CAT 2020 official mock – the one thing that aspirants have been waiting for ever since the change in the CAT 2020 examination duration was announced earlier by IIMCAT. A media release on the IIMCAT website had earlier stated, “Tutorials to understand the format of the test will be available on the CAT website from October 2020. Candidates are advised to work on the tutorials available on the CAT website well in advance.” So it was only natural that the anticipation about the official mock kept mounting with every passing day.
Fast forward to 5 November (today, that is) and the CAT 2020 official mock has finally been released. How does it hold for an aspirant appearing for CAT for the first time? With the prevailing uncertainty about the CAT 2020 examination pattern, how does this official mock help in terms of clearing the air? Let’s dive in!
First of all, how does one access the CAT 2020 official mock?
Exactly! Let us get the basic things out of our way for starters.
1) Go to the IIMCAT website.
2) Under the “Quick Tour” section, there is an option “CAT 2020 Mock Test Link”.
3) You will be redirected to a PDF with the link to the CAT 2020 official mock.
4) There is a standard template that will be displayed with the name, “John Smith”.
5) Click on “Sign In” and start the mock. Note that you do not need to enter any credentials before signing in.
The “CAT 2020 Mock Test Navigation Guide” would also come in handy if you want to get a sense of the mock interface even before you step in.
The official mock: What does it entail?
The announcement clearly states (yet another time), “The objective of this Mock Test is not to disclose the exam pattern for CAT 2020 and the actual exam may or may not contain similar type or number of questions.” So if you are going/ did go in with the idea that you are going to know the number of questions in each section, you are sure to get disappointed.
There are a total of 100 questions in the mock, just like CAT 2017, CAT 2018 and CAT 2019 papers, with the 34-32-34 split across the VARC, DILR and QA sections, respectively. Remember, this MAY or MAY NOT be the split in the actual CAT paper this time.
The announcement also makes it evident that the questions have been taken from several CAT papers of the previous years. It would be worth taking a look at the CAT 2017, 2018 and 2019 papers, for those are always the better indicators of the level of difficulty and types of questions in CAT than any mock by any provider.
Instructions vs the mock paper – the discrepancies in the CAT 2020 official mock
As it is, once you click on “Sign In”, a new window with the list of instructions appears. There are a few discrepancies in the information presented in this Instructions screen and the actual paper.
1) The marking scheme
The Instructions screen lets you know that there is a +3/-1 marking scheme for the MCQs and a +3/0 marking scheme for the TITA questions. However, the display on the questions bear the marking scheme of +3/0 for all questions (be it MCQ or TITA).
2) Navigating between sections
Here again, the Instructions screen states that every section will have a fixed time of 40 minutes, and the candidates will NOT be able to navigate between sections in the time stipulated for each section (which is how the previous CAT examinations were, at least in the last three years. The only difference, obviously, was the time allotted for each section was 60 minutes).
However, as you step into the mock, you realize that you are able to submit each section even before 40 minutes; the timer has not been compartmentalized into 40 minutes per section. For example, if you complete the VARC section in 10 minutes and click on ‘Submit’, you will be taken to the DILR section after a confirmation message. The timer will show that you still have 110 minutes on the clock.
Word of caution
DO NOT GET CARRIED AWAY BY THESE DISCREPANCIES. In all likelihood, the marking scheme is probably going to remain the same (that is, whatever the ‘Instructions’ screen states). So, DO NOT ASSUME that you might not have negative marks. Question selection needs to be done judiciously, and you simply cannot afford to go rampant in selecting questions.
How do the first-timers stand to benefit from the CAT 2020 official mock?
Those aspirants who are taking CAT for the first time have an opportunity to know how the actual CAT examination interface would look like. Irrespective of the number of mock CATs you take from one or more providers, the actual D-Day interface might not resemble the one you witness in the mocks given by the providers. In that aspect, the first-timers (and retakers, too, for that matter) will get to know the interface, the navigation, the colour scheme for marked and unmarked answers, and so on.
The uncertain aspects
Though this was expected, the writing is on the wall now. The uncertainties are going to remain uncertainties until the D-Day.
1) The examination pattern
The aspirants are not going to know the number of questions in each section and the total number of questions until they login to the systems on the day of exam (which is 29 November, by the way, and is 25 days away).
2) The scores, percentiles and everything else
NOBODY KNOWS FOR SURE what would be an ideal score to get a 99.xx or a 95.xx; so not fret over variables which are not under your (and everybody else’s) control. People can only have reasonable opinions based on the premise that the duration has become two-thirds of what is was earlier. Do not worry about where you are, and what scores you might have to score.
To sum up…
The CAT 2020 official mock release does not change anything. The number of days to go remains the same. Even with changes in the duration, CAT is going to be the same examination, where the competition is intense. The fact that if you go in with a humongous belief and sheer confidence, you can muster up enough score to get a possible call from your dream B-school does not change. Your mock-taking rigour and consolidating the portions should be amped up. CAT 2020 is going to be interesting for more reasons than one!
Stay safe, stay energized and best wishes for CAT 2020!
Written by Giridharan Raghuraman
Leave a Reply