CAT has always been known to be an exam full of surprises. While it has become increasingly transparent over the years and information such as the total number of questions, sections, time duration and whether sections are time bound or not, presence of non-MCQs etc. is now known in advance, CAT still can bring a few surprises.
While IIM Calcutta conducted CAT-2018, IIM Kozhikode is taking charge of conducting CAT-2019, and so some of the factors at play may change. The CAT-2019 notification is out and there is no deviation in format from the recent CATs, but there still are things like relative difficulty of various sections, break-up of questions types, proportion of sub-sections such as RC, Sentence Arrangements, Summary, Out of Context (or some others that may have gone missing in the recent past) in English or Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry in QA etc. which are not known before the actual exam. To ensure that you are best equipped to deal with all variations, the 20 AIRCATs are deliberately created with many variations along these dimensions.
So, while the factors that are known to be fixed will not be tinkered with hereon, the pattern of questions across AIRCATs, and the difficulty of various sections, will keep on changing because CAT is finally unpredictable and we would want our students to have exposure to and comfort with a vast variety of combinations, so that no surprise is a surprise for you.
Several past CATs (prior to CAT2018) had RC passages with 3/6 questions at the end – but we kept varying this number for our students. Similarly, several past CATs (prior to CAT2018) had an incredibly easy Quant – but we kept mixing it enough for some students to even question whether they were preparing for CAT. Finally, in CAT2018 proved both these variations came into play and as a result our students gained an invaluable advantage.
If you (have) read through the various reviews on Quora or Google from 1000s of MBAGuru students who finally made it to the Top B-Schools, the one common theme you would find is the proximity of the AIRCATs with the actual CAT. While that isn’t what we claim, it’s the feeling one gets when one does not face anything unexpected at the end. That’s what we strive to ensure for our students, who have trusted us as the best coaching for CAT.
About the author: Deekshant has sleep-walked through several 100 and 99.9 %iles in practically every section of the CAT. That he is a cricket fan and he writes okay is evident from most of his posts. 1000s of our students swear that he can motivate almost anyone to double his/her percentile through very simple yet powerful inputs. And that’s why every MBAGuru student has direct access to him via mail and Telegram. Oddly, he somehow also finds the time to write songs professionally. And yes … almost missed this … he is an alumnus of IIT Delhi & IIM Cal 
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