GRE vs CAT

GRE is Graduate Research Examination for entrance in a number of international colleges/Universities for entrance in their graduate programmes. Students appear for GRE primarily to do MS from abroad.

CAT is the national Common Admission Test conducted by IIMs for admission in most of the B-schools of India, for students who wish to pursue MBA as their career.

Comparison of The exam pattern of CAT and GRE-



Reading comprehension is integrally used used both in CAT and GRE but their formats are completely different. CAT requires students to answer the questions entirely based on comprehension provided in RC section Whereas  GRE may include selection of a text from passage to answer the questions. GRE is vocabulary-oriented examination and will immensely test you on your vocabulary.

CAT also has a VA(VERBAL ASSESSMENT) section that tests students on verbal abilities like infer the right summary of the passage, find the odd one out among the given phrases of the passage, etc.



Quant and DI-LR section of CAT and GRE

The syllabus for both CAT and GRE in this aspect is more or less the same. Number system, Algebra, Arithmetic, geometry, modern maths. CAT is tougher in these sections as compared to GRE.



CAT and GRE both will multiple choice questions, recent trend is there will be few questions with type-in-the-answer type.

However GRE may also have questions that may have more than one option correct.



Added to this, GRE has Analytical Writing Assessment which comprises of two writing tasks that test the ability of candidates to formulate new ideas, support them with reasons, examine the evidence, and offer a well focused assessment. This essay section is not a part of CAT per se, however at later stages of selection, essay writing will be involved too.

Hope this helps!!

All the best!!

1. GRE is an adaptive test. It puts questions based on how you have answered the previous sections. Whereas, in CAT the set of questions is fixed for all the people attending in that test slot.

2. In GRE you will be not be getting so many questions from Data Interpretation, only 3 questions in a Quant section (out of 20 questions).

3. GRE math is very easy in comparison with CAT. You will be not getting questions from Logarithms in GRE.

4. Reading Comprehension is more or less similar in both (Question type differs) . The presence of Logical reasoning in the second section makes CAT verbal more easier than GRE (no logical reasoning in GRE). A strong vocab is must for getting a decent score in GRE.

5.The sample space for calculating your percentile is very high in GRE. So, even a very high score in math , say 167 on 170 will only get a percentile of 94.

6. No negative score is one important thing to notice. In GRE, you have to attend all the questions irrespective of whether you can solve them or not. But selection of the questions is what going to give you an edge in CAT.