Tips to help you prepare for MAT 2014
By Sidharth Balakrishna
The MAT December 2013 exam, conducted by the All India Management Association (AIMA) was very much on expected lines in terms of number of questions: it had the usual 200 questions to be attempted in two and a half hours. There were the expected five sections with 40 questions each: Language Comprehension, Data Analysis and Sufficiency, Mathematical (quantitative) skills, Indian and Global Environment, Intelligence and Critical Reasoning.
For those attempting future editions of the MAT exam, I would advise the following preparation strategy:
- Practice reading ‘Reading Comprehensions’ passages for at least 2-3 months, about 4-5 per day.
- Go through all the rules of Grammar and make an effort to understand the contextual usage of words and phrases in English.
- For Quant, I suggest candidates practice about 20-25 questions every day. Lay particular emphasis on Arithmetic and Algebra based questions-these are quite common in MAT.
- Make an effort to improve on GK, by reading a newspaper every day and a good weekly or monthly magazine. That should help you get a good score in MAT!
Overview of MAT 2013:
In MAT 2013, the pre-specified marking system provided for 1 mark per correct answer and 1/4th of a mark as negative marking for an incorrect answer, so as to discourage wild guessing.
Candidates should remember that the overall consolidated score is generally evaluated by taking only four areas into consideration, with the fifth category, comprising questions pertaining to ‘Indian and Global Environment (GK)’ is not part of the consolidated score; this means that the maximum score in Stage-I is 160 marks. Also worth noting is that the scorecard does not provide the candidate with his total marks, what is provided is the percentile for all sections and the overall percentile.
An analysis of past MAT exams indicates that in order to obtain an overall percentile of 90 plus, the candidate should get a score of slightly above 80 marks.
Sectional Analysis
As far as the section on Language Comprehension goes, there was almost an equal number of questions pertaining to Reading Comprehension and Verbal Ability. The former were not difficult, with the stress being on a decent reading speed; questions were of a ‘direct’ nature (rather than being inference-based), which meant a proper scanning of the passages could help the candidate find the right answer.
The questions in Verbal required a decent working knowledge about English usage and functional grammar. There were questions based on the jumbled format, finding antonyms, the odd one out, fill in the blanks, para jumbles etc.
Should one look at the Mathematical/ Quantitative skills section, one sees that several questions pertaining to Arithmetic were seen. This was in line with the usual trend, that sees a number of questions from topics such as percentages, Profit and Loss, Time &Work, Time and Distance, Averages, Mixtures and Alligations). Generally these questions are not too difficult and for a candidate strong on fundamentals, they do not pose too much of an issue.
There were also a few questions in areas of ‘higher mathematics’ such as Trigonometry and Probability in the paper.
Now let us look at the Data Interpretation (DI) and Data Sufficiency (DS) section. Once again, questions in DI involved calculations based on tables and graphs. Candidates were required to calculate fractions, percentages etc. This time, questions based on pie-charts, tables, line and bar graphs were seen.
In the ‘Intelligence and Critical Reasoning’ section, while some of the questions were a little tricky, they were not too difficult. There were a few ‘distribution-based’ questions of matching students with their subjects, what respective clothes they were wearing, matching people with the houses they stayed in etc
There were also statement-conclusion and assertion-reasoning type questions to be found in this section.
The questions in the GK section were predominantly, from business, current affairs.
About the author:
The author is an alumnus of IIM Calcutta and has been employed with the world’s top marketing, management consultancy and energy firms. Besides his regular corporate job, he has written a number of books and articles for various reputed publications. His books include ‘An Introduction to CAT-Tips from an IIM Alumnus' and ‘Case Studies in Marketing’ among others. He is a faculty at several management institutes and a member of the interview panel to select MBA students at various institutes.