CATVerbal Ability & Reading Comprehension
Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension for CAT
24 questions — Reading Comprehension alone is roughly 60% of the section.
📊 24 Q · 72 marks (~35% of the paper)
How toppers play this section
VARC opens the exam and sets the tone for the rest of your attempt. Reading Comprehension dominates with 4 passages of 4-6 questions each, drawn from a wide register — business, science, culture, philosophy, opinion pieces — and rewarding accurate literal reading and inference over speed-reading tricks. The three Verbal Ability sub-types (Para Jumbles, Para Summary, Odd Sentence Out) are TITA-heavy, carry no negative marking, and reward a small set of learnable techniques — pronoun and connector tracking, opening-sentence identification, central-idea distillation — far more than passive vocabulary. Because VARC is first, over-investing in one stubborn passage here taxes DILR and QA later; a firm per-passage time cap matters more in this section than in the other two.
Chapters
Built to the CAT blueprint — notes, shortcuts, solved PYQ-style examples and practice in every chapter.
Topic-wise weightage in CAT
Expected question counts from previous-year paper analyses. Topics with an arrow already have a full chapter.
| Topic | VARC · DILR · QA — one sitting, three locked sections Q | Tier 2 Q | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reading Comprehension | 14–15 | Very high | |
| Odd Sentence Out / Sentence Placement | 3–4 | High | |
| Para Jumbles | 3 | High | |
| Para Summary | 3 | High |
Take the next step
CAT Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension — find a tutor
Pair self-study with a tutor, a live course or a coaching centre.