Cat / clat 2024

How did everyone find the Classical Language Aptitude Test this year?
I felt like it was really different from any of the past papers I had done, especially in section A. Did anyone else find this?
I also felt like the invented language was really a missed opportunity for me to demonstrate what I knew about declensions and gendered language, as some of the past papers allowed me to explore - oh well.
Overall, though, I thought the exam went really well and I only struggled with one of the sentence translations in section B.

Reply 1

lilith402

I thought this too!
I was so different from the practice exams, especially because of the completely different mark distributions for the questions.
Also, I found it a bit odd that the language used in Section A was not named, as I would have loved to know what it was (something vaguely romance-y, like Romanian maybe?)
But I do agree that it would have showcased ability a bit better if the invented language had some more in-depth rules to follow, e.g. different genders.
Overall I thought it went really well too, I appreciated having less questions than on the practice exams as this meant I had an extra 15 minutes to check over everything instead of doing Section C.

Reply 2

mimishaaw

any advice for preparing to sit one for cambridge? i have my CLAT next friday and am struggling to develop a specific method that works for all new languages/ approaches to the paper. would appreciate any help!

Reply 3

lilith402

Original post by mimishaaw

I would highly recommend doing any practice exams if there are any online on the Cambridge website, those have been so useful in getting the hang of what type of questions they are likely to ask you.
It was mainly the practice papers, to be honest, as other than knowing the technique for the questions, there isn't any set material on the exam: they are assessing how well you can recognise patterns and problem-solve. It's a little like maths in that way.
I'm lucky in the sense that English is my second language, so I already have some language-learning ability, which has helped a bit I think.
Although I'm pretty sure there is no set exam for Cambridge, I know a couple of people who are both applying and teaching there and they have said that they assess using a shortened CLAT-like question during interviews. (This may be Corpus Christi centric, so I apologise if that is the case)

Reply 4

samjble

Original post by meadowwulff

very late replying, but i do have some thoughts! i sat one of the old style of CLAT papers a couple years ago and can definitely understand why they made the changes they did, because in my year the average score for an offer was like ~90%, with the general average score being like 85% (this is probably why they are changing it around a bit and cutting out stuff like Section C, to make a more meaningful difference for the percentages of successful applicants, i think?).

as for the test itself, i found it about as challenging as the first time round, but the distribution of that challenge was significantly altered. to me, section A felt a lot easier and they were definitely testing for Latin capabilities there, definitely agree with it being an unnamed romance language. Section B felt a bit harder than I remember but all in all i think it went ok! also agree with being a little upset about not being able to show off declension skills, i spent the time since my last application learning greek and i feel like i didn’t get to demonstrate much of that :frown:

Best of luck to everyone on this thread in the rest of your applications!

edit: in retrospect, i believe the invented language was gendered, though it was not made particularly obvious (likely intentionally)