MHT-CET to be held on March 11th

By - Apoorva Palkar

MH-CET scheduled to be held on 11th March 2012 has a lot of hopes and aspirations of thousands who have taken painstaking efforts for the test. The Maharashtra CET is probably the only MBA test for admissions into colleges at the state-level, which has a national appeal as well.

This is because of the prestigious institutes in state of Maharashtra that have a presence in the listing at national level at the top. Since these institutes are counted among the top ones in India, students across the country give it a shot and try to secure admission under the outside Maharashtra state candidates' quota and those within the state appear under the within state category. Here is an overview on how to crack the MH-CET.

MH-CET 2011 was tougher than previous years as the pattern of the exam remained same but the level of difficulty of the exam was elevated. The real answer to many questions were none of these ;thus a lot of time spent by students in assessing the answer and finally understanding that none was the answer. A synergy and similarity was found in the questions of XAT and IIFT last year. Students may look at these question papers along with MH-CET papers to assess the paper pattern for CET.

Quantitative Ability

Overall the questions were predictable as per the papers of previous years. The topics in this section were: permutations and combinations (one easy question), Brackets Order Division Multiply Add Subtract (BODMAS - 10 easy questions), arithmetic (seven easy questions) and geometry / mensuration (two easy questions).

An Overview of MHT-CET 2010

Visual Reasoning

In the first topic, there were five moderate difficulty level questions (five sets) with two elements per set. In four out of five sets, both elements shared the same relationship - figure the odd one out. In the second topic, there were five easy to moderate difficulty level questions in the first and last set fixed as a part of a series. Out of the five sets, one set did not belong to the series. One needed to figure this out.

In the third topic, five sets (comprising 10 difficult questions) were given and one figure set was missing. In the fourth topic, five difficult problem figures and five answer figures were given.

Verbal Reasoning

The topic-wise break up of questions was: Courses of Action (five moderate difficulty level questions), syllogisms - Venn diagrams (five easy questions), cause and effect and strengthening / weakening an argument (six easy to moderate difficulty level questions), conclusions, inferences and assumptions (nine easy to moderate difficulty level questions).

Analytical Reasoning

In Analytical reasoning, there were two sets with eight questions that were quite easy.

Logical Reasoning

This test area was a mixed bag with the difficulty level of the questions ranging from easy to difficult. In this section there were five moderate to high difficulty level questions on wrong number series, five moderate difficulty level questions on alpha-numeric series, seven miscellaneous questions of moderate difficulty level, 10 moderate difficulty level questions on eligibility criteria, five difficult questions on symbol-based inequality, five difficult questions on number, letter and symbols series with conditions and five moderate difficulty level questions on input and output.

Data Interpretation and Data Sufficiency

Unlike last year, most of the graphs / tables had very easy questions. The topic-wise break up of questions was : line charts (five easy questions), tables (10 moderate difficulty level questions), bar graphs (five easy questions), and data sufficiency (five easy questions).

English

This test was quite similar to the papers of yesteryears. There were 15 easy to moderate difficulty level questions on RC, 10 moderate difficulty level questions on Cloze, five easy questions on paired fill-in-the-blanks, five moderate difficulty level questions on parajumbles and 15 easy questions on grammar.

Final Tips:

At times the first few questions may appear to be difficult for some students .The best action in such a situation is start from 51 onwards instead of trying to attempt questions that may break your confidence. Students have to be aware that you can make maximum 159/160 genuine attempts out of 200 for a student realistically. Based on your understanding of your strength attempt the right sections. Passage reading may require concentrated effort in reading it is best to attempt it after giving a try on other sections where are confident.

Dr Apoorva Palkar is the Chairperson of ATMA.

Other interesting read:

- "We are in no mood to scrap ATMA"