CAT Para Completion (PC) questions are almost like the para jumbles questions. The sole difference is that within the para jumbles questions you arrange sentences such that is form a coherent paragraph, while in paragraph completion you've to suit or match the last sentence such that it gels with the remainder of the paragraph. Check CAT VARC Syllabus

Before we solve the Para Completion questions, we should understand why these questions are asked in CAT Exam. Para Completion Questions test the applicant’s thought process, the ability of a candidate to conclude & summarize the paragraphs, and how one person keeps the track of a thought mentioned in the paragraph.

Direction of CAT Para Completion Questions

Let’s check out the question direction of Para Completion questions. It says: Each of the subsequent questions features a paragraph from which the last sentence has been deleted.

• The question asks us to finish the paragraph within the most appropriate way, not within the most rational way. 
• Students preparing for CAT must have encounter similar questions during which the questions ask the test taker to logically complete the passage.
• Since what's appropriate may be a subjective view, test-takers often make a choice that supported by their intuition. Often the accuracy percentage is around 50%.
• The last line of a paragraph usually continues a discussion/description or concludes an argument. In short, there's either continuity or a conclusion

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CAT Para Completion: The Right Approach

Let us consider that the last line may be an conclusion, then:

1. The last line should bring the paragraph to a smooth end; it shouldn't be abrupt.
2. The conclusion should be logically derivable from the premises already stated or from pieces of evidence already cited and will reflect the right line of reasoning
3. The outcome should specialize in the most ideal of the passage.
4. The conclusion must be relevant to the critical issues discussed within the passage

If the last line may be a continuation of thought, then:

1. The last line must not have a replacement element, not in the least associated with the ideas discussed earlier
2. The last line should have structure and order very almost like the preceding ideas
3. The logical arrangement of the last line should be such it gives a logical flow to the whole paragraph
4. The idea within the last line should reflect a smooth transition from the thought within the preceding lines

Above all, the applicant must make sure that the tone of the last line is according to the tone of the whole paragraph.

Previous Years Sample Questions on CAT Para Completion

CAT Paragraph Completion: What Happens to our Brain as we age

What happens to our brains as we age is of crucial importance not just to science but to public policy. By 2030, for instance, 72 million people within the US are going to be over 65, double the figure in 2000 and their average anticipation will likely have edged above 20 years. However, this demographic time-bomb would be much less threatening if the elderly were looked upon as intelligent contributors to society instead of as dependents in long-term decline.

1. The idea that we get dumber as we get older is simply a myth, consistent with brain research which will encourage anyone sufficiently old to understand better.
2. It is time we rethink what we mean by the aging mind before our false assumptions end in decisions and policies that marginalize the old or waste precious public resources to remediate problems that don't exist.
3. Many of the assumptions scientists currently make about ‘cognitive decline’ are seriously flawed and, for the foremost part, formally invalid.
4. Using computer models to simulate young and old brains, Ramscar and his colleagues found they might account for the decline in test scores just by factoring in experience

CAT Paragraph Completion: Threats to Insurance Industry

The better behavior resulting from smart devices is simply one threat to the insurance industry. Conventional risk pools (for home or automobile insurance, for instance) are shrinking as preventable accidents decline, leaving the slow-footed giants of the industry in danger. Business is instead moving to digital-native insurers, many of which are offering low premiums to those willing to gather and share their data. Yet the most important winners might be tech companies instead of the firms that now dominate the industry. Insurance is increasingly reliant on the utilization of technology to vary behavior; firms act as helicopter parents to policyholders, warning of impending harm—slow down; reduce your sugar intake; call the plumber—the better to scale back unnecessary payouts.

1. The growing mountain of private data available to individuals and, crucially, to firms is giving those with the required processing power the power to differentiate between low-risk and high-risk individuals.
2. Cheap sensors and therefore the tsunami of knowledge they generate can improve our lives; black boxes in cars can tell us the way to drive more carefully and wearable devices will nudge us toward healthier lifestyles.
3. Yet this type of relationship relies on trust, and therefore the Google’s and Apples of the planet, on which consumers rely day-by-day and hour-by-hour, could also be best placed to win this business.
4. The uncertainty that underpins the necessity for insurance is now shrinking because of better insights into individual risks.

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CAT Paragraph Completion: The execution

The expenditure of your time, money, and sparse judicial and prosecutorial resources is usually justified by claims of a strong deterrent message embodied within the ultimate punishment- the execution. But studies repeatedly suggest that there's no meaningful deterrent effect related to the execution and further, any deterrent impact is not any doubt greatly diluted by the quantity of your time that inevitably passes between the time of the conduct and therefore the punishment. In 2010, the typical time between sentencing and execution within us averaged nearly 15 years.

1. A single federal execution case in Philadelphia was found to cost upwards of $10 million — eight times above the value of trying a death-eligible case where prosecutors seek only captivity.
2. The ethics of the difficulty aside, it's questionable whether seeking the execution is ever well worth the time and resources that it takes to sentence someone to death.
3. Apart from delaying justice, the execution diverts resources that would be wont to help the victims’ families heal.
4. A much simpler deterrent would be a sentence of captivity imposed draw in time to the crime.

CAT Paragraph Completion: Choice of a serious

The premise that the selection of major amounts to picking a career path rests on the faulty notion that the main is vital for its content, which the acquisition of that content is effective to employers. But information is fairly easy to accumulate and what's acquired in 2015 is going to be obsolete by 2020. What employers want are basic but difficult-to-acquire skills. Once they ask students about their majors, it's usually not because they need to assess the applicants’ mastery of the content, but rather because they need to understand if the scholars can mention what they learned. They are a few potential employee’s abilities: writing, researching, quantitative, and analytical skills.

1. As students flock to the 2 or three majors they see nearly as good investments, professors who teach in those majors are overburdened, and therefore the majors themselves become more formulaic and fewer individualized.
2. Often it's the art historians and anthropology majors, for example, who, having marshaled the skills of perspective, breadth, creativity, and analysis, have moved a corporation or project or vision forward.
3. Furthermore, the link between education and earnings is notoriously fraught, with cause and effect often difficult to disentangle.
4. A vocational approach to education eviscerates precisely the qualities that are most precious about it: intellectual curiosity, creativity and important thinking.

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Sample Question on CAT Para Completion.

Relations between the factory and therefore the dealer are distant and typically strained because the factory tries to force cars on the dealers to smooth production. Relations between the dealer and therefore the customer are equally strained because dealers continuously adjust prices—make deals—to adjust demand with supply while maximizing profits. This becomes a system marked by a scarcity of long-term commitment on either side, which maximizes feelings of mistrust. So as to maximize their bargaining positions, everyone holds back information—the dealer about the merchandise and therefore the consumer about his true desires. As a result, ‘deal making’ becomes rampant, without fear for customer satisfaction.

• As a result, inefficiencies creep into the availability chain.
• As a result, everyone treats the opposite as an adversary, instead of as an ally.
• As a result, fundamental innovations are getting scarce within the industry.
• As a result, everyone loses within the end of the day.

Solution:

From the choices, we come to understand that the question wants us to logically conclude the paragraph. So, the last line may be a conclusion, not a continuation. Before we make the choices, we must determine the central argument of the passage. What’s the passage all about? The passage discusses the relations between three entities, which relationship is strained. Now let’s take the choices one at a time:

• Option A: If the relations are strained, then how can deal-making become rampant?
• Option B: The author is discussing strained relations; we must ask ‘how can strained relations cause inefficiencies within the supply chain?’ We don’t have strong pieces of evidence to reach such a conclusion.
• Option C: Seems an honest choice, but only initially glance. If the relations between the manufacturer and therefore the distributor aren't good, then they both will lose within the end of the day because they both depend upon one another. And, how can the customer become an adversary of the manufacturer? The customer is competing neither with the manufacturer nor with the distributor. In short, option C is just too far-fetched.
• Option D: the problems with option D are very almost like those of option B. The logic of ‘strained relations vs innovations’ must be convincing. What has good or strained relations to try to with innovations? The choice doesn't sound convincing.
• Option E: Sees perfect. Carefully read the last line of the passage: so as to maximize their bargaining positions, everyone holds back information—the dealer about the merchandise and therefore the consumer about his true desires. To maximize their bargaining positions, they're holding back information; as a result, all of them will lose within the end of the day. The choice is logical and sensible; it's not far-fetched or irrelevant because of the others.

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