Careers360 - Think higher education! MBA exam planner: From CAT to IRMA, more

MBA exam planner: From CAT to IRMA, more
Besides CAT, we look at other MBA entrance exams that will ensure a berth in a top B-School. Careers360 explains the structure of each exam.
by K Ramnath
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WITH barely six weeks to go for the first exam, the B-School entrance season is set to make or break the dreams of thousands of students this year again. As always, IRMA kick-starts the entrance race by conducting the first exam of the season on November 14.

CAT, the undisputed king of these exams has a month-long window starting October 27. The exams conducted for admissions to the other top B-Schools like XLRI, IIFT, FMS are scheduled after the CAT window, which ends on November 24.

The focus of the students will be to prepare for CAT, as apart from the IIMs, many premier B-Schools like SP Jain, MDI etc., use the CAT scores for admission to their MBA programmes. The key question on many students’ minds will be, what else to do after preparing for CAT to be successful in the other entrance exams. And they do differ substantially in their format. Let’s look at some of the major B-School entrance from last year, and discuss ways to prepare for them.

FMS 2010: With 200 questions to be answered in 2 hours, FMS needs “Speed” as the mantra. The number of questions, which was undisclosed earlier was announced well in advance last year. Besides, they key difference in last year’s paper compared to the previous year is in the RC and vocabulary section. FMS broke new ground in RC by having an RC running into 4-5 pages with 24 questions, a never seen pattern in any of the entrance examinations. Vocabulary-based questions, which were absent the year before, were added last year. The expected cut-off was around 50% overall and for each section.

IIFT 2009: IIFT has always remained an enigma to the students in terms of marking pattern, number of sections, sectional-cut offs etc. However, last year it made life relatively easy for the students by announcing that they expect students to show their competency in each of the sections, in other words, there would be sectional cut-offs. IIFT 2009 had 122 questions with the number of sections reduced to 4. The paper had a simpler marking pattern, ranging from 0.4 to 1, compared to the year before. However, a tough Quant section and a heavily calculation-intensive DI section last year meant that the exam retained its historical difficulty level.

IRMA 2009: The season opener was the right primer for the remainder of the test season. Apart from giving the students a chance to get into one of the premier B-schools, this exam also served as a reality check for the students who need some course correction for the exams to come later. With 200 questions to solve, “Speed” is in high demand for this exam. No big surprises were thrown at the students last year. As in the past, the score in the ‘Issues of Social Concern’ section will determine the fate of the students. It was quite difficult, with emphasis on trivia. A lot more emphasis was given to Vocabulary compared to Reasoning or Grammar this year.

JMET 2010: With 180 minutes duration this is the longest of the premier entrance exams. In the 2nd year of its new format, JMET last year held no surprises. It had 120 questions, with negative marking and sectional cut-offs and all these factors were announced before hand. JMET has set low sectional cut-offs and higher overall cut-offs. It gives ranks to all those who clear the sectional cut-offs which means that a large number of students (close to around 8-10 thousand) secure ranks but not all of them will be able to secure a call. Only those who secure a rank in the top 2500 will have a chance of getting calls from one or more of the IITs for their management programmes.

NMAT 2010: This was the first year of going online for the entrance exam for admission into the prestigious NMIMS. The number of questions in the online paper was down to 120, from 150 in the past. Other than this change, the exam last year was on expected lines. However, this year it is NMAT’s turn to explore uncharted areas. It announced that the exam can be taken upto 3 times. One has to wait and see how the students react to this.

SNAP 2009: Symbiosis National Aptitude Test is by far one of the most predictable of the management exams. SNAP2009 did not do anything to change this image except for the fact that the number of Qs went up from 135 to 150. SNAP 2008 had 2 mark Qs in each of the 4 sections; however, that was discontinued last year. The Analytical & Logical Reasoning section of SNAP2009 was the only one that had 2 mark Qs in it. General English, QA/ DI/ DS and General Awareness sections had 40 Qs each while the Analytical & Logical Reasoning section had 30 Qs. The paper was more focused on Verbal Ability compared to RC. This is the only exam which is not specific about the presence of sectional cut-offs. However, students should remember that just because an institute has not explicitly disclosed the sectional and overall cutoffs doesn’t mean that they do not have such cut-offs.

XAT 2010: The alphabetically and chronologically last premier entrance exam of the season, is second in stature only to the mighty CAT. It gives the students a chance to gain admission into a host of premier B-Schools. It is the only exam which tests the writing skills of the students as well. The progressive negative marking pattern used is also unique to XAT. Last year XAT 2010 was easily the toughest paper of the management exam season, similar to XAT 2009. The VA section saw a huge increase in difficulty level and tested the students not just on their ability in language but also in their logic and analytical skills. The answers were also quite difficult to arrive at, primarily because they tested interpretation, the understanding of implications, and reasoning.

The table above lists the key areas which the students need to prepare for to score well in each of the entrance exams, provided, the students have prepared for CAT. This means that over and above covering all the topics needed for CAT, the additional topics which one needs to concentrate on are listed in the table. But take note, there might be surprises. So prepare well.

An overview of the test schmes
	FMS	IIFT	IRMA	JMET	NMAT	SNAP	XAT
Quant	More focus on pure Maths, topics like Probability and Statistics	Calculation-intensive questions, questions based on application of concepts in business scenarios, Statistics and Trigonometry	—	More focus on pure Maths topics like Probability and Statistics and their application in practical scenarios like decision-making	—	—	More focus on pure Maths, topics like Probability and Statistics and their application in practical scenarios like decision- making
LDI	Input to Output questions	Calculation-intensive questions, Input to Output questions	Reasoning questions like:Strong & weak arguments, Inferences, Type of statement (Assertive etc.)	Complicated questions on deductions	Coding & Decoding, Decision-making in scenarios like selection of teams, people etc. Number series completion, Input to Output Questions	Questions on General Science, Non-verbal logic questions (pictures), Puzzles from George Summers	Questions on decision-making
VA	Direct Grammar questions, Larger RCs	Direct Vocabulary questions	—	Direct Grammar questions, Larger RCs, Direct vocabulary questions	—	Direct Grammar questions, Spellings, Direct vocabulary questions	Essay writing
Others	—	General Awareness	General Awareness	—	—	General Awareness	—

Schedule of examinations
Exam Name	Date of Exam
Aima-MAT (Feb)	First week of February-2011, Last held as paper-based: February 7, 2010, Online: February 13, 2010 onwards
AIMA-MAT (Dec)	First week of December-2010, Last held paper-based: December 6, 2009, Online: December 12, 2009 onwards
ATMA - AIMS Test for Management Admissions	December 19, 2010, 1:30 to 5:00 p.m
Common Admission Test (CAT)	October 27 to November 23, 2010
FMS (Faculty of Management Studies)	December 5, 2010, 2:00 to 5:00 p.m
IBSAT (ICFAI)	April 25, 2010 10:00 a.m to 12:00 p.m
IIFT (Indian Institute of Foreign Trade)	November 28, 2010, 10.00 a.m – 12.00 noon
IRMA (Institute of Rural Management Anand)	November 14, 2010, 09:15 a.m - 12:15 p.m
Joint Management Entrance Test [JMET]	December 12, 2010, (10 a.m to 1 p.m)
MAH-MBA/ MMS- CET	Mid February-2011, Last held on , February 21, 2010, 2:00 p.m
MICA Admissions Test (MICAT)	February 27, 2011
NMAT (Narsee Monjee MAT)	October 01, 2010 to, December 31, 2010
SNAP (Symbiosis National Aptitude Test)	December 19, 2010
TISS (TATA Institute of Social Sciences)	December 12, 2010, 10 a.m to 12 p.m
XAT (XLRI)	January 2, 2011, 10.00 to 12.30 p.m

Published on: October 06, 2010

8 Comments

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Kumar | Apr 12, 2012

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rafa | Dec 15, 2011

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mihir | Jan 10, 2011

i agree with nemidor..its an irony..we belv carrers360 will start an intiative soon so that we the students can save more bucks nd instts are tamed..properly...as they r runnin wild fr money..

vamshi | Nov 23, 2010

information given was excellent

Nemidor | Oct 26, 2010

It's a pity that every year MBA aspirants have to appear in multiple exams such as CAT,XAT etc. to apply to the top notch 20-30 B schools in the country. At an average every MBA aspirant spends around 20K just to write the MBA entrance exams excluding the the college form fee. Even when we are celebrating 50th year of IIM A we don't have a centralized exam like GMAT for all the MBA institutes. Is it because no one wants to give away the chance to mint money or no one wants to open the Pandora's Box. I request careers360 to take some steps in this direction to high lite the miseries of a CAT aspirant. God save our country.