Hi everyone!

The question for the day is an interesting question from the chapter Work and
Time.

Q1. Working together, A and B can do a job in 6 days. B and C can do the same
job in 10 days, while C and A can do it in 7.5 days. How long will it take if
all A, B and C work together to complete the job?

(1) 8 days
(2) 5 days
(3) 3 days
(4) 7 days

2. How long will it take for A alone to complete the job?


(1) 8 days
(2) 6 days
(3) 10 days
(4) 20 days


Click here to know the correct answer

http://www.ascenteducation.com/india-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/April2002\
/arith2504.html

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Cheers

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
Phone (044) 431 5854
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi everyone

Here is the question for the day.

The manager of an auditorium wants to paste stickers with numbers from 1 to 1000
on the 1000 chairs in the auditorium. If each sticker has only one digit from 0
to 9, how many stickers will he have to use in the process of numbering the
chairs?

(1)    2893
(2)    3983
(3)     3077
(4)    4! 3! 2!

Click here to know the correct answer

http://www.ascenteducation.com/india-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/April2002\
/arith2404.html

Cheers

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
http://www.ascenteducation.com
phone (044) 431 5854

p.s There is a small problem with our webserver and hence the correct answer
along with the solution to today's question will be uploaded only tomorrow.
Please bear with the inconvenience caused on account of this.

Hi everyone!

Its time to take stock of one's word power. I hope most of you would have
started revising your word lists by now. Take this small word power test.

There are one or more blanks in each of the following statements followed by
words which will fill the blanks to provide meaningful sentences. Identify the
suitable word for each of the blanks from the set of words given at the end.
Note that there are more words provided than the number of blanks.

1. The singer received _________ (1) for the wonderful rendition of the _______
(2).
2. He was _______ (3) and watched _______  (4) as his house burned down to
ashes.
3. By looking at the beauty of the sculpture, you an see how _______ (5) and
________ (6) the sculptor is.

  (a) Accolades
  (b) acquiesce
  (c) adage
  (d) aghast
  (e) aegis
  (f) agape
  (g) adept
  (h) acme
  (i) adroit
  (j) appall
  (k) arid
  (l) aria

Click here to know the correct answer.

http://www.ascenteducation.com/india-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/April2002\
/verbal2304.html

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Cheers

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
Phone (044) 431 5854
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi Group
I am Vikram a new member. I am doing my second year Bachelors in
Business Administration. I am Answering CAT 2002.
I need some info and help.

1.Is it worth taking a classroom course frm IMS coz their
correspondence course costs half the rate. SO which is better.
2.Regarding the forms of CAT, when is it avaliable. And which and how
many colleges can I apply for. Do I have to get some form frm them
and attach is to my CAT form.
3.How is GMAT different frm CAT as the preparations goes.
4.Is CAT preparation enough for GMAT.
5.If I clear GMAT do I have also have to answer TOFEL to get into a
US B-School

kindly acknowledge
Vikram

Hi everyone!

There are certain topics which most students consider as difficult ones. These
topics differ from individual to individual. For instance, permutation and
combination is generally loathed by most students from non-quant background. My
suggestion would be that learn the basics of all the topics. If you happen to
get an easy question from the topic that you are not comfortable with, answer
it. If there is an element of twist, then you can always skip the question.

Omitting a topic altogether may not be a good idea.

Today's question is based on combinatorics.

How many number of times will the digit '7' be written when listing the integers
from 1 to 1000?

(1) 271
(2) 300
(3) 252
(4) 304

Click here to know the correct answer

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/arith1704.html

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Cheers

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
Phone (044) 431 5854
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi!

I believe most of you would have initiated the process of improving your
vocabulary. Though, direct vocabulary based questions do not appear in CAT any
longer, it wil be of help in other management entrance exams.

Today's problem is based on the concept of work and time.

If A and B work together, they will complete a job in 7.5 days. However, if A
works alone and completes half the job and then B takes over and completes the
remaining half alone, they will be able to complete the job in 20 days. How long
will B alone take to do the job if A is more efficient than B?

(1)    20 days
(2)    40 days
(3)    30 days
(4)    24 days

Click here to know the correct answer and solution to the above problem.

http://www.ascenteducation.com/india-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/April2002\
/arith1504.html

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Cheers


K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
Phone (044) 431 5854
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi All Out There

First of all Lemme Wish You All  A Happy New Year

I would like to know whether any Books on CAT can help me learn myself i.e. SELF STUDY.

Is there any book which contains all explanations of how to tackle a given problem or to solve a particular Logical Question.(In all Three Subjects)

Do please Tell /Mail me

Thanking You,

Ananth

Hi Vikram

All of these courses offer more or less the same kind of study
material. So if you are planning on a correspondence course there
will be very little differentiating factor.

On the contrary if you are planning to take up a classroom course ask
yourself what you are expecting from these classes.

1. For instance, if you are good at quant and english and are joining
a course so that you get enough material to practice and benchmark
your performance against others like you who are taking CAT, I would
suggest that you take up either IMS or TIME. CAT is not an absolute
score exam. You get a call if you are in the top 2500 odd who take
the test. So it is essential that you constantly evaluate where you
stand. Both TIME and IMS have one of the largest enrolments in the
country and will be able to offer you a good benchmark.

2. On the contrary, if you believe you need personal attention, a
smaller class room size and handholding, then you need to look at
alternatives to these big boys. If you happen to be based out of
Chennai, we at Ascent Education offer classroom courses. You can
speak to us. We have a faculty team primarily comprising grads from
one of the IIMs or Xavier institutes. Batch size does not exceed 30.
Last year was our first year of operation. Had 40 students. 11 of
them got calls from institutes ranging from IIM Indore, SP Jain, BIM,
MICA and LIBA. I do not want to make a sales spiel here. If you
happen to be in Chennai, do contact us before you make a decision.

More importantly, all of these courses will offer you 20% of what is
needed to make it to an IIM - a whole lot of effort has to come from
your end. At the risk of sounding pedantic, be prepared for a
laborious 6 to 7 months of hard and smart work if you are serious
about CAT.


Best wishes

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
PGDM IIM - Cal - Class of '94
Phone (044) 431 5854
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi

        A number of institutes offer CAT classroom programmes either in the form of weekend or weekly classes.  Which is the better of these if one has to choose from reputed names like IMS, TIMES and CAREER Forum. 

All of them seem to be charging more or less the same amount in the form of fees. 

Regards

Vikram Kamath

Vikram Kamath V

Software Engineer

Satyam Computer Services Limited

"Be a Vegetarian , Save a Life"

Hi guyz ,

     I just came across a useful link. Just send a blank message to
the address below and you will daily get a new word with itz synonym
in u'r mail box .Hope it will be useful.

        send a blank message to:
join-WordoftheDay@...

bye for now,

Nanda.

Hi everyone!

I would appreciate if you guys can send in your feedback with regard to the
question a day section. It will help in providing a more meaningful service.

Today's question is intended to test your vocabulary power. Though, there is
hardly any question related to vocabulary in CAT these days, you find these
questions in other MBA entrance tests. So, it might be a good idea to brush up
your word list every now and then so that you maximize in this section. These
questions are what I call as 1 or 0 questions. Either you know the meaning of
the word in the question, so that you get the answer and a correct mark in 10
seconds or you do not know and you skip it. This way, you do not spend time
unnecessarily trying to solve problems as it tends to happen on the quant
section.

There are five words which are capitalized in the following five questions. From
amongst the four alternatives, choose the best answer whose meaning is closest
to the meaning of the word in question.

1. RHINOPHYTONECROPHILIA

(a) Romancing the dead
(b) One who is love with the undertaker
(c) One who likes smelling dead plants and flowers
(d) One who summons ghosts.

2. PLEONASM

(a) Tautological
(b) Chimerical
(c) Episodic
(d) Prismatic

3. APOTHECARY

(a) Planet close to the Sun
(b) Star closest to Earth
(c) Coat hanger
(d) Pharmacy

4. NOSEGAY

(a) Olfactory sensation
(b) A bouquet of flowers
(c) Obnoxious person
(d) Pungent smelling

5. UNGUENT

(a) An ointment or medicinal application
(b) Uncle like
(c) Soporific
(d) Sophomoric

Click here to know the correct answers

http://www.ascenteducation.com/india-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/April2002\
/vocab1204.html

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and paste the URL on the address/location bar of your browser.

If you want to access the questions of the previous fortnight, you can access
them at the archives section of our site at
http://www.ascenteducation.com/india-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/

Cheers

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
Phone (044) 431 5854
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi everyone!

Today's question is a simple question from topic - Percentages.

The price of milk increased by 33.33% in the recent past. A family decides to
keep the amount of money it spends on milk constant. By what % should the family
cut down its milk consumption to achieve this goal?

(1) 50%
(2) 33.33%
(3) 25%
(4) 28.57%

Click here to know the correct answer.

http://www.ascenteducation.com/india-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/April2002\
/arith1104.html

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and paste the URL on the address/location bar of your browser.

Cheers

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
Phone (044) 431 5854.
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi everyone!

How did you fare in the reading comprehension test given yesterday.

Today's question is a data sufficiency question. Data sufficiency questions
account for about 7 to 10 questions in CAT.

In each of these questions, there is a question which is followed by two
statements. You have to decide whether the information provided in the
statements is sufficient for answering the question.

Mark 1 If the question can be answered by using one of the statements alone, but
cannot be answered by using the other statement alone.

Mark 2 If the question can be answered by using either statement alone.

Mark 3 If the question can be answered by using both statements together, but
cannot be answered by using either statement alone.

Mark 4 If the question cannot be answered even by using both the statements
together.

Leaving home and travelling at 3/4ths of my usual speed, I reached office late
today. What is the usual time that I take to reach office? (Assume that each day
I take the same route to the office)

(A)     It took me 15 more minutes to reach office today.

(B)     The distance between my office and home is 12 kms.

Click here to know the correct answer.

http://www.ascenteducation.com/india-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/April2002\
/ds1004.html

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Cheers

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
Phone (044) 431 5854
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi everyone!

Today's question is a reading comprehension passage. Give yourself not more than
5 minutes to complete reading the passage and answering the four questions that
follow the passage.
--------
PASSAGE

In nearly all human populations a majority of individuals can taste the
artificially synthesized chemical phenylthiocarbonide (PTC). However, the
percentage varies dramatically--from as low as 60% in India to as high as 95% in
Africa. That this polymorphism is observed in non-human primates as well
indicates a long evolutionary history which, although obviously not acting on
PTC, might reflect evolutionary selection for taste discrimination of other,
more significant bitter substances, such as certain toxic plants.


A somewhat more puzzling human polymorphism is the genetic variability in
earwax, or cerumen, which is observed in two varieties. Among European
populations 90% of individuals have a sticky yellow variety rather than a dry,
gray one, whereas in northern China these numbers are approximately the reverse.
Perhaps like PTC variability, cerumen variability is an incidental expression of
something more adaptively significant. Indeed, the observed relationship between
cerumen and odorous bodily secretions, to which non-human primates and, to a
lesser extent humans, pay attention suggests that during the course of human
evolution genes affecting body secretions, including cerumen, came under
selective influence.


1. It can be inferred from the passage that human populations vary considerably
in their

(1) sensitivity to certain bodily odors
(2) ability to assimilate artificial chemicals
(3) vulnerability to certain toxins found in plants
(4) ability to discern bitterness in taste

2. Which of the following provides the most reasonable explanation for the
assertion in the first paragraph that evolutionary history "obviously" did not
act on PTC?

(1) PTC is not a naturally occurring chemical but rather has been produced only
recently by scientists.
(2) Most humans lack sufficient taste sensitivity to discriminate between PTC
and bitter chemicals occurring naturally.
(3) Variability among humans respecting PTC discrimination, like variability
respecting earwax, cannot be explained in terms of evolutionary adaptivity.
(4) Unlike non-human primates, humans can discriminate intellectually between
toxic and non-toxic bitter substances.

3. Which of the following best expresses the main idea of the passage?

(1) Artificially synthesized chemicals might eventually serve to alter the
course of evolution by desensitizing humans to certain tastes and odors.
(2) Some human polymorphisms might be explained as vestigial evidence of
evolutionary adaptations that still serve vital purposes in other primates.
(3) Sensitivity to taste and to odors have been subject to far greater natural
selectivity during the evolution of primates than previously thought.
(4) Polymorphism among human populations varies considerably from region to
region throughout the world.


4. It can be inferred from the passage that

(1) The amount of bodily odours and secretion that take place reduce at each
stage of evolution.
(2) The extent of attention paid by non-human primates to body secretions is
much higher than that of the more evolved human species.
(3) Artificially sythesized chemicals have impaired the extent of sensitivity
that human beings have to body secretions.
(4) All of these

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/compre0904.html

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Cheers

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
Phone (044) 431 5854
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi guys

The url that links to the correct answer has been entered
incorrectly.

The correct url is given below.


http://www.ascenteducation.com/india-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/April2002\
/arith0804.html

I apologize for the inconvenience

Regards

K S Baskar

Hi Everyone!

Did you get the solution to Friday's problem without actually enumerating, day
by day, the number of days when Traveller B will be ahead of Traveller A. It
would be a good idea to brush up your fundae in basic concepts of progressions,
logarithms, quadratic equations etc. We will be using these concepts in many of
the problems that we will be coming across.

Today's problem is on the topic Pipes & Cisterns

A tank is fitted with 8 pipes, some of them that fill the tank and others that
are waste pipes meant to empty the tank. Each of the pipes that fill the tank
can fill it in 8 hours, while each of those that empty the tank can empty it in
6 hours. If all the pipes are kept open when the tank is full, it will take
exactly 6 hours for the tank to empty. How many of these are fill pipes?

(1)    2
(2)    4
(3)    6
(4)    5

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http://www.ascenteducation.com/India-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/April2002\
/arith0804.html

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have problem accessing the web page directly by clicking on the url.

Cheers

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
Phone (044) 431 5854
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi Everyone!

Welcome to the last question for this week. We will resume our question a day
from Monday, April 8, 2002.

The problem for the day is that of two travelers who set out on a long odyssey.
The first traveler starts from city X and travels north on a certain day and
covers 1 km on the first day and on subsequent days, he travels 2 km more than
the previous day. After 3 days, a second traveler sets out from the same place
and in the same direction of the first traveler and on his first day he travels
12 km and on subsequent days he travels 1 km more than the previous day. On how
many days will the second traveler be ahead of the first?

(1) 2 days
(2) 6 days
(3) 2nd day onwards
(4) 11 days

Hint: This is an arithmetic progression problem involving the concept of finding
the sum of two series.

Click here to find the answer

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/apgp0504.html

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Cheers

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
Phone 91-44-431 5854
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi Everybody

I hope you received my earlier mail about the success story of my
friend K Venkatesh. I will intersperse my postings with the
experience of such people once a month. In the meantime, to get us
cracking on the preparation scene, I shall be posting a question a
day. Please try and solve this question yourself before referring to
the answers. The answers and archives can be found on the website of

http://www.ascenteducation.com/india-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/

(In case this link does not reach you in a single line, cut and paste
the entire link on the address/location bar of your browser)

Today's Question

There are eight sealed bags with gold coins in them. While seven of
them weigh the same, one of them is slightly heavies than the rest.
If you are provied with a fair balance to weigh them, how many
minimum trails do you need to conclusively find the heavier bag?

(1) 1             (2) 6             (3) 3                 (4) 2

Click here to know the correct answer and the solution to the problem

http://www.ascenteducation.com/india-mba/iim/cat/questionbank/Archives/March2002\
/arith2703.html

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the entire link on the address/location bar of your browser)

Best wishes,

K S Baskar
Director - Ascent Education
Phone (044) 431 5854.
http://www.ascenteducation.com

Hi

Welcome to the first issue of the newsletter from Ascent Education.
We will focus on issues relating to the preparation for MBA entrance
exams, CAT 2002 in particular.

In this issue, the focus is going to be on the benefits of doing an
MBA.

Most of us know that the prime motivator behind considering MBA as a
career option is the kind of lucrative jobs one gets at the end of
the two years. There are umpteen reports in the newspaper, especially
this time of the year, about the kind of salaries and perks MBAs from
top B Schools get. For those of you who have missed out on the
articles this year, the average salary for MBAs from the IIMs have
been around Rs.7.5 lakhs. This data does not, however, include
overseas placements where salaries are dollar denominated.

Having mentioned that salary, post MBA,  is a crucial motivator, I
would like to cover some of the salient points on how an MBA enriches
your entire career.

I will present the case study of a good friend and classmate of mine
from IIM Calcutta. His name is K Venkatesh. He hails from Coimbatore.
He did his schooling in Coimbatore and passed XII standard securing a
little over 60%. Subsequently, he joined PSG Arts College and
enrolled for B.A. Sociology. His interests were mostly non-academic.
He was an avid reader and excelled in organizing a variety of events
in the college, both academic and vocational in nature. He passed his
B.A with 59% aggregate marks.

After graduation, he moved to Chennai and got his first job as a
sales assistant at Landmark Book Shop. A couple of months into the
job, he realized that he had more fire in his belly than what a
Landmakr Book Shop can put to good use. He started hunting for jobs
at Advertisement agencies. Much to his chagrin, he met with negative
response from most agencies. However, things took a turn when he
managed to meet the branch head of one of the leading ad agencies.
The branch head was far from polite to Venkatesh. He told Venkatesh
in plain simple English that unless Venkatesh had an MBA degree, he
should not be aspiring to get a job in an advertising agency.

Taking the challenge, Venkatesh started preparing for CAT. He did a
lot of slogging for over 6 months and cracked CAT. He had calls from
IIM A, B, C and L and finally got admissions from IIM B, C and L. He
joined IIM C in 1992 and passed out in 1994. The first job he got
after his MBA from IIMC was in Wipro Systems. He shifted out of Wipro
in a couple of years to California Software and then to Trigent
Systems, USA. Now he heads the Indian operations of Photon Infotech (
http://www.photoninfotech.com )

I am sure neither did Venkatesh nor did his detractors believe that a
II Class Sociology graduate from Coimbatore will be heading a
software company in 10 years time.

That is the kind of career transformation an MBA degree offers . It
is not just the money. It is much more. It offers dream careers
which, otherwise, were out of reach for most of us.

Venkatesh is not an exception to the rule. Most of my classmates,
irrespective of whether they are engineers or not,  have had similar
enriching experience in one form or the other.

I hope the experiences of Venkatesh serves as a  motivating factor
for all those aspiring to do an MBA.

I will continue the next issue with what they actually teach you and
the kinds of facility that are available to students at the best B-
Schools - the likes of IIMs.

Regards

K S Baskar
Director, Ascent Education ( http://www.ascenteducation.com )
Class of '94, IIM Calcutta