CAT 2023 Question Paper with Answer Key PDF for VARC (December 5 - shift 2)
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Content Curator | Updated On - Jun 26, 2026
Conducted by IIM Lucknow on November 26, 2023 in the 12:30 PM to 2:30 PM Slot 2 window, the CAT 2023 VARC section asked you to handle 24 questions in just 40 minutes for a total of 72 marks, with 3 marks riding on each question. You faced 16 Reading Comprehension questions built on 4 passages and 8 Verbal Ability questions, of which 20 were MCQs and 4 were non-MCQ (TITA) type. Candidates and reviewers found the difficulty easy to moderate overall, with 3 of the 4 passages comfortable to read and the history passage being the one to watch. Below you can grab the question paper PDF, scroll the flip viewer, and walk through a worked solution for each question.
| CAT 2023 VARC Slot 2 Question Paper with Solutions | Download PDF | Check Solutions |
CAT 2023 Slot 2 VARC Questions with Solutions
Comprehension:
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
The Positivists, anxious to stake out their claim for history as a science, contributed the weight of their influence to the cult of facts. First ascertain the facts, said the positivists, then draw your conclusions from them. . . . This is what may [be] called the common-sense view of history. History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions, and so on . . . [Sir George Clark] contrasted the "hard core of facts" in history with the surrounding pulp of disputable interpretation forgetting perhaps that the pulpy part of the fruit is more rewarding than the hard core. . . . It recalls the favourite dictum of the great liberal journalist C. P. Scott: "Facts are sacred, opinion is free.". . .
What is a historical fact? . . . According to the common-sense view, there are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so to speak, the backbone of history—the fact, for example, that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. But this view calls for two observations. In the first place, it is not with facts like these that the historian is primarily concerned. It is no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in 1066 and not in 1065 or 1067, and that it was fought at Hastings and not at Eastbourne or Brighton. The historian must not get these things wrong. But [to] praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function. It is precisely for matters of this kind that the historian is entitled to rely on what have been called the "auxiliary sciences" of history—archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, chronology, and so forth. . . .
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The second observation is that the necessity to establish these basic facts rests not on any quality in the facts themselves, but on an apriori decision of the historian. In spite of C. P. Scott's motto, every journalist knows today that the most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts. It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context. . . . The only reason why we are interested to know that the battle was fought at Hastings in 1066 is that historians regard it as a major historical event. . . . Professor Talcott Parsons once called [science] "a selective system of cognitive orientations to reality." It might perhaps have been put more simply. But history is, among other things, that. The historian is necessarily selective. The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.If the author of the passage were to write a book on the Battle of Hastings along the lines of his/her own reasoning, the focus of the historical account would be on:
According to this passage, which one of the following statements best describes the significance of archaeology for historians?
All of the following, if true, can weaken the passage’s claim that facts do not speak for themselves, EXCEPT:
All of the following describe the “common-sense view” of history, EXCEPT:
Comprehension:
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, was right when he said the language of Europe is translation. Netflix and other deep-pocketed global firms speak it well. Just as the EU employs a small army of translators and interpreters to turn intricate laws or impassioned speeches of Romanian MEPs into the EU’s 24 official languages, so do the likes of Netflix. It now offers dubbing in 34 languages and subtitling in a few more. . . .
The economics of European productions are more appealing, too. American audiences are more willing than before to give dubbed or subtitled viewing a chance. This means shows such as “Lupin”, a French crime caper on Netflix, can become global hits. . . . In 2015, about 75% of Netflix’s original content was American; now the figure is half, according to Ampere, a mediaanalysis company. Netflix has about 100 productions under way in Europe, which is more than big public broadcasters in France or Germany. . . .
Not everything works across borders. Comedy sometimes struggles. Whodunits and bloodthirsty maelstroms between arch Romans and uppity tribesmen have a more universal appeal. Some do it better than others. Barbarians aside, German television is not always built for export, says one executive, being polite. A bigger problem is that national broadcasters still dominate. Streaming services, such as Netflix or Disney+, account for about a third of all viewing hours, even in markets where they are well-established. Europe is an ageing continent. The generation of teens staring at phones is outnumbered by their elders who prefer to gawp at the box.
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In Brussels and national capitals, the prospect of Netflix as a cultural hegemon is seen as a threat. “Cultural sovereignty” is the watchword of European executives worried that the Americans will eat their lunch. To be fair, Netflix content sometimes seems stuck in an uncanny valley somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, with local quirks stripped out. Netflix originals tend to have fewer specific cultural references than shows produced by domestic rivals, according to Enders, a market analyst. The company used to have an imperial model of commissioning, with executives in Los Angeles cooking up ideas French people might like. Now Netflix has offices across Europe. But ultimately the big decisions rest with American executives. This makes European politicians nervous.They should not be. An irony of European integration is that it is often American companies that facilitate it. Google Translate makes European newspapers comprehensible, even if a little clunky, for the continent’s non-polyglots. American social-media companies make it easier for Europeans to talk politics across borders. (That they do not always like to hear what they say about each other is another matter.) Now Netflix and friends pump the same content into homes across a continent, making culture a cross-border endeavour, too. If Europeans are to share a currency, bail each other out in times of financial need and share vaccines in a pandemic, then they need to have something in common—even if it is just bingeing on the same series. Watching fictitious northern and southern Europeans tear each other apart 2,000 years ago beats doing so in reality.
Based on information provided in the passage, all of the following are true, EXCEPT:
The author sees the rise of Netflix in Europe as:
Which one of the following research findings would weaken the author’s conclusion in the final paragraph?
Based only on information provided in the passage, which one of the following hypothetical Netflix shows would be most successful with audiences across the EU?
Comprehension:
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Over the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, according to Patrick Deneen, a professor of politics at the University of Notre Dame. . . . Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry” is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,” Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world”? . . .
Deneen does an impressive job of capturing the current mood of disillusionment, echoing left-wing complaints about rampant commercialism, right-wing complaints about narcissistic and bullying students, and general worries about atomisation and selfishness. But when he concludes that all this adds up to a failure of liberalism, is his argument convincing? . . . He argues that the essence of liberalism lies in freeing individuals from constraints. In fact, liberalism contains a wide range of intellectual traditions which provide different answers to the question of how to trade off the relative claims of rights and responsibilities, individual expression and social ties. . . . liberals experimented with a range of ideas from devolving power from the centre to creating national education systems.
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Mr Deneen’s fixation on the essence of liberalism leads to the second big problem of his book: his failure to recognise liberalism’s ability to reform itself and address its internal problems. The late 19th century saw America suffering from many of the problems that are reappearing today, including the creation of a business aristocracy, the rise of vast companies, the corruption of politics and the sense that society was dividing into winners and losers. But a wide variety of reformers, working within the liberal tradition, tackled these problems head on. Theodore Roosevelt took on the trusts. Progressives cleaned up government corruption. University reformers modernised academic syllabuses and built ladders of opportunity. Rather than dying, liberalism reformed itself.Mr Deneen is right to point out that the record of liberalism in recent years has been dismal. He is also right to assert that the world has much to learn from the premodern notions of liberty as self-mastery and self-denial. The biggest enemy of liberalism is not so much atomisation but old-fashioned greed, as members of the Davos elite pile their plates ever higher with perks and share options. But he is wrong to argue that the only way for people to liberate themselves from the contradictions of liberalism is “liberation from liberalism itself”. The best way to read “Why Liberalism Failed” is not as a funeral oration but as a call to action: up your game, or else.
All of the following statements are evidence of the decline of liberalism today, EXCEPT:
The author of the passage is likely to disagree with all of the following statements, EXCEPT:
The author of the passage refers to “the Davos elite” to illustrate his views on:
The author of the passage faults Deneen’s conclusions for all of the following reasons, EXCEPT:
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: This philosophical cut at one's core beliefs, values, and way of life is difficult enough.
Paragraph: The experience of reading philosophy is often disquieting. When reading philosophy, the values around which one has heretofore organised one's life may come to look provincial, flatly wrong, or even evil. __(1)_. When beliefs previously held as truths are rendered implausible, new beliefs, values, and ways of living may be required. _ (2) . What's worse, philosophers admonish each other to remain unsutured until such time as a defensible new answer is revealed or constructed. Sometimes philosophical writing is even strictly critical in that it does not even attempt to provide an alternative after tearing down a cultural or conceptual citadel. (3). The reader of philosophy must be prepared for the possibility of this experience. While reading philosophy can help one clarify one's values, and even make one self-conscious for the first time of the fact that there are good reasons for believing what one believes, it can also generate un-remediated doubt that is difficult to live with.
Comprehension:
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
The Second Hand September campaign, led by Oxfam . . . seeks to encourage shopping at local organisations and charities as alternatives to fast fashion brands such as Primark and Boohoo in the name of saving our planet. As innocent as mindless scrolling through online shops may seem, such consumers are unintentionally—or perhaps even knowingly—contributing to an industry that uses more energy than aviation. . . .
Brits buy more garments than any other country in Europe, so it comes as no shock that many of those clothes end up in UK landfills each year: 300,000 tonnes of them, to be exact. This waste of clothing is destructive to our planet, releasing greenhouse gasses as clothes are burnt as well as bleeding toxins and dyes into the surrounding soil and water. As ecologist Chelsea Rochman bluntly put it, “The mismanagement of our waste has even come back to haunt us on our dinner plate.”
It’s not surprising, then, that people are scrambling for a solution, the most common of which is second-hand shopping. Retailers selling consigned clothing are currently expanding at a rapid rate . . . If everyone bought just one used item in a year, it would save 449 million lbs of waste, equivalent to the weight of 1 million Polar bears. “Thrifting” has increasingly become a trendy practice. London is home to many second-hand, or more commonly coined ‘vintage’, shops across the city from Bayswater to Brixton.
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So you’re cool and you care about the planet; you’ve killed two birds with one stone. But do people simply purchase a second-hand item, flash it on Instagram with #vintage and call it a day without considering whether what they are doing is actually effective?According to a study commissioned by Patagonia, for instance, older clothes shed more microfibres. These can end up in our rivers and seas after just one wash due to the worn material, thus contributing to microfibre pollution. To break it down, the amount of microfibres released by laundering 100,000 fleece jackets is equivalent to as many as 11,900 plastic grocery bags, and up to 40 per cent of that ends up in our oceans. . . . So where does this leave second-hand consumers? [They would be well advised to buy] high-quality items that shed less and last longer [as this] combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. . . .
Luxury brands would rather not circulate their latest season stock around the globe to be sold at a cheaper price, which is why companies like ThredUP, a US fashion resale marketplace, have not yet caught on in the UK. There will always be a market for consignment but there is also a whole generation of people who have been taught that only buying new products is the norm; second-hand luxury goods are not in their psyche. Ben Whitaker, director at Liquidation Firm B-Stock, told Prospect that unless recycling becomes cost-effective and filters into mass production, with the right technology to partner it, “high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability.”
According to the author, companies like ThredUP have not caught on in the UK for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that:
The act of “thrifting”, as described in the passage, can be considered ironic because it:
The central idea of the passage would be undermined if:
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: And probably much earlier, moving the documentation for kissing back 1,000 years compared to what was acknowledged in the scientific community.
Paragraph: Research has hypothesised that the earliest evidence of human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographical location in South Asia 3,500 years ago.___(1)___. From there it may have spread to other regions, simultaneously accelerating the spread of the herpes simplex virus 1. According to Dr Troels Pank Arbøll and Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen, who in a new article in the journal Science draw on a range of written sources from the earliest Mesopotamian societies, kissing was already a well-established practice 4,500 years ago in the Middle East.___(2)___. In ancient Mesopotamia, people wrote in cuneiform script on clay tablets.___(3)___. Many thousands of these clay tablets have survived to this day, and they contain clear examples that kissing was considered a part of romantic intimacy in ancient times.___(4)___. “Kissing could also have been part of friendships and family members' relations," says Dr Troels Pank Arbøll, an expert on the history of medicine in Mesopotamia.
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: Dualism was long held as the defining feature of developing countries in contrast to developed countries, where frontier technologies and high productivity were assumed to prevail.
Paragraph: ___(1)___. At the core of development economics lies the idea of ‘productive dualism’: that poor countries’ economies are split between a narrow ‘modern’ sector that uses advanced technologies and a larger ‘traditional’ sector characterized by very low productivity.___(2)___. While this distinction between developing and advanced economies may have made some sense in the 1950s and 1960s, it no longer appears to be very relevant. A combination of forces have produced a widening gap between the winners and those left behind.___(3)___. Convergence between poor and rich parts of the economy was arrested and regional disparities widened.___(4)___. As a result, policymakers in advanced economies are now grappling with the same questions that have long preoccupied developing economies: mainly how to close the gap with the more advanced parts of the economy.
Five jumbled up 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. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
Five jumbled up 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. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
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. Like the ants that make up a colony, no single neuron holds complex information like self-awareness, hope or pride.
2. Although the human brain is not yet understood enough to identify the mechanism by which emergence functions, most neurobiologists agree that complex interconnections among the parts give rise to qualities that belong only to the whole.
3. Nonetheless, the sum of all neurons in the nervous system generate complex human emotions like fear and joy, none of which can be attributed to a single neuron.
4. Human consciousness is often called an emergent property of the human brain.
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. Contemporary African writing like ‘The Bottled Leopard’ voices this theme using two children and two backgrounds to juxtapose two varying cultures.
2. Chukwuemeka Ike explores the conflict, and casts the Western tradition as condescending, enveloping and unaccommodating towards local African practice.
3. However, their views contradict the reality, for a rich and sustaining local African cultural ethos exists for all who care, to see and experience.
4. Western Christian concepts tend to deny or feign ignorance about the existence of a genuine and enduring indigenous African tradition.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Heatwaves are becoming longer, frequent and intense due to climate change. The impacts of extreme heat are unevenly experienced; with older people and young children, those with pre-existing medical conditions and on low incomes significantly more vulnerable. Adaptation to heatwaves is a significant public policy concern. Research conducted among at-risk people in the UK reveals that even vulnerable people do not perceive themselves as at risk of extreme heat; therefore, early warnings of extreme heat events do not perform as intended. This suggests that understanding how extreme heat is narrated is very important. The news media play a central role in this process and can help warn people about the potential danger, as well as about impacts on infrastructure and society.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
People spontaneously create counterfactual alternatives to reality when they think “if only” or “what if” and imagine how the past could have been different. The mind computes counterfactuals for many reasons. Counterfactuals explain the past and prepare for the future, they implicate various relations including causal ones, and they affect intentions and decisions. They modulate emotions such as regret and relief, and they support moral judgments such as blame. The ability to create counterfactuals develops throughout childhood and contributes to reasoning about other people's beliefs, including their false beliefs.
CAT 2023 Slot 2 VARC Exam Pattern and Marking Scheme
The VARC section in CAT 2023 Slot 2 carried 24 questions for 72 marks, and you had a hard 40-minute sectional timer with no option to move into other sections. Of the 24 questions, 20 were MCQs and 4 were TITA (type-in-the-answer) questions, so knowing the marking rules helps you decide which ones to risk. Here is how the section was built.
- Total questions: 24 in the Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension section
- Section duration: 40 minutes (sectional time limit)
- Total marks: 72 (3 marks per question)
- Marking (MCQ): +3 for a correct answer, -1 for a wrong one
- Marking (TITA): +3 for a correct answer, no negative marking
- Question types: 16 Reading Comprehension questions from 4 passages plus 8 Verbal Ability questions covering para-summary, para-jumble, odd-sentence-out and sentence-insertion. The 4 TITA questions came from the para-jumble and odd-sentence sets, so you could attempt those without fear of negative marking.
CAT 2023 Slot 2 VARC Section-wise Weightage
Reading Comprehension dominated the section as usual, accounting for 16 of the 24 questions, while Verbal Ability contributed the remaining 8. Here is how the marks were spread, so you can see where the bulk of your 72 marks was sitting.
- Reading Comprehension: 16 questions (48 marks) across 4 passages of roughly 300 to 450 words, each followed by 4 questions. Passage themes covered a critique of liberalism, the environmental cost of buying new clothes versus second-hand clothing, Netflix and language translation in the EU media market, and history as a science (the Positivists and the cult of facts).
- Verbal Ability: 8 questions (24 marks) made up of 2 para-summary, 2 para-jumble, 2 odd-sentence-out, and 2 sentence-insertion/para-completion questions. The para-jumble and odd-sentence sets were the 4 TITA questions in this section.
- Difficulty spread: 3 of the 4 passages were comfortable to read, while the history passage on the Positivists ran on long, dense sentences and was the toughest. VA was rated slightly easier than RC.
CAT 2023 Slot 2 VARC Solved Question Walkthrough
Source: DoubtPucho
How to Use the CAT 2023 Slot 2 VARC Paper for Practice
Treat this paper as a timed mock first and a learning tool second. Reviewers pegged the section as easy to moderate, so the gap between a 90 and a 99 percentile here came down to accuracy, not raw speed. Follow these steps to get the most out of it.
- Set a 40-minute timer and attempt all 24 questions in one sitting before you look at any solution, exactly like the real sectional limit.
- Aim to lock 12 RC questions and 6 to 7 VA questions with high accuracy, since that was the realistic high-confidence haul in this slot.
- Open the detailed solution for every question you got wrong, especially the long history passage, and note whether you lost the mark on comprehension or on careless option elimination.
- Attempt the 4 TITA questions (para-jumble and odd-sentence) freely, because they carry +3 with no negative marking, so a smart guess costs you nothing.
CAT 2023 Slot 2 VARC Good Attempts and Percentile Benchmark
- A solid target was 17 to 19 attempts at roughly 70% accuracy, which counted as a strong VARC performance in this slot.
- A VARC score in the range of 38 to 40 marks was reported as enough for around a 99 percentile in the section.
- Clearing about 12 of the 16 RC questions accurately was the backbone of a good score, since RC carried 48 of the 72 marks.
VARC Slot 2 Question Paper FAQs
Ques. How many questions were there in CAT 2023 VARC Slot 2?
Ans. The VARC section in CAT 2023 Slot 2 had 24 questions worth 72 marks, with a 40-minute sectional time limit. It split into 16 Reading Comprehension questions across 4 passages and 8 Verbal Ability questions, including 20 MCQs and 4 TITA questions.
Ques. How difficult was the CAT 2023 Slot 2 VARC section?
Ans. Most students and reviewers rated it easy to moderate, slightly easier than CAT 2022 and close to Slot 1. Three of the four RC passages were comfortable to read, while the history passage on the Positivists and the cult of facts was the toughest because of its long, dense sentences.
Ques. What was a good number of attempts in CAT 2023 Slot 2 VARC?
Ans. A good attempt was around 17 to 19 questions at roughly 70% accuracy. Within that, clearing about 12 of the 16 RC questions and 6 to 7 of the 8 VA questions with high accuracy was the realistic target for a strong score.
Ques. What VARC score gave a 99 percentile in CAT 2023 Slot 2?
Ans. Based on candidate feedback, a VARC score in the range of 38 to 40 marks was enough to reach about a 99 percentile in the section. Because RC carried 48 of the 72 marks, accuracy on the passages mattered most.
Ques. What were the RC passage topics in CAT 2023 Slot 2 VARC?
Ans. The four passages covered a critique of liberalism, the environmental cost of buying new clothes versus second-hand clothing, Netflix and language translation in the EU media market, and history as a science focusing on the Positivists. Each passage was about 300 to 450 words with 4 questions.
Ques. How is the CAT VARC section marked and where can I confirm the official pattern?
Ans. Each question carries 3 marks. MCQs give +3 for a correct answer and -1 for a wrong one, while the 4 TITA questions give +3 with no negative marking. You can verify the official exam pattern and dates on the CAT authority website at iimcat.ac.in.
*The article might have information for the previous academic years, please refer the official website of the exam.