Should candidates take notes while reading CAT RC passages?
Note-taking during CAT RC passages costs most candidates more than it gives back. The 40-minute VARC window covers 24 questions across 4-5 passages, leaving roughly 8-9 minutes per passage including answering.
Adding a physical writing step narrows that margin fast.
Why the Pen Usually Loses
CAT RC is not a comprehension test in the school-exam sense. It is an inference and reasoning test.
The questions rarely ask you to recall a fact you could have written down; they ask you to evaluate the author's tone, identify an assumption, or strengthen an argument. Notes that summarise "paragraph 1 talks about climate policy" do not help you answer those questions any faster.
What helps is holding the passage's logical spine in your head, which is a mental skill, not a writing skill.
The physical act of noting also fragments your reading rhythm. Fluent reading builds momentum; stopping to scribble breaks it. When you return to the text, you often re-read the lines you just left, quietly doubling your time on that paragraph.
When Annotation Actually Helps
There is one narrow case where light annotation earns its cost: dense, multi-viewpoint passages where three or four positions are presented and then compared. In those passages, quickly circling or underlining which paragraph represents which voice can prevent costly confusion during questions.
This is not full note-taking; it is a one-second annotation, not a sentence.
During practice, if you are repeatedly losing the thread mid-passage and re-reading from the top, some marginal annotation may help you build structural awareness. The goal is to internalise the habit so the pen becomes unnecessary before the actual exam.
The Better Alternative: Paragraph-Level Mental Pauses
After each paragraph, pause for roughly three seconds and silently answer: what was the purpose of that paragraph, and how does it connect to the one before? This keeps your working memory anchored to passage structure without costing time.
Strong VARC scorers, those clearing 99+ percentile, almost universally describe reading as an active, analytical process rather as a passive information-collection exercise.
| Technique | Time Cost | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Full note-taking | High (2-3 min/passage) | Almost no one on exam day |
| Light annotation/underlining | Low (15-30 sec) | Multi-viewpoint, dense passages |
| Mental paragraph summaries | Near-zero | Most passages, most candidates |
| No strategy at all | Zero upfront, high re-read cost | Candidates with very high reading fluency only |
What Mocks Will Actually Tell You
Run a controlled experiment across your next six timed mocks: three with your current approach, three with deliberate mental pausing after each paragraph and no pen. Track accuracy and average time-per-question separately for RC.
The data from your own performance beats any general advice, including this one. If annotation genuinely lifts your accuracy without blowing your time, keep a light version of it.
If it does not, drop it.
The broader skill gap that holds most candidates back is not technique selection. It is reading stamina.
A daily habit of reading long-form argument-heavy text, think longform journalism, Supreme Court judgments, or serious magazine essays, builds the sustained focus that makes the 40-minute VARC window feel manageable rather than exhausting.
Pro Tip: In your next mock, underline only the sentence that states each paragraph's central claim, nothing else, and check whether your RC accuracy changes before committing to any note-taking habit.