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This section witnessed a jump in the level of difficulty as compared to CAT 06. Although there were just 25 questions, it was quite impossible to solve all of them in a span of 50 minutes.
Geometry took a back seat, while Algebra and Arithmetic came to the forefront, comprising 60% of the questions. The questions on Modern Math were relatively less time-consuming but reasoning based and required clarity in fundamental concepts.
Data Sufficiency questions appeared in this section after a long time. Some of them were also quite tough and confusing.
While there were many speed-breakers, there were also a few easy ones interspersed across the section. Identifying and solving these questions was the key to success in this section.
Data Sufficiency made its appearance in this section once again after a gap of 2 years, whereas logical reasoning questions went missing. Unlike CAT 2006 in which a majority of the DI sets were reasoning- based, CAT 2007 had hardly any reasoning intensive questions.
This section comprised 21 Data Interpretation questions and 4 Data Sufficiency questions.
The questions based on Data Sufficiency were easy as mere comprehension was sufficient to answer the question. These questions should have been given the first preference while attempting this section.
All the sets in Data Interpretation were based on simple or intensive calculation. The sets based on ‘Health Drink Company’ and ‘Secondary School’ should have been preferred over other sets as they involved basic calculations.
Even though the set based on ‘US dollar’ involved intense calculations, it should have been attempted since questions asked were quite straightforward.
The set based on ‘low-cost airline’ needed an initial analysis of all the possible routes and fares, which was time consuming. The set based on ‘five year production details of a company’ required comprehending the given data and drawing a few inferences to solve all the questions.
Note that though the DI sets were calculation intensive, one needed a fair level of comprehension and reasoning ability before proceeding to perform the relevant calculations.
The verbal section of CAT 2007 was fairly straightforward: 13 VA/VR questions and 12 RC questions (4 passages with 3 questions each).
Verbal Ability/Verbal Reasoning questions had some new takes on old constructs, like Jumbled Paragraphs, which featured five sentences with the first sentence fixed, and in some cases whole paragraphs jumbled instead of single sentences. Grammar/usage/vocabulary-based questions were presented in a novel way in two different types of questions. Complete the Theme questions were the only familiar construct.
The four passages in Reading Comprehension were fairly short, and except for one passage, quite easy to read. They varied in subject: one was on art and literary history, one on sociology, one on historiography and one on philosophy of science. The questions ranged from very simple and direct to challenging and inferential ones.
Though there were some similarities between CAT 2007 and CAT 2006 – for example, there were 25 questions with no differential marking – on the whole the differences were more marked. The number of RC passages increased from 3 to 4, but the number of questions went down from 15 to 12. Direct questions, which had been conspicuous by their absence last year, made a comeback. Similarly, in VA/VR, concept-based questions were reintroduced after a year’s absence.
Overall, this section was of medium difficulty and slightly easier than CAT 2006. A student with good language concepts and reading skills should not have faced any insurmountable difficulties here.
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