Section 2 of CAT, if attempted smartly, may turn out to be a game-changer in determining your final scores. The trick lies in a wise pre-planning, plus a smart execution of your strategies, tactically maneuvering the questions to your advantage.
You must first begin with the individual questions from the English Usage (EU) category. These questions such as Para Completion, Para Jumbles and others require a coherence of thought, which is likely to be at its peak during the beginning of the section. Devote, say, about 10 minutes in attempting 5 questions here.
Next, we suggest you go on to the Logical Reasoning (LR) and then to the Reading Comprehension (RC) questions. Each problem/passage, followed by a set of questions, necessitates immense concentration, and an eye for spotting or extracting out details. Spare approximately 20-25 minutes for Logical Reasoning. Similarly, in Reading Comprehension, be prepared to devote a time of 25-30 minutes. You may swap the sequence of LR and RC if you wish so.
The last 10 minutes should be kept for the remaining 4-5 EU questions. One should not be attempting group questions (RC, LR etc.) in the last 10 minutes as you might end up just reading the passage without even attempting the questions or understanding the information given in LR set without getting any time to attempt the questions.
People have scored in the vicinity of 80 percentile by getting 9-10 correct answers in Section 2 in the last two editions of CAT (11 and 12). Those who are better at QA/LR/DI in comparison with Verbal Ability should ensure that they attempt all 9 questions of LR to get some confidence and then build further on this base in the next 40 minutes. Those who are better at Verbal Ability should ensure that they attempt 9-10 questions of their preference in the first 30 minutes.
All the very best!!!
