Exam Snapshot

This was the kind of paper where students would have come out feeling pleasantly happy with their performance since NMAT was on expected lines with no deviation in the pattern from what was specified in the bulletin. This exam tested the students more on their ability to pick the easy questions and as such was a test of speed more than that of skill and aptitude. Students with good time management skills would have fared very well in this paper.

English Usage

No. of Questions    :    40

English Usage was a scoring section with many sitters. Vocabulary based questions consisted of Antonyms and Synonyms and were of the ‘easy’ type where a score of at least 3-4 marks was possible in about 1-2 minutes. The sentence correction questions were based on some elementary rules of grammar and students could have scored 2-3 marks in less than a minute. The Para-jumble questions were tricky and would have caused problems even for those who are strong in this area. A score of 1-2 was possible in 6-7 minutes. Fill in the blanks questions were moderately difficult on account of the 2 blanks that needed to be filled. Of the three RC passages the ones on ‘Nuclear Fission’ and ‘Pollution’ were easy and a score of around 5-6 was possible in around 8-10 minutes. A par score for this section should be around 14-18 in about 28-32 min. A score in the range of 28-30 should be considered good.

Quantitative Aptitude

No. of Questions    :    40

The Quant in NMAT can be classified as ‘EASY’ where students could identify the doable questions but each of those took a lot of time to solve on account of the calculation intensive nature of the section. A majority of the questions in Quant comprised of Arithmetic but the surprise element were some out of the blue ‘Physics’ questions on Retardation, Acceleration etc. that were asked. Arithmetic had 30 questions and was of the easy-moderate difficulty level. The questions mostly focused on Time and Work, SI/CI, Time and Distance, P&L, Ratio-Proportion, Shares etc. The questions were based on the application of formula, calculation intensive but were not reasoning oriented. A score of 10-12 was possible in around 18-20 min. However the same cannot be said about the Pure Maths questions which focused on Probability, P&C and Physics (a big surprise) which were quite difficult in nature. A score of 3-4 would be possible in around 8-10 minutes. A good time allocation for this section would be around 28-30 min with a score of 13-16 being par for the course..

Reasoning

No. of Questions    :    40

This section was the most difficult of the five sections in this paper. This was on account of the numerous questions on Critical Reasoning, the very tricky and time taking Deductions and the almost impossible to crack logic puzzles. A good strategy would be to start with the Input/Output and Number series questions where a score of 3-4 in about 5-6 min was very much possible. The questions on Strong and Weak Arguments and Inferences based on a passage were of a moderate difficulty level and should have been attempted by those who are comfortable with those areas. A score of 4-5 is possible in around 7-8 minutes. The LR questions based on a passage were lengthy and were very time consuming and 1-2 in about 5-6 minutes would be considered to be a good score. All in all any attempts in the range of 18-22 with an accuracy of 75-80% would be considered good. A score of 12-16 would be par for the section and anything in the range of 26-27 in around 30-35 min would be considered good.

Data Interpretation/ Data Sufficiency

No. of Questions    :    40

There were 14 Q’s in Data Sufficiency/ Data Redundancy and 26 in Data Interpretation. This was a difficult section on account of the very tedious Data Sufficiency and Data Redundancy Q’s and the very tricky DI sets a la CAT type. Students would have found that this section was in some ways of a level of the MC’s and a notch lower than the AIMCAT’s. The Data Redundancy questions where one had to identify the statement that wasn’t required to answer the question were different though not very difficult. The DS questions with 3 statements were the ones that could have created problems for the students. A score of 4-5 in around 8-9 min was possible in this section. The DI sets on ‘Arrival Departures’ and ‘Company Expenditure’ were easy and one could have ‘maxed’ their score in these sets. However the network set on the ‘Power Company’ was of the CAT level and was quite difficult and students would have done well to avoid it. All in all this was a tough section and a score of 11-14 is par for the course and a score in the range of 23-24 in about 25-30 min would be considered good.

General Knowledge

No. of Questions    :    40

Students who had read a lot on ‘Current Affairs’ and GK would have been able to deal with this section on account of the high focus accorded to them. Attempts in the range of around 16-20 with 70% accuracy would be a good one. A score of around 10-15 in about 12-15 min would be considered to be par and anything in the range of 20+ would be considered good.

Sectional Scores

The overall cut-off is expected to be 90-92.

A score in this range should help one get a call for the MBA Full Time program from
Narsee Monjee.