you will meet a screen with 2 buttons

Start Exam
Start Tutorial

If you hit start tutorial and finish the tutorial in less than 15 mins, you can safely hit 'End Tutorial'.

Then, your screen will contain a single button saying

Resume Exam 'Time Remaining : 00:13:06

That is, it shows as though the time remaining for the test is the same as the time left after the tutorial. At this point, it is important that you DO NOT CLICK ANYTHING. WAIT!!!

After a few seconds, the two buttons that you previously saw will appear on the screen.

Start Exam
Start Tutorial

Click on start exam now and start the test.

Remember: To select on 'I Agree' to the Non Disclosure Agreement or your test will end abruptly.

XAT Question Papers

2009-09-27T10:36:00.004+05:30

Here are some papers for XAT.
The folder has both XAT Mock papers and also previous XAT papers.

Click here or click the link below.

CAT Questions Papers - 1999 to 2007

2009-09-27T10:27:00.004+05:30

Here is a link to download old CAT papers.

There are CAT papers from 1999 to 2007 in the folder.

I will upload CAT 2008 seperately.

Click on the picture below to download.

You can also click here to download.

More Mock Papers

2009-09-27T09:41:00.005+05:30

I am providing a link to more mock papers.

Clock on the following link, and you will be directed to a mediafire page.

Click on "Click to download files" at the top on left side of the page.

Your download will begin immediately.
Click on image below.

http://www.mediafire.com/?mczalnyditz

CAT Mocks.

2009-09-27T09:11:00.005+05:30

Hardly 2 months left for CAT 09 now, I guess the CAT-junta would be prepping hard. It is also the time for people to be giving mock exams.

I have collected a lot of online mock papers of last year and the year before and here I share them with all of you.

All the best :)

TIME Mocks

SIMCATs

Ps: The above files have not been uploaded by me. I am merely providing the links to exiting files.

DI-Marathon SET 2

2009-06-26T20:40:00.004+05:30

Here is today's set also from an old question paper of CAT.

Solutions will be put up tomorrow.

In the table above is the listing of players, seeded from highest (#1) to lowest (#32), who are due to play in an Association of Tennis Players (ATP) tournament for women. This tournament has four knockout rounds before the final, i.e., first round, second round, quarterfinals, and semi-finals. In the first round, the highest seeded player plays the lowest seeded player (seed # 32) which is designated match No. 1 of first round; the 2nd seeded player plays the 31st seeded player which is designated match No. 2 of the first round, and so on. Thus, for instance, match No. 16 of first round is to be played between 16th seeded player and the 17th seeded player. In the second round, the winner of match No. 1 of first round plays the winner of match No. 16 of first round and is designated match No. 1 of second round. Similarly, the winner of match No. 2 of first round plays the winner of match No. 15 of first round, and is designated match No. 2 of second round. Thus, for instance, match No. 8 of the second round is to be played between the winner of match No. 8 of first round and the winner of match No. 9 of first round. The same pattern is followed for later rounds as well.

Q 1. If there are no upsets (a lower seeded player beating a higher seeded player) in the first round, and only match Nos. 6, 7, and 8 of the second round result in upsets, then who would meet Lindsay Davenport in quarter finals, in case Davenport reaches quarter finals?

a. Nadia Petrova
b. Patty Schnyder
c. Venus Williams
d. Justine Henin

Q2. If Elena Dementieva and Serena Williams lose in the second round, while Justine Henin and Nadia Petrova make it to the semi-finals, then who would play Maria Sharapova in the quarterfinals, in the event Sharapova reaches quarterfinals?

a. Nadia Petrova
b. Patty Schnyder
c. Dinara Safina
d. Justine Henin

Q3. If, in the first round, all even numbered matches (and none of the odd numbered ones) result in upsets, and there are no upsets in the second round, then who could be the lowest seeded player facing Maria Sharapova in semi-finals?

a. Svetlana Kuznetsova
b. Nadia Petrova
c. Flavia Pennetta
d. Anastasia Myskina

Q4. If the top eight seeds make it to the quarterfinals, then who, amongst the players listed below, would definitely not play against Maria Sharapova in the final, in case Sharapova reaches the final?

a. Amelie Mauresmo
b. Elena Dementieva
c. Lindsay Davenport
d. Kim Clijsters

Solution to Set 1

2009-06-26T18:33:00.003+05:30

Here is the solution to Set 1.

We are supposed to create a table as follows and we obtain the answers as follows :

The answers are as follows

Q1 (a)
Q2 (c)
Q3 (a)
Q4 (c)

LR & DI Marathon

2009-06-25T17:46:00.006+05:30

From today on, I start a new initiative, I will post one DI set every day for you to solve and put up the answers the next day along with another DI set.

I will try to setup a way to send this directly to your e-mail inboxes. but till then you will need to check out this page for the DI set.

Here goes, the first DI set.

DI Set 1: (CAT 2004)

Purana and Naya are two brands of kitchen mixer-grinders available in the local market. Purana is an old brand that was introduced in 1990, while Naya was introduced in 1997. For both these brands, 20% of the mixer-grinders bought in a particular year are disposed off as junk exactly two years later. It is known that 10 Purana mixer-grinders were disposed off in 1997. The following figures show the number of Purana and Naya mixer-grinders in operation from 1995 to 2000, as at the end of the year.

1. How many Naya mixer-grinders were purchased in 1999?

a. 50
b. 44
c. 64

d. 55

2. How many Naya mixer-grinders were disposed off by the end of 2000?

a. 10
b. 22
c. 16
d. cannot be determined

3. How many Purana mixer-grinders were purchased in 1999?

a. 20
b. 50
c. 23
d. cannot be determined

4. How many Purana mixer-grinders were disposed off in 2000?

a. 6
b. 0
c. cannot be determined
d. 5

Get those brain cells working and wait up for the answers to be posted tomorrow!!

Time, Speed and Distance

2009-06-14T01:38:00.003+05:30

This post is a little different from all the previous posts.

I was going to make a presentation on the topic Time,Speed and Distance as I usually do for all the lessons I have here, but my blog is not to show off my presentations, it is rather to provide a direction for everyone preparing for CAT and nice enough to drop by.

I found a nice tutorial on Time,speed and Distance and it explained everything really well. I was myself jittery in the topic but the tutorial did help me build some confidence in tackling TSD problems.

Haha! I know I sound like an advertiser already.

But yes, career launcher has put up this wonderful video tutorial on Time, Speed and distance as a demo to one of their courses and I think the demo is very good.

Check this link out

Career Launcher - Time, Speed and Distance Tutorial

You will need to register to access this material but I think you can go through that much trouble for a wonderful tutorial.

It also has a test with it - so go learn TSD through this demo and do come back to tell me if you liked my suggestion.

Sentence Completion

2009-06-12T22:00:00.006+05:30

Long time since the last post, but was trying to do the lesson for Time, Speed and Distance but it's a vast topic and I am myself quite jittery in this topic. I will put one up soon.

Anyways, I am putting up a presentation on sentence completion for verbal section and also a small exercise after that.

sentence completion

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by pinisetti.swetha | Upload your own presentation

Sentence Completion height="500" width="100%" > value="http://d.scribd.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=16360962&access_key=key-17ajdkoguch2h41gqorx&page=1&version=1&viewMode=">

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Essays & Theses School Work cat IIM

Paragraph Jumbles

2009-05-26T13:03:00.005+05:30

The verbal section happens to be the Achilles' heel of many CAT takers.

Paragraph Jumbles are an integral part of CAT for quite many years now.

Here is a presentation on solving Para Jumbles in a more structured and organized way.

This will seem a bit difficult to start out with, but if you practice it regularly, para jumbles can be highly scoring in the verbal section.

Around 4 questions of Para Jumbles solved correct and in a short time can give you a huge advantage over the competition.

I will post some exercises soon. I am only putting up the presentation as of now.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by pinisetti.swetha

Do let me know your comments on it. You can also ask any doubts you have in the comments and I will try to solve/ get my friends to solve them and post the answers here :)

Exercise:

Here is an exercise to practice your newly acquired skills in paragraph jumbles. If the document isn't clear, try going clicking on the small heading link to view the document on scribd.

The full screen option doesn't seem to be working properly. The document can be viewed better if you go to the scribd page.

Para Jumbles

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

Mixtures and Alligations

2009-05-23T01:52:00.005+05:30

Long time since I posted! Sorry for getting lazy.

Here is a tutorial on Mixtures and Alligations for Quantitative Aptitude Section of CAT.

You will find it useful to once go through basics of averages and weighted averages before you go through this presentation.

Click on the last button on the slideshow to look at the presentation in full screen view.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by pinisetti.swetha

Exercise:

Here is an exercise sheet to practice problems of the type discussed above.

Download Exercise Sheet Here

Ps: Click on link and scroll down the page. Below the ads you will find a space to enter some characters. After entering the characters, hit submit to download the file in a few seconds.

Please do let me know if you like the presentations :)

Mixtures and Alligations

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

Get a discount on TestFunda.com

2009-05-19T12:20:00.003+05:30

Get an additional discount of 5% on any premium course you buy on Testfunda.com.

Just give the referral id as nickyswetha when you make the purchase and mail a copy of your receipt page to testfunda.discount@gmail.com .

Data Interpretation Type 1 - Averages Type

2009-05-15T12:51:00.002+05:30

Given DI has been my nemesis in CAT 2008, I am trying a new approach to it.

The traditional method of breaking DI into bar graphs, pie charts is outdated.

Everyone knows how to read these charts but DI problems are more about logical deductions than reading charts. So, I have divided DI into various types of problems which will be discussed as various DI types.

Well, here's the first lesson.

Data Interpretation Type 1 Tutorial

Data Interpretation

View more presentations from nickyswetha.

Exercise on this type of problems:

Data Interpretation 1 Averages Type1

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Study Guides, Notes, School Work cat IIM

Syllogisms

2009-05-15T12:50:00.001+05:30

All Cats are Dogs

Some Dogs are Birds

How do you solve these questions in under a minute?

Check out the presentation here :)

It is in .ppt format and is 8 MB in size.

logical-deductions-Syllogisms

A sample presentation without narration is here on slideshare.net

I haven't put it up here, 'cause it seems to be crashing the blog.

Here's a screenshot of the presentation :)

Number Systems Tutorial

2009-05-15T11:53:00.001+05:30

Here is a tutorial on Number Systems. It is in powerpoint (.pptx) format and has narration. So, remember to use rehearsed timings on it for proper continuity.

It's 6.3 MB in size, so it might take some time to download.

~~If you need the .ppt form of it (which is 12 MB) , do comment here with your e-mail Id . I will mail you a .rar copy of that.~~

Here's the .ppt version in two parts

number-systemspart1

number-systemspart2

It was great fun making this presentation. Hope you like it too! I realized that I "rrrr" a lot and I got to work on that. While on work on it - do check out the presentation and tell me what you think of it! :D

Number Systems Tutorial

Here's a slide show with no narration, it will help people who have slow internet connections or limited download.

Number Systems Theory for CAT 2009 Quant

View more presentations from nickyswetha.

Number Systems Test

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

Reading Comprehension passage - 1 (CAT 2008)

2009-05-15T11:52:00.000+05:30

Read the passage below and try to answer the questions. This is an RC passage from CAT 2008.

You can download the CAT 2008 paper from here. It is by TestFunda.com

The following passage has been obtained from Learnhub.com

Directions for Questions 76 to 80 The passage given below is followed by a set of five questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

When I was little, children were bought two kinds of ice cream, sold from those white wagons with the canopies made of silvery metal: either the two-cent cone or the four-cent ice cream pie. The two-cent cone was very small, in fact it could fit comfortably into a child’s hand, and it was made by taking the ice cream from its container with a special scoop and piling it on the cone. Granny always suggested I eat only a part of the cone, then throw away the pointed end, because it had been touched by the vendor’s hand (though that was the best part, nice and crunchy, and it was regularly eaten in secret, after a pretense of discarding it).

The four-cent pie was made by a special little machine, also silvery, which pressed two disks of sweet biscuit against a cylindrical section of ice cream. First you had to thrust your tongue into the gap between the biscuits until it touched the central nucleus of ice cream; then, gradually, you ate the whole thing, the biscuit surfaces softening as they became soaked in creamy nectar. Granny had no advice to give here: in theory the pies had been touched only by the machine; in practice, the vendor had held them against his hand while giving them to us, but it was impossible to isolate the contaminated area.

I was fascinated, however, by some of my peers, whose parents bought them not a four-cent pie but two two-cent cones. These privileged children advanced proudly with one cone in their right hand and one in their left; and expertly moving their head from side to side, they licked first one, then the other. This liturgy seemed to me so sumptuously enviable, that many times I asked to be allowed to celebrate it. In vain. My elders were inflexible: a four-cent ice, yes; but two two-cent ones, absolutely no.

As anyone can see, neither mathematics nor economy nor dietetics justified this refusal. Nor did hygiene, assuming that in due course the tips of both cones were discarded. The pathetic, and obviously mendacious, justification was that a boy concerned with turning his eyes from one cone to the other was more inclined to stumble over stones, steps, or cracks in the pavement. I dimly sensed that there was another secret justification, cruelly pedagogical, but I was unable to grasp it.

Today, citizen and victim of a consumer society, a civilization of excess and waste (which the society of the thirties was not), I realize that those dear and now departed elders were right. Two two-cent cones instead of one at four cents did not signify squandering, economically speaking, but symbolically they surely did. It was for this precise reason, that I yearned for them: because two ice creams suggested excess. And this was precisely why they were denied me: because they looked indecent, an insult to poverty, a display of fictitious privilege, a boast of wealth. Only spoiled children ate two cones at once, those children who in fairy tales were rightly punished, as Pinocchio was when he rejected the skin and the stalk. And parents who encouraged this weakness, appropriate to little parvenus, were bringing up their children in the foolish theater of “I’d like to but I can’t.” They were preparing them to turn up at tourist-class cheek-in with a fake Gucci bag bought from a street peddler on the beach at Rimini.

Nowadays the moralist risks seeming at odds with morality, in a world where the consumer civilization now wants even adults to be spoiled, and promises them always something more, from the wristwatch in the box of detergent to the bonus bangle sheathed, with the magazine it accompanies, in a plastic envelope. Like the parents of those ambidextrous gluttons I so envied, the consumer civilization pretends to give more, but actually gives, for four cents, what is worth four cents. You will throw away the old transistor radio to purchase the new one, that boasts an alarm clock as well, but some inexplicable defect in the mechanism will guarantee that the radio lasts only a year. The new cheap car will have leather seats, double side mirrors adjustable from inside, and a paneled dashboard, but it will not last nearly so long as the glorious old Fiat 500, which, even when it broke down, could be started again with a kick.

The morality of the old days made Spartans of us all, while today’s morality wants all of us to be Sybarites.

Q. 76. Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage?

(1) Today’s society is more extravagant than the society of the 1930s.
(2) The act of eating two ice cream cones in akin to a ceremonial process.
(3) Elders rightly suggested that a boy turning eyes from one cone to the other was more likely to fall.
(4) Despite seeming to promise more, the consumer civilization gives away exactly what the thing is worth.
(5) The consumer civilization attempts to spoil children and adults alike.

Q. 77. In the passage, the phrase “little parvenus” refers to

(1) naughty midgets
(2) old hags
(3) arrogant people
(4) young upstarts
(5) foolish kids

Q. 78. The author pined for two-cent cones instead of one four-cent pie because

(1) it made dietetic sense
(2) it suggested intemperance
(3) it was more fun
(4) it had a visual appeal
(5) he was a glutton

Q. 79. What does the author mean by “now a days the moralist risks seeming at odds with morality”?

(1) The moralist of yesterday have become immoral today
(2) The concept of morality has changed over the years
(3) Consumerism is amoral
(4) The risks associated with immorality have gone up
(5) The purist’s view of morality is fast becoming popular

Q. 80. According to the author, the justification for refusal to let him eat two cones was plausibly

(1) didactic
(2) dietetic
(3) dialectic
(4) diatonic
(5) diastolic

Solutions:
Here is the answer key. The solutions have been narrated in the audio. Though it is 10 mins long, it is of very horrible quality - this was done to decrease size. So, I presume it should download fine.

Do NOT play the slideshow. Instead, open the presentation and double click on the "speaker" icon to listen to the narration.

The file is in a powerpoint presentation format.

Reading-Comprehension-1-cat-08

Solution with Explanation - Narrative in .pptx format - 5.65 MB

Answer Key:
Q 76. Option 3
Q 77. Option 4
Q 78. Option 2
Q 79. Option 2
Q 80. Option 1

I hope you like my technique and try practicing with it. You can use the other two techniques also, if you find them easier.

Reading Comprehension Techniques

2009-05-15T11:50:00.000+05:30

There are many Coaching Institutes which will teach you speed reading, skimming, scanning etc… etc… but in the exam situation it is most probable that all these techniques will not even strike our mind. Therefore, it is important that we start to regularly read - books, blogs :) , passages, newspapers,magazines and anything which makes even an ounce of sense.

Here, We will start solving the previous years RC passages one by one. So that we can understand the way the IIMs/CAT think(s). Usually, coaching Institutes never are able to answer questions from verbal correctly. So, our best bet to start thinking in lines of CAT would be old CAT question papers only.

There are many methods suggested for going about the CAT RCs.

Method 1:

1. Go through questions

2. Read passage

3. Answer questions

Adv : You know what you need to look for in the passage

Disadv :

1. It is possible that you will have concentrated so much on remembering the questions that you cannot give the passage the same attention and at the end, you might not have read between the lines. Mostly, CAT passages aren’t direct, so it is important to keep the whole topic in mind while answering questions.

Method 2:

1. Read Passage

2. Read Questions and Answer Questions

Adv : You get the essence of the passage because you aren’t reading the questions

Disadv : You might need to go through the whole passage again, several times while answering the questions as you sometimes need to locate authors/people/dates/phrases etc…

Method 3 : (This is the method I use)

1. Skim through questions for important/striking words.

Here, you shouldn’t read the whole question or even try to make sense of anything in it. Just look for the following in the questions

- Names

- Places

- Weird/Difficult/Striking words

- Phrases ie., you look for quotes “– ” or ‘–’

2. Go through passage and underline all the words that seem to match what you have just read and any other words you find difficult to comprehend or which you feel might be necessary.

3. Write down the exact topic which each paragraph is talking about.

4. Write in big letters the main objective of the whole paragraph.

4. Go through the questions and answer the questions.

We will see how this method can be put to use for various RC passages in the forthcoming posts.

Can I Guess?

2009-05-10T22:44:00.000+05:30

This is one question which bothers most CAT aspirants - "Can I guess?"

"If you can eliminate all options except two, guess..." says Gaurav Bhattacharya, a 100 Percentiler in CAT 2007. Well, I have to dis-agree with him here, as guessing is something much more difficult than actually solving the question.

Why do I say this?

Well, the IIM professors who make the CAT, design it so as to eliminate all chances of people making the cut just-by-chance. They are looking for real intellect and not beginner's luck.

Guessing is something which can be done only if you have had already experienced similar questions many times before and are sure about what the answer could look/be like. For a problem/question which appears completely new to you, it is wise to let it be and use the time to solve another problem which you know how to solve.

What about guessing in verbal section?

Most students believe that the verbal section is pure luck and works on pure guessing. I know many 99+ percentilers who believe that the law of averages will ensure a 50% accuracy if they answer most of the questions. However, this is not true. Though the verbal ability section looks ambiguous and the answers in the key look unlikely at the first glance, a thorough analysis of the answers will prove otherwise. One needn't be a Charles Dickens to crack the CAT verbal, nor does he need to answer all the 40 questions.

A person answering 20 questions with 5 mistakes would obtain 55 marks (ie., 75% accuracy) which would be a 96+ percentile - enough to fetch him all calls. While a person answering 38 questions with 19 mistakes (50% accuracy) would be getting the same 57 marks. However, answering 20 questions would take much less time and effort compared to answering 38 questions. A person answering 20 questions can even leave out a whole Reading Comprehension passage which he finds difficult or time consuming while a person answering 38 questions would have spent at least 10 - 15 mins on the same passage and also guessing through it to attain such a high attempt rate.

A similar logic can be applied to QA or DI sections.

Solving 12 problems with no mistakes out of 30 in QA/DI would fetch you 48 marks which is 98+%ile while answering 18-20 questions out of 30 with 6-8 mistakes can cost you a call from the top 3 IIMs.

Its not the number of questions you answer, but the number of questions you answer RIGHT.

Remember, you don't need to top in the CAT - you just need to clear all cut offs and clear the final cut off - for which you don't need to be a super human.