Experts’ Speak: Expert tips to prepare for AIMS Test for Management Admission (ATMA)

By: Amit Sharma

Know the complete structure of the exam during its preparation. Allot equal time and energy for different sections i.e. Verbal Skills, Analytical Reasoning Skills, and Quantitative Skills while preparing for competitive exams like ATMA.

AIMS Test for Management Admission also known as ATMA is conducted by All India Management School at the national level, five times a year. This exam gives the opportunity to take admission in various programmes like MBA, MMS, and PGDM, and so on. The difficulty level of the exam is not at par with CAT; however, it is almost the same as MAT and other state-level competitive exams for management studies.

ATMA structure in brief

It is an online multiple-choice question exam consists of 180 questions. The exam assesses the verbal ability, quantitative skills and reasoning ability of the candidate. Like most of the exams,  ATMA also follows the ongoing approach to evaluate the candidates. For each correct answer, the candidate gets one mark and 0.25 marks are deducted in case of each wrong answer. The time allotted for this exam is three hours. There are six sections in this exam. Each section has thirty questions. The sections covered in ATMA are Verbal Skills, Analytical Reasoning Skills, and Quantitative Skills.

Preparation strategy for ATMA

Quantitative Aptitude: To prepare for the quantitative section of ATMA, go through the syllabus of Class 12 NCERT. It covers topics such as Inequality, Quadratic Equation, Pie Chart, Number Series, and Inequality.

Verbal Skills: Command over the English language with good vocabulary would help in securing good marks in this section. Candidates usually start preparing from grammar books, dictionary and newspaper, etc. From my personal experience, I would advise, instead of preparing grammar from a particular book and using a dictionary for vocabulary, the student should prepare from the books suggested by experts. Since, understanding the rules of grammar at this stage is a bit difficult and needs extra effort, which could be utilized for some other section of this paper. As far as vocabulary is concerned, using a dictionary and newspaper is a tedious task. Refer a book for competitive exams for enhancing vocabulary. For example, a book by SP Bakshi is a well-known book for competitive exams. The reason for suggesting this book is that every competitive exam has a fixed pattern and they ask questions on similar lines every year. Books designed specifically for competitive exams consider this fact and present the content accordingly, this makes easier for students to prepare for any competitive exam.

Analytical Reasoning: For this section, a lot of practice is required by each student after understanding the concepts and learning the formulae, like Mathematic.

Basic Tips to prepare for ATMA

Following are the basic tips to keep in mind while preparing for ATMA:

1. Practise previous year exam papers is one of the most important tips for preparation of any competitive exam. This would help students in understanding the pattern of the exam, which in turn would help in time management during the exam.
2. In order to cover all the subjects, the student should start revision one month prior to the scheduled exam
3. Avoid starting a new topic before the exam; this would lead to confusion while preparation and would reduce the confidence level as well.
4. A student might find it difficult to prepare a particular topic during the last days of the preparation; in this scenario, skip the topic and revise other topics and save time in hand.

About the Author:

Amit Sharma is serving as an Assistant Professor at Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, since 2013. With an experience of seven years in academics, Sharma conducts faculty development programmes at school level and management development programmes at organisational level across the industry.