CAT (Common Admission Test) previous papers help aspirants to know about the pattern and nature of the exam. Going through the CAT previous year papers will be of immense help in knowing the nuances of the exam. Analyzing the previous year question papers of CAT will help aspirants understand how the exam has evolved over the years. This, in turn, will help aspirants classify the topics based on their relative importance in the CAT exam.
Though the pattern of the exam has undergone drastic changes over the past 2 decades, the core competencies that the exam tests have remained the same. On going through the CAT previous papers, it becomes evident that IIMs have refrained from asking abstruse or formulaic questions over the years. Most of the questions that have appeared in the exams demand a logical bent of mind rather than brute force calculation skills to solve them. Also, the exam has slowly evolved from a speed based exam in the early 2000s to a concept-heavy one by the end of the decade.
We can observe that the VARC section has become easier over the years from 2008. There was a drastic change in the level of difficulty of the quants section in 2018. Also, the level of difficulty of the LRDI section increased consistently till 2017, before providing some respite to the aspirants in CAT 2018. Going through CAT 2018 question paper will help aspirants to gauge the level of the DILR and quant sections.
CAT 2018 had 3 sections - Verbal Ability and reading comprehension, logical reasoning and data interpretation and quantitative ability. Each section had a sectional time limit of 1 hour. The VARC and QA sections had 34 questions each. The LRDI section had 32 questions. The pattern of the exam was similar to the pattern of CAT 2017, except for a few changes in the VARC section. The number of questions per RC changed a bit.
We have uploaded over 15 CAT previous year papers on our site. The questions have been provided with detailed explanations. Going through these papers will be of great help in strengthening the concepts. Also, revising the previous papers of CAT will boost the morale of the aspirants.
The CAT previous papers can be taken in the actual exam interface. This feature will be of great help in replicating the actual exam scenario. Taking the CAT previous papers in the exam interface will help aspirants understand how they would have fared in the actual CAT exam.
You can download the Quantitative aptitude for CAT questions, Data Interpretation for CAT Questions, Logical reasoning for CAT questions and the Verbal ability for CAT questions asked in previous papers in PDF format. Also, you can download the previous papers directly in the PDF format.
All the question papers are solved, and a comprehensive solution has been provided for each question for all the sections (Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension - VARC, Data Interpretation and Logical reasoning - DILR and Quantitative Aptitude (QA)
CAT 2017 and CAT 2018 question paper PDFs (slot-1 and slot-2) are available. After 2008, CAT exam went online so CAT 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 papers are not available. However, we have provided excellent free online CAT mock tests based on our experience of the recent CAT online exams.
