NMAT 2015: Understanding the exam pattern

by Tarun Malik

NMAT 2015 will be held over a three month window from October 7 to December 20, 2014. The scores of the test will be used for admission to SVKM's Narsee Monjee Institute Of Management Studies (School Of Business Management).

Every year, although the difficulty level of this paper may vary from slot to slot, the overall test experience has remained more or less remained uniform till date. This makes it possible for you to approach NMAT with a well-formulated strategy aimed at maximising your score.

Here are eight tips for NMAT 2015 preparation strategy.

The structure of the paper comprise of three major areas – Language skills, Quantitative skills and logical reasoning.
Look at the break-up of NMAT 2013 to get a feel of what the basic structure of the paper is and how it is supposed to be dealt with.

There were five options per question.

Language Skills
The questions in this section were of moderate difficulty level. There were 32 questions to be done in 22 minutes and therefore speed was the most challenging thing in this section. The two RC passages were around 400 words each and the questions were largely inferential in nature. This was easily the most challenging portion of the paper and most students struggled to complete the section. There were a lot of fill in the blanks questions of three major types. One-blank and two-blank FIBs with moderately difficult words and several FIBs that required students to fill in appropriate prepositions which were presented in a jumbled format. Para-jumbles were a mix of four and five-sentence types and were easy. Synonyms and antonyms featured moderately difficult words. Sentence correction questions were easy and mostly revolved around subject verb agreement errors, idiomatic errors, pronoun errors and preposition errors. There was one moderate analogy question in the bag.

Quantitative Skills
This was a moderate difficult section with the usual mix of easy-moderate questions on Number Systems, Percentage, Ratio/Proportion, Profit and Loss, Average, Time-Speed-Distance, Work/Time, Mixture & Solution/Alligations, Simple/Compound interest, Mensuration, Geometry, Algebra(Linear/Quadratic Equation), Probability, Permutations and Combinations, and Coordinate Geometry.
Data Interpretation questions were especially calculation-intensive and time-consuming and featured table-based as well as bar, line graph questions. Some sets had multiple graphs as well. Speed would have been the determining factor for scoring in DI questions. Data Sufficiency questions were on the tougher side.

Logical Reasoning

This was a moderate-difficult section with the usual mix of questions including several questions on Critical Reasoning (including the usual mix of strengthening, weakening, assumption questions), Calenders, Syllogisms, Statement Conclusions, Course of Action, Arrangements, Blood Relations, Coding-decoding. The caselets in LR were time-consuming.

I would like to close this article by saying that a student’s thorough preparation for CAT can very well take care of other competitive exams like TISS, IIFT, MAT, CMAT, NMAT, etc.

About the author

Tarun Malik is the Product Head - MBA at Career Launcher.