Hello! I am mostly good with VARC. Yesterday, I attempted 2019 slot 2 Varc section in 40 minutes and scored 45. However, today I attempted 2020 slot 1 Varc section and scored only 14. I found questions to be hard and options were close. Attempted only 2 RCs even though I was able to read the third one I skipped every question, never happened before. Second RC every question wrong, never happened before. VA attempted 3 Q in 4 mins got 2 right. I guess everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. This is giving me anxiety. Should I be worried?

Answer to the question is No and Yes(bear with me)... When i gave CAT 2019 slot 1 VARC at the beginning of my prep I got 66 in that...Then when I attempted CAT 2020 slot 1 shortly thereafter, My score plummeted down to 25(ideally should have been in the 40s)...When I analysed both papers I found out why that happened...Reason 1- Questions and options were much closer, so deeper comprehension is needed to answer the questions, not that the questions were necessarily tough, but the questions needed a certain level of critical reasoning which was rarely present in papers before CAT 2020. This means that just by reducing the pace at which you read, and attempting fewer questions, you would see much better results...Reason 2 - Time constraint, any well read person could easily complete pre-Cat 2020 VARC section...But CAT 2020 saw disproportionate reduction in time vs the number of questions... That creates additional pressure... So the solution is, 1-read slower,2-Take a break after reading few RCs and jump to VA section,3-Practice the new Mocks which have become bizzarely tough because of CAT 2020...Other than that just read more and absorb what you read...Always reason critically and if you cant understand the question just leave it...Attempting easy questions in all RCs is much better than doing few full RCs and getting the tough questions wrong...

Thank you so much for the detailed answer Debraj. This makes sense. Can relate to many of the things you mentioned in the answer.