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MAT Analysis - February 2009
The scene outside the MAT
examination centers on 2nd February, 2009 was in marked contrast to
a similar situation on the first Sunday of December 2008. Yes, that
was the day of the December MAT and hopes were yet alive, all other
tests were yet to be conducted. This Sunday last, the picture had
altered considerably for many MAT aspirants. Where earlier in
December, they had been considering the MAT as another option, this
time around they were possibly more serious in their approach,
having tasted failure in the preceding examinations, or what were
even worse, near-misses. These near-misses are always, the more
bitter to swallow.
For most MAT aspirants, the test conducted on 2nd February was, therefore, a make or break situation, if they wanted to gain admission to a moderate to average B-school from the approximate 200 colleges taking part in the examination. The pattern of MAT was as usual total 200 jumbled questions with 40 questions from each test area; Reading Comprehension and English Usage (RC and EU), Quantitative Aptitude (QA), Logical Reasoning (LR), Data Interpretation and Data Sufficiency (DI and DS) and General Knowledge (GK). The time allowed to solve the paper was 150 minutes. Four alternatives were provided for each question. It was declared in the instruction provided in the paper at the last page that each correct answer will carry one mark, while there was a negative marking of 0.25 marks for each incorrect answer. Total thirteen different sets of test booklets were available there. Overall level of difficulty of the paper was moderate to easy, although the difficulty level of GK questions was higher than the December 2008 MAT. The ideal strategy to solve the paper should be - in first 10-15 minutes scan all the GK questions and attempt 12 to 15 questions on which you are absolutely sure. After that the student should have started picking up the easy, solvable questions from the start of the paper. The questions from Coding-Decoding, Numbers, Fractions, Arithmetic, Para Jumbles, Fill in the Blanks, Analogies, Data Arrangement, Syllogism and the DI sets containing the Pie Charts etc. could have been included in this round. 15-17 questions from LR, 10-12 questions from GK, 13-15 questions from QA, 13-15 questions from DI & DS and 6-8 questions from EU should have been attempted first. After the first round of attempts, the student should have attempted the tougher questions like those on DI sets containing tables and Bar graphs, questions from Mensuration, Height and Distance, some questions of mixtures, work and time, the strong and weak argument questions, questions on cubes, reading of RC passages, sentence correction question etc. can be done in this round. Ideally, a student who was good at "selecting which questions to solve" could have attempted 65 to 70 questions in the first hour itself. 
The questions from the topics
like Numbers, Fractions, SI and CI, Time Speed and Distance
(including Trains), Races, Averages, Percentages, Work and Time
(including Pipes and Cisterns), Profit and Loss, Mixtures,
Profit and Loss, Calendar, Ratio and Proportion, Mensuration,
Height and Distances, Probability, Permutation and Combination,
were the representative of QA area. The questions were of
moderate level of difficulty. For a well prepared student on an
average not more than 1-1.5 minutes would be required to solve
each question from this area.
To check the students' logical and analytical abilities there were questions on Direction Sense, Calendar, Relations, Linear and Matrix arrangements, Strong and Weak Argument, Coding-Decoding and Cubes. Excluding some questions based on Direction Sense and Data Arrangement all other questions were of easy level. One could attempt 28-30 questions in a time span of 25 to 30 minutes from this area. There were four RC passages based on which a total of 20 questions were asked. The themes of the RC passages were: Terrorism, Small and Medium enterprises in economy, Life of Henry Ford and Bird Eggs. The passages were pretty lengthy and 5 questions were asked on each passage. The questions asked were of moderate level of difficulty. From EU area there were questions on Fill in the Blanks - two blanks (3), Identify the Best way of Writing (4), Analogies (4), Para Jumble (4) and Sentence Correction (5). The questions were not too difficult even for those students who claim they are weak in English. The GK questions were a mix of easy and moderately tough questions. The questions were on dynamic as well as traditional GK. There were questions on Economics, Current Affairs, Awards and Prizes, and important Days. Since this area was only to obtain minimum marks and that too which are not included in the calculation of the overall score, an attempt of 15-18 questions would have been sufficient (with at least 75% accuracy) to achieve the cut-off marks in this area. Overall a score of 100+ (out of 160 i.e. excluding GK) should prove good enough in getting admission into some of the top B- Schools allied to the examination. Courtesy - Sandeep Manudhane, Founder Chairman - PT Education Education News
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