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Friday 16 August 2013

Cracking the MBA with comboupdates.com, details of all the major MBA entrance exams schedules and patterns

Cracking the MBA with comboupdates.com, details of all the major MBA entrance exams schedules and patterns

You may have read my article giving out websites of various boards giving out the SSC results and another one on the best online coaching classes to crack the CAT for IITs, this article is another one in the series.

Master of Business Administration or MBA as its commonly know is a key to successful career and most sought after degree among the young students now a days.  But do you know details and dates of the various MBA entrance exams that are going to take place in this year starting September 2013.  If not then read on :


The CMAT will be held on September 26 to September 30 (first attempt).  The Common Management Admission Test (CMAT) is an online computer-based test conducted by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), India. 

It is a key to MBA admission as it  is a national-level admission test for all management programmes approved by AICTE which has over 3500 AICTE approved Business Schools (B-schools) which in turn mean that over 4 lakh seats are available for the taking if you crack this one.  Among the premier institutions which accept the CMAT students are JBIMS, Sydenham, KJ Somaiya, Welingkar, IMT and GIM, among others.

PAPER PATTERN
The test has four sections namely, Quantitative Techniques & Data Interpretation; Logical Reasoning; Language Comprehension and General Awareness.    The total time allotted to each student is 180 minutes and in that time you can move back and forth between the four sections. Each section will have 25 questions which you have to answer however there is no timing for individual sections. So it is best desirable that you keep Language Comprehension and General Awareness for the last because they depend on your General Knowledge and Language abilities.  

MARKING SCHEME 4 marks for each correct answer, and -1 for an incorrect one.  Remember CMAT deducts marks for a wrong answer so if you don't know the answer for a particular question it is better to leave it alone.

RANKING: CMAT will rank its takers based on both the overall test score. Those with high overall scores will get better ranks.  If there is a tie then the rank is  decided based on individual sections.

CMAT has been designed to rank all the candidates who appear in the test. AICTE has designed the test in such a way that most of the students will make the cut but only suitable students will make it to the merit list.  


NMAT is conducted by Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies for admissions to business management course which will be held in from October 5 to December 18.  The students who crack the NMAT will gain entrance into NMIMS B-schools in Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

NMAT is a longish test which takes place over 75 days.  It also allows students to choose a test date based on their comfort level. This is the only Admission Test that allows students take two retakes after the first attempt to improve their scores, if they want to. The best of three scores (considering sectional cut-offs) are considered.

PAPER PATTERN
Every candidate who takes the NMAT gets a unique question paper, but of the same difficulty level. The test has three sections - Language Skills, Quantitative Skills and Logical Reasoning. All three sections are individually timed. Language Skills has 32 questions to be attempted in 22 minutes, Quantitative Skills has 48 questions in 60 minutes and Logical Reasoning has 40 questions in 38 minutes.

MARKING SCHEME : NMAT doesnt deduct marks for wrong answers.

RANKING: Students should note that it is important for them to perform relative to other students in each of the three sections. Section-wise scores and overall scores are used to shortlist candidates for the second stage of the selection process.

RESULTS : The NMAT results are generally declared within 5 weeks after the conclusion of the exams.


This admission test is conducted by the Symbiosis International University and will be held on the third Sunday of December which is 15th December for the current year 2013.

This is a common written test for admission into all postgraduate institutes under the Symbiosis International University. In addition to the written test, students need to apply to these individual institutes to qualify for admissions.  There are about 13 colleges which accept the SNAP scores, including SIBM Pune and SCMHRD. The SNAP is an offline, pen-paper test.

PAPER PATTERN
The paper lasts 120 minutes, with four sections - General English, Quantitative, Data Interpretation and Data Sufficiency, General Awareness and Analytical and Logical Reasoning.  

MARKING SCHEME
The number of questions in Analytical and Logical Reasoning are 30 (2 marks each) and in other three sections it is 40 (1 mark each). In each section, 25% of the marks are deducted for marking incorrect answer.


XAT is conducted by former Xavier Labour Relations Institute now called XLRI and will be held on January 5, 2014.  
Cracking the XAT will get you admission in the prestigious XLRI School of Business Management and Human Resources.  Some other prominent institutions which accept XAT scores are SP Jain, GIM, XIMB etc. 

PAPER PATTERN:
XAT 2013 was a three-hour long exam, divided into an initial section of two hours and twenty minutes, with multiple-choice questions testing Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation, Verbal Ability and Analytical Reasoning and Decision Making and a final section of 40 minutes which contained General Awareness questions and an essay question.  The XAT is an offline, pen-paper test.

MARKING SCHEME:

XAT follows a unique marking scheme with changing format which can range from incremental negative marking to differential marking schemes to different number of questions in each section. It is the only test which includes questions on decision-making skills, which makes the XAT one of the more challenging management entrance exams. Even so, students found last year's paper quite easy. XAT had introduced a General Awareness section last year but this wasn't used in the calculation of the final percentile. 

So there you go, I have listed all the influential and relevant data for each of the Admission tests.  If I have missed something, do leave the information in the comment field so that you can help other students.

And Best of Luck friends


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2 comments

  1. Oh Thanks Vijay for this info.. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wish all this was available in the last decade, Thank You and will surely pass this extremely useful info to other MBA aspirants.

    ReplyDelete

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