[PDF] CAT 2021 Question Paper (slot 1, 2 & 3) with Solutions

Because of the pandemic, the CAT 2021 overall paper pattern and the time allotted to the whole paper and individual section was similar to cat 2020. The only significant change was with respect to the number of questions, which was the same for all the slots. But in CAT 2021, we had 24 questions in VARC, 20 questions in LRDI and 22 questions in QA. The question distribution was almost the same as it was in earlier papers.

In CAT 2021, out of the 24 questions that came in Varc, 16 were from RC and 8 were from VA. There were 4 RCs, with each having 4 questions. In VA, we had 3 questions each from para summary and parajumbles, and 2 questions from odd sentences. The overall difficulty of this section was moderate.

In the DILR section of CAT 2021, we had only 4 sets to choose from. There were two sets having 6 questions each, and 2 sets having 4 questions each. The overall difficulty of DILR was greatest ever.

The QA section of CAT 2021, in terms of question distribution, was very similar to earlier CAT papers. Arithmetic dominated the section, with almost 9/10 questions coming from arithmetic alone. Then came geometry and algebra with 4 questions each. The rest 2/3 questions came from basic number system. But the crucial difference was in the difficulty level of the paper. Slot 1 QA difficulty was very low, whereas slot 3 QA difficulty was the highest among all three slots. The QA difficulty level of slot 2 was moderate. Thus in this section, scaling will play a major role.