All 24 VARC questions in exam order, with the passage topic, what each question asks, the answer and the reasoning.
4
RC passages
16
RC questions
8
VA questions
VA mix: 2 para summary, 2 para jumbles, 2 odd sentence out, 2 sentence placement. RC themes: History, Politics & Society; Economics & Business; Language, Arts & Literature; Science & Nature.
RC question types in this slot
Detail 2Main idea & summary 4Word / phrase in context 2Inference 3Purpose of example 1Application & analogy 1Except / NOT 2Strengthen / weaken 1
Why no passages? CAT's VARC passages and sentences come from published books and articles, so we don't reproduce them. Each question is analysed instead: its type, the passage topic, what it asks, the answer and why. For full practice, use the original CAT-style practice sets.
AsksArrange four sentences on how power works through the panoptic mechanism.
Answer: 2143
Logic: Topic opener → how power plugs into functions → "In short" recap → formal definition.
Sentence 2 opens the topic by calling the mechanism political, and sentence 1 picks up its "it" to explain how power is fitted into functions such as education or punishment. Sentence 4 begins with "In short", so it recaps 2-1, and sentence 3 closes with the most abstract statement of the idea.
Reading comprehension · History, Politics & Society
Alienists and criminal responsibility
Q2–Q5 · 4 questions · Detail, Main idea & summary, Word / phrase in context
AsksWhat links the doctors and lawyers described in the last paragraph.
Answer: A
Correct option: They shared a professional debate over where criminal responsibility begins and ends.
The final paragraph stresses that, despite a common background, these men were divided by arguments about the limits of responsibility. The other options describe earlier parts of the passage (the pre-expert courtroom, symptoms being classified, how jurors read defendants), not the link the last paragraph draws.
Correct option: Nineteenth-century physicians who studied and treated insanity.
The passage presents alienists as doctors of madness and forerunners of psychiatrists. Options about foreigners or outsiders take the word's everyday sense and ignore the passage's definition.
The passage is about how courts judged a defendant's mind, how insanity was defined and how that tied responsibility to punishment, which D covers fully. The closest distractor mixes in peripheral words (such as patriotism) that the passage only touches on.
AsksWhat "confession" means in the list of ways a defendant could differ from officials.
Answer: A
Correct option: Religious affiliation, an identity marker like race or gender.
The word sits in a list of identity categories, so it means a person's faith, not an admission. Reading it as "confessing" a crime or a belief ignores its role as a noun in that list.
Reading comprehension · Economics & Business
Income inequality and growth
Q6–Q9 · 4 questions · Main idea & summary, Inference, Purpose of example, Application & analogy
Correct option: It sets out three routes (investment, incentives, governance) by which inequality may help growth, with short-run gains and long-run costs.
The passage presents the three arguments and mixed evidence on timing, which D captures. The tempting option says the passage argues that inequality speeds growth, but the author reports the case neutrally and includes the negative long-run evidence.
AsksWhich scenario is the opposite of democratization as the passage uses it.
Answer: A
Correct option: Narrowing the vote and banning opposition parties.
The passage ties democratization to extending the vote so that low- and middle-income voters gain power, so shrinking voting rights reverses it. Caps on donations or public funding are reforms within a democracy, not its reversal.
AsksWhat the three-part case for inequality aiding growth does in the passage.
Answer: C
Correct option: It identifies the specific conditions under which inequality can support growth, mainly in the short run.
The three mechanisms are each conditional (large up-front costs, unobservable effort, concentrated ownership), which C keeps. Options that make the claim universal, or reverse the ownership point, misread the passage.
AsksThe design that best fits the incentive (moral hazard) argument.
Answer: A
Correct option: Rewarding productive workers on verifiable performance.
The incentive argument says that effort which cannot be observed is drawn out only when pay tracks results, so performance-linked rewards fit. The option about concentrated ownership belongs to the governance argument instead.
AsksSummary of a paragraph on artists borrowing across cultures.
Answer: A
Correct option: Globalisation exposes artists to many cultures; respectful inspiration builds understanding, careless borrowing commodifies and stereotypes, reinforcing power imbalances.
A keeps all three parts: the global setting, the line between inspiration and appropriation, and the wider social harm. The closest option drops the global context and the power-imbalance point.
AsksWhere a remark about the family's entirely traditional, old-world instrument-making fits.
Answer: Blank 1
Logic: Blank 1.
The sentence before blank 1 says the sisters follow their great-grandfather's methods, and the one after describes building an instrument by hand, so the remark about tradition bridges the two. The later blanks come after the discussion moves to tools, tone and fame, where the remark no longer connects.
Reading comprehension · Language, Arts & Literature
Objections to electronic music
Q12–Q15 · 4 questions · Main idea & summary, Inference, Except / NOT, Word / phrase in context
Correct option: To defend electronic music against two objections: that it isn't music and that it is "inhuman".
The opening raises both objections and the rest of the passage answers them, so the whole passage is a defence. Options that read it as a contrast, or that promote one supporting remark to the main goal, miss this structure.
AsksHow the "communication problem" of paragraph 2 relates to the opening question of whether electronic music is music.
Answer: A
Correct option: Unfamiliar structural vocabulary can block hearing it as music, but the barrier fades once listeners learn that language.
The author treats the difficulty as a learning gap that can be overcome. The tempting option turns it into a permanent verdict against electronic music, which the author never says.
AsksWhat Stravinsky's description of music does NOT do in the first paragraph.
Answer: A
Correct option: It does not help separate musical sounds from non-musical ones.
The description moves away from older ideas of music and helps listeners accept electronic work as music. Nowhere is it used to sort sounds into musical and non-musical, so A is the exception.
AsksThe meaning of the Latin phrase in paragraph 3.
Answer: A
Correct option: Particular: unique, one of a kind.
The author says the medium's appeal lies in exploring distinctive new forms, so the phrase signals uniqueness. "Generic" means the opposite and would contradict that point.
AsksSummary of a paragraph on senescent "zombie" cells.
Answer: C
Correct option: With age, clearance of damaged cells weakens, so zombie cells pile up and their inflammatory output drives chronic disease.
C keeps the whole chain: weaker clearance, accumulation, inflammation, disease. The closest option wrongly says the cells resist removal and drops the inflammation and disease links.
AsksFive sentences on freedom over death and assisted dying; find the one that doesn't belong.
Answer: 4
Logic: 5 → 1 → 2 → 3: freedom is a complex idea → we now have more control over dying → that control should be central → assisted dying extends it.
Sentences 5, 1, 2 and 3 build a philosophical argument step by step. Sentence 4 merely reports what many people support, which adds nothing to the argument's chain, so it is the odd one.
AsksFive sentences on how the Bayeux tapestry was displayed and viewed.
Answer: 1
Logic: 3 → 2 → 5 → 4: viewers engaged art bodily → a square layout put them at the centre → hung at eye level → an immersive space.
The four sentences form one argument about display and viewing. Sentence 1 is about why the tapestry suited the Norman conquest story and its "therefore" follows from nothing here, so it is the odd one.
AsksArrange four sentences on women, anger and boxing training.
Answer: 3421
Logic: Women are taught to suppress anger (3) → the coach sees them hold back punches (4) → breaking the taboo is freeing (2) → but managing anger shapes everyone (1).
Sentence 3 sets out the observation, and sentence 4's "many of them" refers back to those women. Sentence 2's "once" picks up the taboo, and sentence 1's "but" widens the point to everyone, which makes it the closing line.
Reading comprehension · Science & Nature
Complex systems and tail events
Q20–Q23 · 4 questions · Except / NOT, Main idea & summary, Strengthen / weaken, Inference
Correct option: That sports bettors alone caused the market rebound.
The passage offers bettors only as one possible factor, so "sole cause" goes beyond it. The other options restate what the passage says about contagion, rule changes after extreme events and heavy tails.
Correct option: Noise can create order; contagion-driven systems are prone to extreme cascades; early shocks change the rules (nonstationarity).
B covers all three threads, with the pandemic market only as an example. The other options reverse the claim about extremes, overstate a tentative point, or wrongly confine nonstationarity to biology.
AsksWhich observation best supports the claim that one extreme event makes further extremes more likely.
Answer: C
Correct option: After a crash, extreme daily moves cluster for weeks, far above normal frequency.
Clustering of extremes after a first shock is exactly the claim. The earthquake option reports independent events with no aftershocks, which undercuts it.
AsksThe assumption behind the warning that contact-tracing apps could backfire by changing how people move.
Answer: B
Correct option: People's movements respond to observed infections and to one another, so small adjustments add up to large unintended patterns.
If people acted independently, their adjustments could not combine into a collective effect, so the argument needs B. Data precision or who stays enrolled is irrelevant to that mechanism.
AsksWhere a sentence on silver as a long-standing status object (homes, churches, state, diplomacy) fits.
Answer: Blank 1
Logic: Blank 1.
The next sentence says lighting and kitchen dining wore away "this need", so the need must be described first, at blank 1. Later blanks come after the paragraph has moved to the trade's survival, leaving "this need" without anything to refer to.
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