CAT 2025 Answer Key PDF with Detailed Solution (Nov 30, 2025) (Slot 1)

CAT 2025 Slot 1 Answer Key with Detailed Solutions is available here to download in PDF format. CAT 2025 Slot 1 was conducted on November 30, 2025, from 8:30 AM to 10:30 AM.

CAT 2025 Answer Key with Detailed Solution; Download PDF

1. The given sentence is missing in the paragraph below. Decide where it best fits among the options 1, 2, 3, or 4 indicated in the paragraph.

Sentence: "Everything is old-world, traditional techniques from Mexico," Ava emphasizes.

Paragraph: The sisters embrace the ways their great-grandfather built and repaired instruments. ____(1) ____. When crafting a Mexican guitarrón used in mariachi music, they use tacote wood for the top of the instrument. Once the wood is cut, they carve the neck and heel from a single block using tools like hand saws, chisels and sandpaper rather than modern power tools — and believe that this traditional method improves the tone of the instrument. ____(2) ____. Their store has a three-year waitlist for instruments that take months to create. ____(3) ____. The family's artisanship has attracted stars like Los Lobos, who own custom guitars made by all three generations of the Delgado family. ____(4) ____. For the sisters, involvement in the family business started at an early age. They each built their first instruments at age 9.

1. Option 3

2. Option 2

3. Option 4

4. Option 1

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The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

2. In the dynamic realm of creativity, artists often find themselves at the crossroads between drawing inspiration from diverse cultures and inadvertently crossing into the territory of cultural appropriation. Inspiration is the lifeblood of creativity, driving artists to create works that resonate across borders. The globalized nature of the modern world invites artists to draw from a vast array of cultural influences. When approached respectfully, inspiration becomes a bridge, fostering understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity. However, the line between inspiration and cultural appropriation can be thin and easily blurred. Cultural appropriation occurs when elements from a particular culture are borrowed without proper understanding, respect, or acknowledgment. This leads to the commodification of sacred symbols, the reinforcement of stereotypes, and the erasure of the cultural context from which these elements originated. It’s essential to recognize that the impact of cultural appropriation extends beyond the realm of artistic expression, influencing societal perceptions and perpetuating power imbalances.

1. In today’s world of creativity, artists have to decide between respectfully acknowledging works that are inspired by diverse cultures and appropriating elements without respect for their contexts.

2. Artists must navigate the thin line between inspiration and cultural appropriation, where respectful inspiration fosters cultural understanding whereas appropriation involves borrowing without acknowledgement leading to commodification and reinforcement of stereotypes.

3. Artists in a globalised world must navigate between drawing inspiration from diverse cultures respectfully and cultural appropriation that involves borrowing without proper acknowledgement which has broader societal impacts including perpetuating power imbalances.

4. In a globalised world, artists must draw from diverse cultural influences to create works that appeal to all, and this results in instances of both inspiration and cultural appropriation.

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3. Zombie cells may contribute to age-related chronic inflammation: this finding could help scientists understand more about the aging process and why the immune system becomes less effective as we get older. Zombie or “senescent” cells are damaged cells that can no longer divide and grow like normal cells. Scientists think that these cells can contribute to chronic health problems when they accumulate in the body. In younger people, the immune system is more effective at clearing senescent cells from the body through a process called apoptosis, but as we age this process becomes less efficient. As a result, there is an accumulation of senescent cells in different organs in the body, either through increased production or reduced clearance by the immune system. The zombie cells continue to use energy though they do not divide, and often secrete chemicals that cause inflammation, which if persistent for longer periods of time can damage healthy cells leading to chronic diseases.

1. A younger person’s immune system is healthy and is able to clear the damaged cells, but as people age, the zombie cells resist apoptosis, and start accumulating in the body.

2. Aging leads to less effective apoptosis, and therefore zombie cells start to accumulate in the body, causing inflammation, which accelerates aging and leads to chronic diseases.

3. Senescent “zombie” cells are inactive or malfunctioning cells that can be found throughout the body.

4. Dead cells accelerate chronic inflammation weakening the immune system and lead to aging.

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Five jumbled sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph.

4. Identify the odd sentence out and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

1. The Bayeux tapestry was, therefore, an obvious way to tell people about the downfall of the English and the rise of the Normans.

2. So if we take expert in Anglo-Saxon culture Gale Owen-Crocker’s idea that the tapestry was originally hung in a square with certain scenes facing each other, people would have stood in the centre.

3. Art historian Linda Neagley has argued that pre-Renaissance people interacted with art visually, kinaesthetically (sensory perception through bodily movement) and physically.

4. That would make it an 11th-century immersive space with scenes corresponding and echoing each other, drawing the viewer’s attention, playing on their senses and understanding of the story they thought they knew.

5. The Bayeux tapestry would have been hung at eye level to enable this.

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Five jumbled sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph.

5. Identify the odd sentence out and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

1. Developments both technological and sociocultural have afforded us far greater freedom over death than we had in the past, and while we are still adapting ourselves to that freedom, we now appreciate the moral importance of this freedom.

2. But I believe that a type of freedom we can call freedom over death – that is, a freedom in which we shape the timing and circumstances of how we die – should be central to this conversation.

3. Legalising assisted dying is but a further step in realising this freedom over death.

4. Many people endorse, through their opinions or their choices, our freedom over death encompassing a right to medical assistance in hastening our deaths.

5. Freedom is a notoriously complex and contested philosophical notion, and I won’t pretend to settle any of the big controversies it raises.

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(DIRECTIONS for questions 6-9)

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

How can we know what someone else is thinking or feeling, let alone prove it in court? In his 1863 book, A General View of the Criminal Law of England, James Fitzjames Stephen, among the most celebrated legal thinkers of his generation, was of the opinion that the assessment of a person’s mental state was an inference made with “little consciousness.” In a criminal case, jurors, doctors, and lawyers could watch defendants—scrutinizing clothing, mannerisms, Read More

6. The last paragraph of the passage refers to “middle-class, white, professional men”. Which one of the following qualities best describes the connection among them?

1. The borders of criminal responsibility.

2. Eccentricity and aggression.

3. Empathy and imagination.

4. The opinions of family and neighbours.

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7. Study the following sets of concepts and identify the set that is conceptually closest to the concerns and arguments of the passage.

1. Judgement, Belief, Accounts, Patronage.

2. Empathy, Prosecution, Knowledge, Business.

3. Judgement, Insanity, Punishment, Responsibility.

4. Assessment, Empathy, Prosecution, Patriotism.

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8. According to the passage, who or what was an “alienist”?

1. Professionals who pushed the boundaries of their fields till they became unrecognisable in the nineteenth century.

2. Physicians and lawyers who were responsible for the condition of immigrants or ‘aliens’ in the nineteenth century.

3. Physicians and lawyers who were responsible for examining accounts of extraterrestrials or ‘aliens’ in the nineteenth century.

4. Physicians who specialised in the study of madness and the care of the insane in the nineteenth century.

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9. “Conversely, when a defendant struck officials as unlike themselves, whether by dint of disease, gender, confession, or race, the precariousness of judgments about mental state was exposed.” Which one of the following best describes the use of the word “confession” in this sentence?

1. Referring to the gender, race or disease claimed as a defence by the defendant, here it is a synonym for ‘professing’ a gender, race, or disease.

2. Referring to the practice of ‘confession’ in some faiths, here it is a metaphor for the religion of the defendant.

3. The defendants struck out at the officials and then confessed to the act.

4. Referring to the defendant’s confession of his or her crime as false, because ‘dint’ is an archaic form of ‘didn’t’ or ‘did not’.

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(DIRECTIONS for questions 10-13)

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Studies showing that income inequality plays a positive role in economic growth are largely based on three arguments. The first argument focuses on investment indivisibilities wherein large sunk costs are required when implementing new fundamental innovations. Read More

10. According to the incentive or moral hazard argument, which one of the designs below is most consistent with the claim that some inequality can raise growth?

1. A regime that concentrates stock ownership in relation to corporate governance.

2. Wages are determined by tenure rather than output to ensure equity.

3. Rents protected by market power that enlarge top incomes without linking pay to results.

4. Pay rewards on verifiable performance for highly productive workers.

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11. Which one of the options below best summarises the passage?

1. The passage argues that income inequality accelerates economic growth while also emphasising the significance of concerns regarding human capital accumulation, fertility rates, and political instability.

2. The passage confines its discussion to financing gaps and corporate control while undercutting cross country evidence and overlooking the significance of concerns regarding human capital accumulation, fertility rates, and income redistribution under democratisation.

3. The passage outlines investment, incentive, and governance channels through which income inequality may support economic growth and reports short-term gains while noting long term drawbacks.

4. The passage claims that evaluating the effect of income inequality on economic growth without considering both short- and long-term consequences is misguided.

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12. The primary function of the three-part case for a positive income inequality–economic growth link in the first half of the passage is to show that:

1. inequality can aid short-term growth in settings with high sunk costs, incentive alignment, and concentrated ownership.

2. dispersed ownership speeds corporate decision-making and removes free rider problems.

3. inequality boosts growth in every period and type of economy, regardless of finance or governance conditions.

4. mature stock markets make wealth concentration unnecessary, yet they might still be harmful to investment.

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13. The passage refers to "democratization". Choose the one option below that comes closest to the opposite of this process.

1. The coalition imposed term limits and strengthened judicial review in order to further entrench autocratic rule.

2. Corporate donations were capped and parties received public funding which was portrayed as establishing an oligarchy.

3. Municipalities adopted participatory budgeting and recall elections which a press release called totalitarianism.

4. After the emergency decree, the regime shifted toward authoritarianism as suffrage narrowed and opposition parties were deregistered.

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14. The given sentence is missing in the paragraph below. Decide where it best fits among the options 1, 2, 3, or 4 indicated in the paragraph.

Sentence: Historically, silver has been, and still is, an important element in the business of 'show' visible in private houses, churches, government and diplomacy.

Paragraph: ____(1) ____. Timothy Schroder put it succinctly in suggesting that electric light and eating in the kitchen eroded this need. As he explained to the author, 'Silver, when illuminated by flickering candlelight, comes alive and almost dances before the eyes, but when lit by electric light it becomes flat and dead.' ____(2) ____. Domestic and economic changes may have worked against the market, but the London silver trade remained buoyant, thanks to the competition of collectors seeking grand display silver at the top end, and the buyers of 'collectables', like spoons and wine labels and 'novelties', at the bottom. ____(3) ____. Another factor that came into play was the systematic collection building of certain American museums over the period. Boston, Huntington Art Gallery and Williamsburg, among others, were largely supplied by London dealers. ____(4) ____.

1. Option 1

2. Option 2

3. Option 3

4. Option 4

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​15. The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.

1. But man, woman or otherwise, there is no denying that the quality of our life and character will be significantly shaped by the way we handle our anger.

2. Once the taboos have been broken, women usually experience letting their fists fly as intensely liberating.

3. Though this might seem a stereotype, women—unlike men, who are frequently applauded for unbridled aggression—are often socialized to keep a lid on their ire.

4. Many of them are so at odds with their aggressive feelings that, as a coach, I often have to stop them from pulling their punches and encourage them to extend their arms so their blows might actually reach their fleshy target.

1. 3214

2. 3421

3. 4321

4. 2431

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16. The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.

1. It can in fact be integrated into any function (education, medical treatment, production, punishment); it can increase the effect of this function, by being linked closely with it; it can constitute a mixed mechanism in which relations of power (and of knowledge) may be precisely adjusted, in the smallest detail, to the processes that are to be supervised; it can establish a direct proportion between ‘surplus power’ and ‘surplus production’.

2. It’s a case of ‘it’s easy once you’ve thought of it’ in the political sphere.

3. The panoptic mechanism is not simply a hinge, a point of exchange between a mechanism of power and a function; it is a way of making power relations function in a function, and of making a function function through these power relations.

4. In short, it arranges things in such a way that the exercise of power is not added on from the outside, like a rigid, heavy constraint, to the functions it invests, but is so subtly present in them as to increase

1. 1342

2. 3412

3. 4132

4. 3142

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(DIRECTIONS for questions 17-20)

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Often the well intentioned music lover or the traditionally-minded professional composer asks two basic questions when faced with the electronic music phenomena: (1) . . . is this type of artistic creation music at all? and, (2) given that the product is accepted as music of a new type or order, is not such music “inhuman”? Read More

17. What relation does the “communication problem” mentioned in paragraph 2 have to the questions that the author recounts at the beginning of the passage?

1. Its unfamiliar “language of forms” and novel terms mean that we cannot see electronic music as music since it does not employ traditional musical concepts.

2. Unfamiliar forms and terms might get in the way of our seeing electronic music as music, but this can be overcome.

3. The communication problem is what allows us to see electronic music as music because music must be difficult to understand.

4. None; they are unrelated to one another and form parts of different discussions.

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18. From the context in which it is placed, the phrase “sui generis” in paragraph 3 suggests which one of the following?

1. Indescribable

2. Particular

3. Unaesthetic

4. Generic

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19. The goal of the author over the course of this passage is to:

1. differentiate the modern composer from the nineteenth century composer.

2. defend electronic music from certain common charges.

3. differentiate between electronic music and other forms of music.

4. defend the “serious-minded composer” from Lejaren Hill and Stravinsky.

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20. The mention of Stravinsky’s description of music in the first paragraph does all the following EXCEPT:

1. complicate our notion of what is communicated through music.

2. allow us to classify electronic music as music.

3. respond to and expand upon earlier understandings of music.

4. help us determine which sounds are musical and which are not.

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(DIRECTIONS for questions 21-24)

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Understanding the key properties of complex systems can help us clarify and deal with many new and existing global challenges, from pandemics to poverty . . . A recent study in Nature Physics found transitions to orderly states such as schooling in fish (all fish swimming in the same direction), can be caused, paradoxically, by randomness, or ‘noise’ feeding back on itself. Read More

21. All of the following inferences are supported by the passage EXCEPT that:

1. learning can change the rules that actors face. So, a rare shock can alter payoffs and raise the odds of subsequent large disturbances within the same system, which supports the idea of second-order tail events.

2. the text attributes the COVID-19 pandemic rebound in financial markets solely to displaced sports bettors and treats their entry as the overriding cause of the rapid recovery across assets and time horizons.

3. examples like runs on banks and toilet paper scrambles illustrate how contagion can amplify local choices into system-wide cascades that surprise participants and lead to patterns they did not intend to create.

4. heavy-tailed events make extreme outcomes more frequent and larger than bell curve expectations. This complicates forecasting and risk management in collective settings shaped by contagion and copying behaviour.

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22. Which one of the following observations would most strengthen the passage’s claim that a first-order tail event raises the probability of further tail events in complex systems?

1. After a major equity crash, researchers find dense clusters of large daily moves for several weeks, with extreme days occurring far more often than in normal circumstances for assets with customarily low volatility profiles.

2. Following large earthquakes, regional seismic activity returns to baseline within hours with no aftershock sequence once data are adjusted for reporting effects, which suggests independence across events rather than any elevation in subsequent tail probabilities.

3. In epidemic networks, initial super-spreading episodes are isolated spikes after which outbreak sizes match the baseline distribution from independent contact models across comparable cities with no rise in the frequency or size of later extreme clusters.

4. River discharge records show water levels fit a normal distribution with thin tails that match laboratory data, regardless of storms or floods.

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23. Which one of the options below best summarises the passage?

1. The passage explains how speculative entrants always produce inefficiency after health shocks. Therefore, long-term investors invariably profit when new participants push prices away from fundamentals under pandemic conditions and comparable crises.

2. The passage explains how social outcomes generally follow normal distributions. So, extreme events are negligible, and policy should stabilise averages rather than learn from large shocks in fast-changing collective settings.

3. The passage explains how nonstationarity works in evolutionary biology and rejects applications in markets or public health because adaptation is exclusive to parasite-host systems and cannot arise in technology-mediated social dynamics.

4. The passage explains how noise can create order, then shows why complex systems with contagion are vulnerable to heavy-tailed cascades. It also explains why early shocks change rules through nonstationarity with a market illustration during the COVID-19 disruption.

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24. The passage suggests that contact tracing apps could inadvertently raise risky interactions by altering local behaviour. Which one of the assumptions below is most necessary for that suggestion to hold?

1. Individuals base movement choices partly on observed infections and on the behaviour of others. So, local responses interact, which turns many small adjustments into large scale patterns that can frustrate the intended aim of risk reduction.

2. Most users uninstall apps within a week, which leaves only highly exposed individuals participating. This neutralises any systematic bias in routing decisions and prevents any predictable change in aggregate contact patterns.

3. App alerts always include precise location to within one metre and deliver real time updates for all users, which ensures that the data feed is perfectly accurate regardless of privacy settings, power limits, or network conditions.

4. Urban networks have uniform traffic conditions at all hours, which allows perfectly predictable routing independent of personal choices, social signals, or crowd reactions and, therefore, makes interdependence negligible in city movement decisions.

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CAT Preparation Tips

Candidates preparing for upcoming CAT exams should practise previous year question papers, take mock tests, and focus on improving speed and accuracy. The following CAT preparation tips can help candidates improve their performance:

1. Solve Previous Year Papers: Practise CAT question papers from 2025, 2024, 2023 and earlier years to understand the exam pattern and difficulty level.
2. Focus on Important Topics: Prepare Reading Comprehension, Para Jumbles, Arithmetic, Algebra, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning.
3. Attempt Mock Tests: Take full-length CAT mock tests regularly to improve time management and question selection.
4. Analyse Mistakes: Review incorrect answers using detailed solutions and revise weak topics.
5. Improve Section-wise Accuracy: Practise VARC, DILR and QA separately while maintaining the 40-minute sectional time limit.

Download CAT Previous Year Question Papers

CAT Exam Analysis

CAT 2025 Slot 1 was conducted on November 30, 2025, with 68 questions across VARC, DILR and QA. The overall difficulty level was moderate to difficult, based on expert reviews and candidate feedback. The section-wise CAT 2025 Slot 1 analysis is summarised below.

CAT 2025 Slot 1 Key Highlights: VARC included four Reading Comprehension passages along with Para Jumbles and Para Summary questions. DILR contained five sets involving arrangements, charts and logical puzzles, while QA focused mainly on Arithmetic and Algebra. DILR required careful set selection, and QA included several calculation-intensive questions.

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