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One may ask as to why such questions in an MBA entrance. Very simply - because as a manager one must exhibit good decision making capabilities. Tomorrow you may be standing with the CEO
of a big petroleum conglomerate on a highway and analyzing a situation where in hoardings of two rival companies are flashing and you have to take a decision to exhibit your hoarding after a certain time interval. So one should have the ability to apply his acquired knowledge in real life situations. Thus, CAT is not a test to judge your pure subject knowledge as opposed to pre-engineering / pre-medical entrance examinations, where the test is of your knowledge in core technical subjects, but CAT is a test of your inherent smartness. How smartly you pick some questions and more important how smartly you leave others.

Consider another illustration of a CAT question - "Deepak starts from A at 10.00 am at a speed of 45 km/hr and Sudhir starts from B at the same time at speed of 50 km/hr towards each other. They meet at 10.11 am but keep moving till they reach at ends (Deepak at B & Sudhir at A), then they turn back and keep moving. At what time do they meet again?" The solution to the question can be found by different methods but what matters is smartness.

Let us understand how this question will be cracked by a smart CAT aspirant. In this question, speed and distance are both irrelevant because the relative speed and the distance will stay constant, only time is variable. So if they have together covered some distance (whatever it may be) in 11 minutes, before the next meeting, they have to cover twice of that distance, requiring 11 x 2= 22 min. So they meet at 10.33 am. This takes less than a minute but the conventional way will be to find the distance with the help of relative speed and then find time, which will take more than 2 minutes.

Performance in CAT depends heavily on Quantitative Ability and it is not just CAT that needs good ability in Quant - any MBA entrance exam you take has its own share of Quant. Fortunately, the prescription is the same for all the exams - a good amount of practice with high quality questions.

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* Contributed by -
Jatinder Vohra is Quantitative Assessment Expert at Top Careers & You (www.tcyonline.com), the leaders in MBA, MCA, GRE & GMAT preparation in Punjab.