CAT 2024 Slot 1, 2 & 3: Past Year Question Paper with Answer key | CAT Mock Test Series 2025 PDF Download

 Page 1


 
CAT 2024 –
 
SLOT 01
 
Question Paper with Answer Keys
 
 
  
Page 2


 
CAT 2024 –
 
SLOT 01
 
Question Paper with Answer Keys
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
Section: VARC  
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best 
answer for each question. 
Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren't much impressed with the small-bodied, 
slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. "Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives 
them an air exceedingly stupid," one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the 
"zebra rat" because of its black-striped rump. 
Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra rat-the smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today 
as the western barred bandicoot-exhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its 
ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the 
bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers 
could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters. 
Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era 
transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from 
cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon 
developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and 
by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the 
continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia's western 
coast. 
"Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators," says Reece Pedler, an 
ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program. 
Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay 
bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They've imported 20 
bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New 
South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the 
world's most mercurial rainfall patterns-relentless droughts followed by sudden drenching 
floods. 
The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced "exclosures," cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy 
of Pedler's sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third 
fenced area contains the program's Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials 
(bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for 
sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning 
to evade them. It's unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more 
predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of 
breakthrough. 
Page 3


 
CAT 2024 –
 
SLOT 01
 
Question Paper with Answer Keys
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
Section: VARC  
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best 
answer for each question. 
Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren't much impressed with the small-bodied, 
slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. "Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives 
them an air exceedingly stupid," one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the 
"zebra rat" because of its black-striped rump. 
Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra rat-the smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today 
as the western barred bandicoot-exhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its 
ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the 
bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers 
could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters. 
Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era 
transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from 
cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon 
developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and 
by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the 
continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia's western 
coast. 
"Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators," says Reece Pedler, an 
ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program. 
Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay 
bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They've imported 20 
bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New 
South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the 
world's most mercurial rainfall patterns-relentless droughts followed by sudden drenching 
floods. 
The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced "exclosures," cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy 
of Pedler's sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third 
fenced area contains the program's Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials 
(bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for 
sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning 
to evade them. It's unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more 
predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of 
breakthrough. 
 
 
 
 
For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild 
Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also 
signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap 
moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself. 
They have a new nickname-a flattering one, this time. "We call them ecosystem engineers," 
Pedler says. 
Q. 1)  
Which one of the following statements provides a gist of this passage? 
a) The onslaught of animals, such as cattle, rabbits and housecats, brought in by the British led 
to the extinction of the western barred bandicoot. 
b) Marsupials are going extinct due to the colonial era transformation of the ecosystem which 
also destroyed natural vegetation. 
c) A type of bandicoots was nearly wiped out by invasive species but rescuers now pin hopes 
on a remnant island population. 
d) The negligent attitude of the British colonists towards these bandicoots evidenced by the 
names given to them led to their annihilation. 
Q.2) 
The text uses the word 'exclosures' because Wild Deserts has adopted a measure of 
a) restoring cattle damaged deserts to green landscapes. 
b) excluding animals to make the islands predator-free. 
c) barring the entry of invasive species. 
d) ridding the main desert of feral cats and large bilbies. 
Q.3) 
Which one of the following options does NOT represent the characteristics of the western 
barred bandicoot? 
a) Shallow diggers having an elongated muzzle 
b) Smallest black striped marsupial that uses camouflage and dig 
c) Long thin nose, black striped back, pouch for joeys 
d) Look of a rat but with a baby pouch and a slender snout 
Q.4) 
According to the text, the western barred bandicoots now have a flattering name because they 
have 
a) aided in altering an arid environment. 
b) grown fivefold in terms of population. 
c) led to a surge and increase of rainfall. 
d) led a revival in preserving the species. 
Page 4


 
CAT 2024 –
 
SLOT 01
 
Question Paper with Answer Keys
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
Section: VARC  
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best 
answer for each question. 
Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren't much impressed with the small-bodied, 
slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. "Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives 
them an air exceedingly stupid," one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the 
"zebra rat" because of its black-striped rump. 
Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra rat-the smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today 
as the western barred bandicoot-exhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its 
ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the 
bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers 
could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters. 
Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era 
transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from 
cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon 
developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and 
by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the 
continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia's western 
coast. 
"Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators," says Reece Pedler, an 
ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program. 
Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay 
bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They've imported 20 
bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New 
South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the 
world's most mercurial rainfall patterns-relentless droughts followed by sudden drenching 
floods. 
The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced "exclosures," cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy 
of Pedler's sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third 
fenced area contains the program's Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials 
(bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for 
sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning 
to evade them. It's unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more 
predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of 
breakthrough. 
 
 
 
 
For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild 
Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also 
signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap 
moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself. 
They have a new nickname-a flattering one, this time. "We call them ecosystem engineers," 
Pedler says. 
Q. 1)  
Which one of the following statements provides a gist of this passage? 
a) The onslaught of animals, such as cattle, rabbits and housecats, brought in by the British led 
to the extinction of the western barred bandicoot. 
b) Marsupials are going extinct due to the colonial era transformation of the ecosystem which 
also destroyed natural vegetation. 
c) A type of bandicoots was nearly wiped out by invasive species but rescuers now pin hopes 
on a remnant island population. 
d) The negligent attitude of the British colonists towards these bandicoots evidenced by the 
names given to them led to their annihilation. 
Q.2) 
The text uses the word 'exclosures' because Wild Deserts has adopted a measure of 
a) restoring cattle damaged deserts to green landscapes. 
b) excluding animals to make the islands predator-free. 
c) barring the entry of invasive species. 
d) ridding the main desert of feral cats and large bilbies. 
Q.3) 
Which one of the following options does NOT represent the characteristics of the western 
barred bandicoot? 
a) Shallow diggers having an elongated muzzle 
b) Smallest black striped marsupial that uses camouflage and dig 
c) Long thin nose, black striped back, pouch for joeys 
d) Look of a rat but with a baby pouch and a slender snout 
Q.4) 
According to the text, the western barred bandicoots now have a flattering name because they 
have 
a) aided in altering an arid environment. 
b) grown fivefold in terms of population. 
c) led to a surge and increase of rainfall. 
d) led a revival in preserving the species. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Q.5) 
There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide 
where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit. 
Sentence: Understanding central Asia's role helps developments make more sense not only 
across Asia but in Europe, the Americas and Africa. 
Paragraph: The nations of the Silk Roads are sometimes called 'developing countries', but they 
are actually some of the world's most highly developed countries, the very crossroads of 
civilization, in advanced states of disrepair. (1). These countries lie at the centre of global 
affairs: they have since the beginning of history. Running across the spine of Asia, they form a 
web of connections fanning out in every direction, routes along which pilgrims and warriors, 
nomads and merchants have travelled, goods and produce have been bought and sold, and 
ideas exchanged, adapted and refined. (2) .They have carried not only prosperity, but also deat 
(3) The Silk Roads are the world's central nervous system, connecting otherwise far-flung 
peoples and places....__(4)_. It allows us to see patterns and links, causes and effects that 
remain invisible if one looks only at Europe, or North America. 
a) Option 3 
b) Option 1 
c) Option 2 
d) Option 4 
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best 
answer for each question. 
Oftentimes, when economists cross borders, they are less interested in learning from others 
than in invading their garden plots. Gary Becker, for instance, pioneered the idea of human 
capital. To do so, he famously tackled topics like crime and domesticity, applying methods 
honed in the study of markets to domains of nonmarket life. He projected economics outward 
into new realms: for example, by revealing the extent to which humans calculate marginal 
utilities when choosing their spouses or stealing from neighbors. At the same time, he did not 
let other ways of thinking enter his own economic realm: for example, he did not borrow from 
anthropology or history or let observations of nonmarket economics inform his homo 
economicus. Becker was a picture of the imperial economist in the heyday of the discipline's 
bravura. 
Times have changed for the once almighty discipline. Economics has been taken to task, within 
and beyond its ramparts. Some economists have reached out, imported, borrowed, and 
collaborated —been less imperial, more open. Consider Thomas Piketty and his outreach to 
historians. The booming field of behavioral economics-the fusion of economics and social 
psychology-is another case. Having spawned active subfields, like judgment, decisionmaking 
Page 5


 
CAT 2024 –
 
SLOT 01
 
Question Paper with Answer Keys
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
Section: VARC  
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best 
answer for each question. 
Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren't much impressed with the small-bodied, 
slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. "Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives 
them an air exceedingly stupid," one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the 
"zebra rat" because of its black-striped rump. 
Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra rat-the smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today 
as the western barred bandicoot-exhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its 
ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the 
bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers 
could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters. 
Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era 
transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from 
cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon 
developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and 
by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the 
continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia's western 
coast. 
"Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators," says Reece Pedler, an 
ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program. 
Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay 
bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They've imported 20 
bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New 
South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the 
world's most mercurial rainfall patterns-relentless droughts followed by sudden drenching 
floods. 
The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced "exclosures," cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy 
of Pedler's sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third 
fenced area contains the program's Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials 
(bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for 
sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning 
to evade them. It's unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more 
predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of 
breakthrough. 
 
 
 
 
For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild 
Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also 
signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap 
moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself. 
They have a new nickname-a flattering one, this time. "We call them ecosystem engineers," 
Pedler says. 
Q. 1)  
Which one of the following statements provides a gist of this passage? 
a) The onslaught of animals, such as cattle, rabbits and housecats, brought in by the British led 
to the extinction of the western barred bandicoot. 
b) Marsupials are going extinct due to the colonial era transformation of the ecosystem which 
also destroyed natural vegetation. 
c) A type of bandicoots was nearly wiped out by invasive species but rescuers now pin hopes 
on a remnant island population. 
d) The negligent attitude of the British colonists towards these bandicoots evidenced by the 
names given to them led to their annihilation. 
Q.2) 
The text uses the word 'exclosures' because Wild Deserts has adopted a measure of 
a) restoring cattle damaged deserts to green landscapes. 
b) excluding animals to make the islands predator-free. 
c) barring the entry of invasive species. 
d) ridding the main desert of feral cats and large bilbies. 
Q.3) 
Which one of the following options does NOT represent the characteristics of the western 
barred bandicoot? 
a) Shallow diggers having an elongated muzzle 
b) Smallest black striped marsupial that uses camouflage and dig 
c) Long thin nose, black striped back, pouch for joeys 
d) Look of a rat but with a baby pouch and a slender snout 
Q.4) 
According to the text, the western barred bandicoots now have a flattering name because they 
have 
a) aided in altering an arid environment. 
b) grown fivefold in terms of population. 
c) led to a surge and increase of rainfall. 
d) led a revival in preserving the species. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Q.5) 
There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide 
where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit. 
Sentence: Understanding central Asia's role helps developments make more sense not only 
across Asia but in Europe, the Americas and Africa. 
Paragraph: The nations of the Silk Roads are sometimes called 'developing countries', but they 
are actually some of the world's most highly developed countries, the very crossroads of 
civilization, in advanced states of disrepair. (1). These countries lie at the centre of global 
affairs: they have since the beginning of history. Running across the spine of Asia, they form a 
web of connections fanning out in every direction, routes along which pilgrims and warriors, 
nomads and merchants have travelled, goods and produce have been bought and sold, and 
ideas exchanged, adapted and refined. (2) .They have carried not only prosperity, but also deat 
(3) The Silk Roads are the world's central nervous system, connecting otherwise far-flung 
peoples and places....__(4)_. It allows us to see patterns and links, causes and effects that 
remain invisible if one looks only at Europe, or North America. 
a) Option 3 
b) Option 1 
c) Option 2 
d) Option 4 
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best 
answer for each question. 
Oftentimes, when economists cross borders, they are less interested in learning from others 
than in invading their garden plots. Gary Becker, for instance, pioneered the idea of human 
capital. To do so, he famously tackled topics like crime and domesticity, applying methods 
honed in the study of markets to domains of nonmarket life. He projected economics outward 
into new realms: for example, by revealing the extent to which humans calculate marginal 
utilities when choosing their spouses or stealing from neighbors. At the same time, he did not 
let other ways of thinking enter his own economic realm: for example, he did not borrow from 
anthropology or history or let observations of nonmarket economics inform his homo 
economicus. Becker was a picture of the imperial economist in the heyday of the discipline's 
bravura. 
Times have changed for the once almighty discipline. Economics has been taken to task, within 
and beyond its ramparts. Some economists have reached out, imported, borrowed, and 
collaborated —been less imperial, more open. Consider Thomas Piketty and his outreach to 
historians. The booming field of behavioral economics-the fusion of economics and social 
psychology-is another case. Having spawned active subfields, like judgment, decisionmaking 
 
 
 
 
and a turn to experimentation, the field aims to go beyond the caricature of Rational Man to 
explain how humans make decisions.... 
It is important to underscore how this flips the way we think about economics. For generations, 
economists have presumed that people have interests-"preferences," in the neoclassical argot-
that get revealed in the course of peoples' choices. Interests come before actions and 
determine them. If you are hungry, you buy lunch; if you are cold, you get a sweater. If you only 
have so much money and can't afford to deal with both your growling stomach and your 
shivering, which need you choose to meet using your scarce savings reveals your preference. 
Psychologists take one look at this simple formulation and shake their heads. Increasingly, even 
some mainstream economists have to admit that homo economicus doesn't always behave like 
the textbook maximizer; irrational behavior can't simply be waved away as extraeconomic 
expressions of passions over interests, and thus the domain of other disciplines.... This is one 
place where the humanist can help the economist. If narrative economics is going to help us 
understand how rivals duke it out, who wins and who loses, we are going to need much more 
than lessons from epidemiological studies of viruses or intracranial stimuli. 
Above all, we need politics and institutions. Shiller [the Nobel prize winning economist] 
connects perceptions of narratives to changes in behavior and thence to social outcomes. He 
completes a circle that was key to behavioral economics and brings in storytelling to make 
sense of how perceptions get framed. This cycle (perception to behavior to society) was once 
mediated or dominated by institutions: the political parties, lobby groups, and media 
organizations that played a vital role in legitimating, representing, and excluding interests. Yet 
institutions have been stripped from Shiller's account, to reveal a bare dynamic of emotions 
and economics, without the intermediating place of politics. 
Q.6) 
The author critiques Schiller's approach to behavioural economics for 
a) denigrating the role of institutions while creating a link between behavioural economics and 
perceptions. 
b) linking emotions and rational behaviour without considering the mediation of social 
institutions. 
c) ignoring the marginal role that media and politics play in influencing people's behaviour. 
d) relying excessively on storytelling as the main influence on the formation of perceptions. 
 
Q. 7)  
"Times have changed for the once almighty discipline." We can infer from this statement and 
the associated paragraph that the author is being 
a) disparaging of economists' inability to precisely predict market behaviour, and are now 
borrowing from other disciplines to remedy this.