CAT does not test vocabulary directly - no synonym questions, no fill-in-the-blank, no "choose the antonym." It tests reading comprehension and inference, where a weak vocabulary slows you down and increases the odds of an out-of-scope error rather than costing you marks on a definition. A downloadable PDF of 500 words changes almost nothing about that on its own: the research on vocabulary and reading comprehension is clear that isolated word-list memorisation transfers weakly to actual comprehension, while retrieval-based practice on words met in context transfers well. Below is both things at once - a real list of 20 CAT-relevant words with concise definitions, and the actual evidence for why a list is the wrong unit of practice and retrieval is the right one.
What CAT VARC actually tests, and what it does not
This is worth being precise about, because most "CAT vocabulary list" pages imply the opposite. Karma Yogi's own CAT exam pattern reference states it plainly: "CAT tests comprehension and inference, not word meanings in isolation... there is no fixed vocabulary list to memorize." The same conclusion appears independently in this site's VARC preparation guide, built from 23 logged mocks: "CAT VARC doesn't test vocabulary directly with synonym or fill-in-the-blank questions... a weak vocabulary slows every passage down and increases the odds of an out-of-scope error, because an unfamiliar word in an answer choice is easy to mistake for 'sounds academic enough to be right.'"
| VARC fact | Figure |
|---|---|
| Questions | ~24, roughly 70% Reading Comprehension, 30% Verbal Ability (para-summary, odd-sentence-out, para-jumbles) |
| Time | 40 minutes, sectional lock - no borrowing time from DILR or Quant |
| Format | Mix of MCQ and Non-MCQ (type-in-the-answer) |
| Direct vocabulary questions (synonym, antonym, fill-in-the-blank) | None in the current pattern |
| Max sectional marks (at +3/correct) | ~72 |
Older CAT patterns, before the exam consolidated into today's RC-heavy, sectionally-timed VARC, did carry direct vocabulary items - synonym-antonym pairs and sentence-completion blanks were a real, scored question type. That format is gone from the current pattern. Anyone selling a vocabulary list as "high-yield for CAT" in the sense of "these exact words may appear as a question" is describing an exam that no longer exists. The actual mechanism is indirect: RC passages draw on an academic-argument register (economics, philosophy, social critique), and a reader who has to stop and guess at "obdurate" or "sanguine" mid-paragraph loses the thread of the argument, which is what the questions are actually testing.
Why an isolated word list has weak transfer to comprehension
This is a real, decades-old finding in reading research, not a marketing claim invented to sell a different product. The clearest direct test of the mechanism - not vocabulary specifically, but the exact contrast between "study it again" and "retrieve it," which is the whole argument against a static list - is Karpicke and Roediger's 2008 experiment in Science, and it happens to use foreign-language vocabulary word pairs as its material.
40 Washington University undergraduates learned 40 Swahili-English word pairs (e.g. "mashua - boat"). Everyone studied and was tested on the full list in early rounds. Once a pair was recalled correctly once, it was then handled differently across four conditions: kept in both further study and further testing, dropped from study but kept in testing, kept in study but dropped from testing, or dropped from both. All four conditions reached near-perfect performance by the end of the learning phase - so during learning, restudying and retesting looked equally effective.
The difference showed up a week later. On the final test:
| Condition after first correct recall | Recalled 1 week later |
|---|---|
| Kept in repeated testing (studied and tested, or tested only) | ~80% |
| Dropped from testing but kept in repeated study | 36% |
| Dropped from both study and testing | 33% |
Repeated studying after a word could already be recalled produced no measurable benefit a week later. Repeated retrieval - being tested on it again - produced a combined effect of d = 4.03 against the drop-from-testing conditions, with essentially no overlap between the two distributions: final recall in the drop-from-testing conditions ranged 10-60%, against 63-95% in the repeated-testing conditions. Students in every condition predicted they would recall about 50% of the words - they had no sense that which method they used mattered at all.
That is the mechanism a static PDF word list runs into. Reading a list, even several times, is the "restudy" condition - the one that produced almost no benefit once a word felt familiar. A word that "looks known" on a list is not the same as a word you can retrieve under the load of an unfamiliar RC passage three weeks later, and the gap between those two states is exactly what this study measures.
What actually works: retrieval, in a form close to how CAT uses the word
Two things follow directly from the finding above, and both are testable claims rather than product marketing:
- Retrieval beats re-exposure. Being asked to produce or recognise a word's meaning - a flip card, a quiz, a blank you have to fill - does more for a week-later memory than reading the word and its definition again, even repeatedly.
- Spacing the retrieval matters more than the retrieval itself being effortless. The conditions that worked in the 2008 study kept testing the word across sessions, not all on one sitting. This is the same spacing logic behind the site's own revision-round research (see what the evidence actually supports about spaced revision), applied to vocabulary instead of mock analysis.
Karma Yogi's own vocabulary feature, WordOfTheDay, is built around exactly that mechanic rather than a scrollable list: 500 words are scheduled across 153 days (1 June - 31 October 2026), three a day on most days and four on 41 of them, so no day dumps more than a handful of new words at once. Each word is presented as a three-stage flip card - word, then meaning, then two example sentences (one everyday, one workplace-register, closer to the argument-driven prose CAT passages actually use) - and a quiz mode tests it bidirectionally, word-to-meaning and meaning-to-word, on a later pass. That is the retrieval-practice shape the 2008 study found effective, applied to words instead of Swahili pairs, and it is a mechanical description of what the feature does, not a claim about a controlled trial of this specific product.
A real 20-word sample list
Since "vocabulary list" search intent is genuine and worth answering honestly, here are 20 real words from Karma Yogi's own 500-word set, chosen to span the register CAT RC passages draw on - measured argument, academic caution, and the vocabulary of persuasion and disagreement that shows up in passages about economics, philosophy, and social critique.
| Word | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| sagacious | adj | Having keen practical wisdom and sound judgment. |
| perspicacious | adj | Having a ready insight into and understanding of things; shrewd. |
| astute | adj | Having an ability to accurately assess situations and turn them to one's advantage. |
| pragmatic | adj | Dealing with things sensibly and realistically rather than theoretically. |
| circumspect | adj | Wary and cautious about all circumstances and possible consequences. |
| erudite | adj | Having or showing extensive knowledge acquired through study. |
| sanguine | adj | Optimistic, especially in a difficult situation. |
| obdurate | adj | Stubbornly refusing to change one's opinion; hardened against persuasion. |
| intransigent | adj | Unwilling to change one's views or to agree to a compromise. |
| magnanimous | adj | Very generous or forgiving, especially toward a rival or less powerful person. |
| recalcitrant | adj | Having an obstinately uncooperative attitude toward authority. |
| supercilious | adj | Behaving as though one is superior to others; disdainfully arrogant. |
| posit | verb | To assume or put forward something as a fact or as a basis for argument. |
| corroborate | verb | To confirm or give support to a statement, theory, or finding. |
| substantiate | verb | To provide evidence to support or prove the truth of something. |
| refute | verb | To prove a statement or theory to be wrong or false. |
| extrapolate | verb | To extend a method or conclusion to an unknown case by assuming existing trends continue. |
| construe | verb | To interpret words or actions in a particular way. |
| promulgate | verb | To make a rule or idea widely known by formal announcement. |
| syllogism | noun | A form of deductive reasoning with two premises that necessarily yield a conclusion. |
Twenty words is a genuine starting point and a bad place to stop. Read as a list, these 20 will feel familiar within a day and be gone within a month - the same pattern the 2008 study found for its "drop from testing" conditions. The difference is whether you ever get tested on them again, in some form, after that first pass.
How to actually use a list like this
- Do not try to memorise all 20 (or 500) at once. The spacing that made retrieval work in the cited study was days apart, not one sitting. Karma Yogi's schedule is 3-4 a day for exactly this reason - it forces the spacing rather than trusting willpower to provide it.
- Test yourself on yesterday's words before adding today's. A quiz that runs word-to-meaning one day and meaning-to-word the next is doing the "repeated testing" condition from the study, not the "repeated study" one.
- Meet the word in a sentence, not alone. A word learned only as "adjective = definition" has no register attached to it - you will not recognise it as the answer choice CAT actually writes it into. Both example sentences in Karma Yogi's cards exist for this reason: one everyday, one closer to the persuasive-argument register RC passages use.
- Track whether the habit is actually holding, not just whether you downloaded the list. A PDF you opened once is not vocabulary practice; a 100-day streak of doing three words a day is.
Where this is weak
The 2008 study is about vocabulary pairs and memory, not about VARC scores. Karpicke and Roediger measured recall of Swahili-English pairs after one week, using American undergraduates. It is strong, directly relevant evidence for "retrieval beats re-exposure" as a memory mechanism. It is not a study of CAT aspirants, and it does not measure whether better vocabulary retention moves an RC accuracy percentage or a VARC score - that causal chain (better vocabulary retention → faster, more accurate passage reading → higher VARC score) is plausible but untested here.
This site's own claim about CAT's current format is a factual one, not a research finding - it rests on Karma Yogi's own exam-pattern and VARC-strategy pages, built from the founder's own 23 logged mocks and public exam documentation, not on an independent academic source. Worth checking against the current year's official CAT information brochure before you rely on it, since exam bodies do occasionally revise question types.
I am not a neutral party. Karma Yogi's WordOfTheDay feature is built around the retrieval-practice mechanic this post recommends, and I built it. The description above is accurate to what the feature does - a scheduled, spaced, bidirectional-quiz mechanic - but "this mechanism is evidenced" is a different and much safer claim than "this product improves your CAT score," which nothing here tests.
Want the full 500-word schedule rather than the 20-word sample above? See how Karma Yogi tracks CAT preparation, including the vocabulary track, or start free.
End of essay
- Anish Guruvelli