Improving VARC accuracy in CAT: from 60% to 80%

Most VARC marks are lost in the last ten seconds of a question. You have narrowed four options to two, both sound reasonable, and you pick the one that feels better. Half the time, feel is wrong.

Accuracy in VARC is not a talent. It is a set of habits: reading the question stem properly, finding the line that supports an answer, and knowing exactly how a near-miss option differs from the right one. This guide shows why accuracy matters so much under CAT's marking, how to classify your errors, and how to break the tie between two close options.

Why accuracy beats attempts

In recent CAT papers, MCQs carry +3 for a correct answer and −1 for a wrong one, while TITA questions carry no negative marking. Check the latest notification for your year.

Compare two candidates on MCQs alone.

Both got 12 right. B spent time on four extra questions and lost 4 marks for it. The extra attempts cost time that could have gone into getting one more of the first 16 right.

The marking also tells you when a guess is worth making. With four options, a blind guess has an expected score of 0.25 × 3 − 0.75 × 1 = 0. Remove one option with certainty and it becomes 1/3 × 3 − 2/3 × 1 = +1/3. Remove two and it is 0.5 × 3 − 0.5 × 1 = +1. So a genuine 50-50 is worth marking; a blind guess is not.

Where errors come from

The evidence habit

For every RC question, follow the same four steps.

1. Restate the question. "What does the author think caused X?" is clearer than the stem's wording.
2. Go to the text first. Find the lines that answer your restated question before looking at the options.
3. Predict loosely. Form a rough answer from those lines.
4. Eliminate with reasons. For each option you reject, name the reason: out of scope, extreme, reversed, not stated, true but not the answer to this question.

It feels slower for the first two weeks, then becomes faster, because you stop re-reading options in circles.

Breaking a tie between two options

Many small towns have lost their cinemas over the past few decades. The usual explanation is television, and later streaming: why go out when the film comes to you? But the towns that kept their cinemas were not the ones with poorer television reception. They were the ones where the cinema had become something more than a place to watch films: a venue for school functions, a meeting hall, a place where teenagers were allowed to be out in the evening. Where the building served only one purpose, a cheaper substitute for that purpose was enough to close it.

Question 1

The author's explanation for why some cinemas survived is that:

(a) their towns had poor television reception.
(b) they showed films that were not available at home.
(c) they stopped showing films and became community halls instead.
(d) they served several purposes in their towns, so no single substitute could replace them.

Answer: (d). Options (a) and (b) fall quickly: (a) is contradicted, and (b) is never mentioned. Many candidates stall between (c) and (d). Compare them element by element.

(c) fails on the first element. "More than" means films plus other uses, not films replaced.

Question 2

The author treats the usual explanation (television and streaming) as:

(a) completely false.
(b) incomplete, since it does not explain why some cinemas survived.
(c) correct and sufficient.
(d) irrelevant to small towns.

Answer: (b). The close pair is (a) and (b). The last sentence says a cheaper substitute "was enough to close" single-purpose cinemas, so the author accepts that television played a part. It is not "completely false", only incomplete. (c) ignores the "But" that turns the passage. (d) is contradicted, since the passage is about small towns.

Review your correct answers too

A correct answer reached by luck teaches nothing, and it hides a weakness that will show up later. In review, mark each correct answer as either "sure, with evidence" or "unsure". Treat unsure-correct answers as errors in your log.

Track accuracy by type

Suppose an aspirant logs five sectionals like this:

The overall figure is 45 out of 64, or about 70%, which hides the real problem: abstract passages. The fix is targeted practice on difficult passages, not more of everything.

Practice set

Part 1: read the passage and answer both questions.

Open-plan offices were sold as a way to encourage conversation. Remove the walls, the argument went, and colleagues will talk more. Studies of some such offices have found the opposite: people put on headphones and move conversations to messaging apps, since every word spoken aloud is now overheard. The walls, it turns out, were not only barriers to talk. They were also what made talk private enough to happen.

1. The author suggests that office walls:
   • (a) served a purpose that the designers of open-plan offices overlooked.
   • (b) should be rebuilt in every office.
   • (c) prevented all conversation between colleagues.
   • (d) were removed mainly to save money.
2. In the passage, "the opposite" refers to:
   • (a) people speaking more loudly.
   • (b) offices becoming more expensive to run.
   • (c) colleagues talking face to face less rather than more.
   • (d) employees leaving the company.

Part 2: name the error type from the table.

• Q3. An aspirant chose "the author argues that rules capture expertise", which was the view the passage set out in its first line and then rejected.
• Q4. The stem asked which option the passage does NOT support, and the aspirant chose the one option it clearly supported.
• Q5. The passage criticised some apps; the aspirant chose "the author believes technology is always harmful".

Answers:

1. (a). The walls made talk "private enough to happen", which the open-plan argument missed. (b) is a remedy the author never gives. (c) is extreme and contradicts "not only barriers", which concedes they were partly barriers. (d) is not mentioned.
2. (c). The plan was that colleagues would talk more; the opposite is that they talk less aloud. (a) reverses the finding. (b) and (d) are not in the passage.
3. Described vs held view.
4. Misread stem.
5. Extreme wording.

What to do next

• For two weeks, write the supporting line number next to every RC answer.
• Log each error with its type from the table, and each unsure-correct answer as an error.
• At the end of each week, find your worst passage type and give it three extra passages the next week. The VARC mistakes guide lists more patterns to watch.