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CAT 2021: Expected Dates, Exam Pattern, Syllabus and Past Year’s Trends

Calender Icon CAT Registration Ends: 13th September 2023

CAT 2021: Expected Dates, Exam Pattern, Syllabus and Past Year’s Trends

Before actually deciding to start a career in Master of Business Administration, you must know about the biggest gateway- CAT. Common Admission Test (CAT) is a competitive management entrance exam. It is conducted at the national level.

As per the last year's analysis, there are a total of 2,27,835 candidates are applied for CAT 2020. In that, 1, 90,143 students appeared for the CAT exam. A total of 37,692 candidates did not appear for the CAT exam last year due to one cause of infection COVID-19. So the present percentage has reduced when compared to previous year i.e. 83.456%.

Even when the exam conducting body for CAT changes, the dates have mostly been the last Sunday of November. Keeping this trend in mind, we expect the CAT 2021 to be on November 28, 2021.

CAT Exam


CAT Exam Date

CAT 2021

November 28, 2021, Last Sunday of November (Tentative)

CAT 2020

November 29, 2020

CAT 2019

November 24, 2019

CAT 2018

November 25, 2018

CAT 2017

November 26, 2017

CAT 2021 Eligibility Criteria

  1. Candidates who successfully completed a Bachelor’s Degree in any stream with 50% of aggregate marks (45% for SC/ ST/ PwD) from any recognized university/ institute are eligible to apply for CAT 2021.
  2. Candidates who appeared in the final year of the degree examination or who have a backlog in their examination can also apply.
  3. There is no age restriction to apply for the CAT exam 2021.
  4. CAT 2021 does not mention that one needs to have any work experience to be eligible to apply, but if one has it, they are likely to have an edge.

CAT 2021 Exam Pattern

  • Every correct answer carries 3 marks.
  • Every wrong answer carries -1.
  • Negative marking do not apply to non-MCQs or TITA (type in the answer) questions.
  • The order of attempting the sections is pre-determined.
  • Sections start with VARC, followed by DILR, and ends with QA.

Section

Total Question

Total MCQs

Total Non-MCQs

Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC)

26

18

8

Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning (DILR)

24

18

6

Quantitative Ability (QA)

26

18

8

Total

76

54

22

CAT 2021 Exam Syllabus

The details of the CAT 2021 syllabus for exam are as follows:

CAT Exam Sections

CAT Exam Sections Breakup

CAT Syllabus

VARC

Reading Comprehension

Analogies

Antonyms

Contextual usage

Different usage of same word

Fill in the blanks

Foreign language words used in English

Grammar

Idioms

Jumbled paragraphs

One word substitution

Para Completion and inference

Para-jumbles

Reading Comprehension

Sentence completion

Sentence correction

Syllogisms

Verbal Logic

Verbal Reasoning

Verbal Ability

DILR

Data Interpretation

Assumptions

Bars

Binary Logic

Blood Relations

Clocks and Calendars

Coding-Decoding

Data Arrangement

Data Structures

Data Sufficiency

Direction Sense

Family Tree

Line Graphs

Pie Charts

Proposition

Puzzles

Seating Arrangement

Series

Sets

Statements

Syllogism

Tables

Venn Diagram

Logical Reasoning

QA

 

Algebra

Averages

Geometric Progression

Geometry

HCF & LCM

Inequalities

In-equations Quadratic and linear equations

Logarithms

Mensuration

Number system

Partnership (Accounts)

Percentages

Profit & Loss

Ratios and Proportion

Surds and Indices

Time-Speed-Distance

Trigonometry

Work and time

CAT 2021 Selection Procedure

The selection procedure differs according to various participating institutes. However, the one uniform feature among all is the preliminary round selection where candidates are shortlisted based on CAT cut-off.

For the second round selection, candidates will have to appear for the Group Discussion (GD) or Writing Ability Test (WAT) or both and Personal Interview (PI) rounds. The new IIMs have in fact started to conduct Common Admission Process (CAP) where the shortlisted candidates from all participating IIMs appear for WAT and PI rounds jointly.

After the end of CAT selection procedure, each IIM release their separate merit lists. The final selection process of B-schools or the CAT selection procedure of participating B-schools is based on multiple criteria such as performance in CAT and GD/WAT and PI rounds and past academic records and or work experience. The criteria or parameters vary from institute to institute. IIMs release their detailed admission criteria after the CAT notification every year.

CAT 2021 Important Dates

The tentative dates for CAT 2021 are listed below. Keep checking this window for more updates.

Notification release date

Mid July, 2021

Registration commencement

1st Week of August, 2021

Last date for Online Registration

2nd Week September, 2021

Issue of Admit Card

Last week of October, 2021

CAT 2020 Exam date

Last Sunday of November, 2021

Result Announcement

1st week of January 2022

CAT 2021 Result - Last Year’s Trends

  • 9 candidates have secured 100 percent overall in CAT 2020 examination.
  • Out of the nine candidates who got the overall percentage, 7 were from engineering / technical background, 1 candidate was from the mathematical background and 1 was from a management background.
  • In CAT 2020, 19 candidates scored a total of 99.99 percent, of whom 18 were men and 1 was women. Of these candidates, 16 are from Engineering / Technology, 2 from Economics, and 1 from Management.
  • CAT 2020 was held on November 29, 2020, in three shifts. A total of 1,90,144 candidates appeared for the exam, which was held at 430 test centers in 159 cities across India.
  • The gender distribution of the candidates who appeared for CAT 2020 is as follows;

Gender

Total Candidates

Male

1,23,388

Female

66,755

Transgender

01

After the completion of the CAT 2020 exam, the CAT convener provided slot-wise statistics on the total number of candidates appearing for the exam.

Shifts

Scheduled

Present

Present %

Candidates Absent

Shift 1

72166

59580

82.560%

12586

Shift 2

78265

65556

83.762%

12709

Shift 3

77404

65007

83.984%

12397

Total

227835

190143

83.456%

37692

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