CAT Mock Taking Strategies for VARC, Check Details Now

The Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC) section in the CAT exam evaluates your language proficiency, comprehension skills, and critical thinking for verbal. It includes topics like reading comprehensions, para jumbles, summary-based questions, and odd-sentence identification.

VARC can be challenging due to the diverse topics and tricky language usage and questions. Candidates can follow the below-mentioned CAT VARC preparation tips to crush this section.

CAT VARC Exam Pattern 2024

Understanding the VARC structure of the CAT exam is required so as to know what to expect from the paper. While Reading Comprehension consist of the majority of the section (66.67%), Verbal Ability only consists of 33.33% of the paper. Following are details of the VARC section for CAT 2024.

How to Improve CAT VARC Score?

Following are few tips and techniques to enhance your CAT 2024 VARC preparation, which a candidate can employ to improve their overall VARC score:

• Read Read Read! : Candidates need to read content from diverse genres like Psychology, philosophy, business, art, science, and technology, environmental science etc. and from various sources including newspapers, editorials, novels, and non-fiction. This will help you get comfortable with a variety of topics.
• Making RC Summary: Since there can be a lot of information that can be hard to retain, candidates can write little summary of each paragraph of the RC to remember their content and important points.
• Strengthen Vocabulary and Grammar: Work on building your vocabulary and grammar basics. This will help in understanding complex passages and performing better in VA questions.
• Develop a Strategy: Identify whether you perform better in RC or VA questions, and adjust your time allocation accordingly. Candidates better in verbal can choose to tackle all 8 VA questions first and then choosing and doing RC in exam or vice-versa.
• Work on Elimination Techniques: Best practice for CAT VARC section is to use elimination method to remove tricky option and reach to the correct option. Candidates can use elimination strategies to narrow down answer choices. This increases your chances of picking the correct option.
• Practice RC and VA Questions Consistently: With 3 months remaining to CAT, candidates need to regularly practice at least 3 RCs and 10 VA questions and analyze mistakes and learn from them.
• Mock Test Analysis of VARC section: Take regular VARC sectionals and topic tests and after every mock test, review your VARC performance. Identify the types of questions you struggle with and focus on improving those areas.

Also Read, How To Prepare Verbal Ability for CAT 2025? Check Now

CAT VARC Mock Test Strategies

Following are some CAT VARC strategies that candidates can utilize during their mock tests and ultimately in exam to enhance their VARC score:

• Start with Your Strengths: Begin the VARC section with the topic you are most comfortable with i.e., RC or VA questions. If a candidate is good in VA Para jumbles, para summary, odd man out etc., they can first tackle VA questions and then move onto RC part. This builds confidence and helps you score quickly.
• Skim and Scan RC Passages: Learn to skim through the RC passages to understand what the passage is about, its the main idea etc. before diving into the questions. This helps you navigate the passage more efficiently while answering.
• Focus on Accuracy: Prioritize accuracy over attempting too many questions. Incorrect answers will fetch negative marking, lowering your overall score, so avoid guess-work unless you can eliminate most options confidently.
• Time Management: Allocate specific time to RC and VA sections based on your strengths. For example, one can choose to spend not more than 10 minutes on VA section.
• Practice Elimination Techniques: For tough questions, use elimination to narrow down options. Eliminating incorrect answers improves your chances of selecting the correct one.
• Don’t Get Stuck on One Question: If a question seems too tricky or time-consuming, do not dwell and move on to the next question. Do not guess work as an incorrect answer will fetch you negative marking.
• Analyze Every Mock: After each mock, thoroughly review your mistakes and understand why you got them wrong. Focus on improving weak areas and doubling on your stronger topics.

How to analyse VARC Mock Test

Evaluating Reading Comprehension (RC)
 This part of the exam is usually consistent and predictable, with very few changes in format or style over the years.

• Passage Selection: Review the passages where you performed well and analyze why. After attempting several sectional tests, you will likely notice a pattern in the types of passages you're most comfortable with. Start with these to build confidence. Make sure in next mock you don't spend too much time in selecting passage.
• Time Allocation: Assess how much time you spent on each passage relative to its importance, if you are spending more than 12-14 minutes on 1 RC then, you should practice more and try to bring it down to atleast 10 minutes, so that you can attempt atleast 3 RCs and 8 VA questions
• Question Analysis: Categorize RC questions into factual, inferential, or tone-based. Identify which category you're struggling with and work on improving that area.

Verbal Ability (VA) Analysis
The VA section in VARC typically includes questions on sentence rearrangement, grammar, and vocabulary. To improve, follow these steps:

• Pattern Recognition: Identify the types of VA questions you often get wrong. For example, if you find para jumbles are challenging, focus on practicing more of those.
• Don't Skip Para summary: Para summaries are one of the most important as well as easy to answer questions of the VA part. If someone do it carefully then he/she should get them right. 
• Order of attempting VA Questions: Since Para summaries are on easier side one should go for them first. After that, one can attempt para insertion questions followed by odd one out and lastly one should go for Para jumbles. So, the right approach would be:    PS>PI>Odd one out> Para jumbles.