Detailed Analysis of NMAT 2008

NMAT, the last test of this year, could boost the spirits of the test-takers. It was aneasy test with no surprise element. Like last year, it was a five-option test with 150questions. The division of the sections and the names of the sections also remainedsame. All the three sections were worth an attempt.

Structure of the Test

Total Duration of the Exam120 minutesTotal number of questions150 Number of choices per question5Marks per question

Negative marks per question1/4

Number of Sections3

Section NoAreas testedNo. of Questions

ILanguage Skills40IIQuantitative Skills, Data Analysisand Data Sufficiency60IIIIntelligence and Logical Reasoning50

Section I –Language Skills

The Language Skills section comprised questions on Verbal Ability (25 questions) andReading Comprehension (15 questions). In NMAT 2007, the weightage given to VerbalAbility and Reading Comprehension was same, i.e., 20 questions of each area. Thistime, in the verbal ability set, the focus was more on vocabulary.

Question Types

No of Questions

RC passage (Transparency as an important element of progress)15Fill in the Blanks (paragraph) 10Jumbled Paragraph 5Sentence Correction (Highlighted) 5Contextual Usage (synonym)5

Reading Comprehension:

Unlike last year, where there were 2 passages on which 2questions were based, NMAT 2008 had only one passage with 15 questions

Thepassage was an excerpt from

Ignited Minds by our former President Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam

. The excerpt was somewhat edited. Out of 15 questions, 5 were word-based ones and rest 10 were a mix of direct and inferential questions. Overall, the

level of difficulty of the questions was not high. The words for which one had to lookfor synonyms/antonyms were quite familiar ones like yardstick, enormous,transparency, ignite and target. The options also gave away the correct answers.In one of the questions, the word ‘incident’ was wrongly spelt as ‘incidence’ andanother questions was ambiguous because in the entire passage the author says thatIndia is still a developing country whereas one of the questions asked the test taker toidentify developments (mentioned in the options) that have transformed India into adeveloped country. There was undoubtedly an option as ‘data inadequate’ but thequestion contradicted the views of the author.

Verbal Ability:

Fill in the Blanks

- A small passage (again an excerpt from

Ignited Minds

) wasgiven with ten blanks. The passage was easy to read and arriving at the correctoptions was not much of a problem because none of the options were close and thecontext was easy to interpret.

Jumbled Paragraph –

In this set, six sentences were jumbled up followed by fivequestions asking ‘which is the first sentence, second sentence and so on. This set wasa little tricky because two sentences could start the sequence. The easiest way of solving would have been to link the other sentences and then decide on the firstsentence.

Sentence Correction

- The 5 questions on sentence correction tested basic conceptsof grammar such as pronoun error, conditionals, parallel construction, double negativesetc. This set was a ‘must attempt’ because it was very easy.Contextual Usage – All the 5 questions in this set were very easy. Five sentences weregiven with one word that was highlighted and one had to identify a synonym for theword. The words were: lauded, repercussion, pernicious, obsolete and camaraderie.

In the Language Skills section one could attempt 30 to 35 questions with apossible score of 25+.Section II – Quantitative Skills, Data Analysis and Data Sufficiency

In this section, there were questions testing Quantitative Skills, Data Analysis andData Sufficiency.

Quantitative SkillsTopics Number of questions

BODMAS 15Series (Find the wrong term) 5Approximation 5Compound & Simple Interest 2Investment 1Fractions 2Square Root 1Percentage 4Questions basedon BODMAS and Series were easy but time consuming. Some were very elementary.One should have solved Approximation based problems. Among BODMAS and Series,BODMAS should have been attempted.

Data Analysis

Data InterpretationNo. of questions

Table 1 - Number of enrolled in hobby classes5Caselet – Male & Female ratio in an organization5Table 2- Number of students passed/Failed in various standards5Bar graph - Number of students appearing for CEET5

The questions based on Data Interpretation were on averages, ratios and percentages.All the questions involved simple calculation. One should have selected any of theTable based set and Caselet while attempting this section. ‘ None of these’ as an option in many question did not allow one to approximate orguess the answer.

Data Sufficiency