CMAT 2017 Students Reaction: Quant tough; Overall exam difficulty level moderate

CMAT 2017 was conducted on January 28, 2017. The exam commenced at 9.30am at various cities of India. While some students were confident about their exam preparation, there were few who were nervous. 

Once the exam was conducted, Shiksha got in touch with CMAT expert, Mikin Shah. “Like every year, this year too, the level of monitoring and moderation was relaxed. Students were seen coming into the exam centre even after half an hour of exam commencement,” he said. Adding to this he said, "This year Quant was a big surprise as it did not hold any usual mathematics questions – rather, this time the focus was more on modern Maths."

Shiksha spoke to a few students who appeared for the exam to know about the difficulty level of the exam. Here is what they had to say: 

Vaibhav said, “This was my second attempt at CMAT. I would say that if I keep Quant aside, this year’s paper difficulty level was the same as last year. The LR section had easy questions but the Quant section had a couple of tough questions. Furthermore, the surprising factor was that there were numerous questions based on modern Maths. Talking about the English section, it was of moderate difficulty. Around 15 questions were based on pure Reading Comprehension and each passage had 6 questions. For me, the most challenging section was the General Knowledge section. There were numerous questions based on Govt. Schemes, and I found this section tough as I got stuck in most of the questions.

Surabhi attempted CMAT for the first time. She said, “I was very nervous before the exam, but when I started attempting the questions, I started gaining confidence. I have done well in the English and GK sections, but am a little disappointed with my performance in the Reasoning section – I found this section extremely difficult. Moreover, around 1-2 questions were just not doable. 

Vaanya also spoke to Shiksha and this is what she had to say, “I would say that the paper was tough to moderate. For me, the easiest section was Logical Reasoning as I had prepared well for it. There were numerous questions based on arrangements, but I was expecting questions on family relationships and coding and to my surprise no questions based on these were a part of the exam paper. GK was of moderate difficulty for me. Any student who would have known about the happenings of the past 6 months would have done well in this section. Marks will tell how I have performed.” 

This was Deepak’s second attempt at CMAT. “The exam was of moderate difficulty level. The easiest section for me was General Awareness and the most difficult section was Quant. The Quantitative Ability and Language Comprehension sections were of moderate to easy difficulty level. The questions in the beginning were tough followed by questions having moderate to easy difficulty level. The Reasoning section saw lots of questions based on clocks – this is something I wasn’t expecting. Overall the exam paper was of tough to moderate difficulty level.”

Vasundhra found the General Knowledge section difficult. This is what she had to say about the exam paper, “This was my first attempt at CMAT. Except for the GK section, the difficulty level of all the other sections was moderate to easy. The GK section was tough for me. However, if I talk about what I had prepared in the mocks, Quant held a lot of surprise for me.”