The first thought which came to an aspirant’s mind having finished the Joint Management Entrance Test (JMET 2011) was that it was easier compared to last time. But, with the various coaching institutes coming out with their keys, aspirants realised that it was not significantly easier than last year and the cut-offs wont shoot up by a huge margin. We spoke to Kinjal Das, Abhishek Mandliya and Priyabrata Bisoi, who took the paper today. Below is what they said about the paper.

Verbal Communication (30 questions):

Over the last few years, the vocabulary part has had a heavy part allotted to it but this time, it went slightly beyond that. There were 3 questions on synonyms, 2 on antonyms, a couple of questions on idioms, couple of questions on analogies, fill-in-the-blanks questions (both word and phrase ones) and a question on identifying the incorrect spelling made the vocabulary part. There was one parajumble which was a must attempt question. One with a decent vocabulary could have easily cracked the fill-in-the-blanks questions. The idioms were tough. There was a question on conversion of a part of sentence from active voice to passive voice.

There were four Reading Comprehension passages. There was a good mix of both factual and inferential questions. One of the passages(Buchanans constitutional economics) was tougher than the others. The passages were the regular crisp, dense passages one has come to associate with JMET.

One could have easily attempted around 20 questions with a good accuracy in this section in around 30 minutes owing to the short nature of the Reading Comprehension passages. One could have easily scored around 15 marks if one were prepared.

Quantitative Aptitude:

As Abhishek put it, this section had approximately 10 easy questions, 10 moderate questions and 10 tough questions. A good candidate could have easily done 18-20 questions in this section with just about a few errors. The difficulty level was moderate to difficult and the questions covered many areas ranging from trigonometry to ratios to geometric progressions to functions and a couple of time-speed-distance questions. There was a caselet on linear programming of two questions, typical of JMET papers. There were a significant number of questions on permutations and combinations and probability. The easier questions were interspersed between others requiring knowledge of higher maths and selecting them and solving these questions was of paramount importance.

Logical Reasoning:

One question on syllogisms, two on assumptions and a critical reasoning question were a small part of what was largely a section dominated, for the lack of a stronger word, by the logical reasoning caselets. Almost everything in this section was doable and upto a third of the total marks could have been scored from this section. Only one caselet (the murderer one) could have caused bit of a confusion if one had assumed that the murderer was devoid of a profession.

Overall a very ‘doable’ section considering the huge amount of time available on disposition. A number of people have scored 30/30 as this story gets published and there will be more people achieving the feat. 20-25 and above was definitely gettable in this section for a good aspirant.

Data Interpretation:

Again not that difficult. Short caselets which didnt require much interpretation but calculations. The section was similar to last year. A couple of caselets were a bit heavy on calculations. The Venn diagram caselet was easy and should have been attempted. The set on Indias imports and exports was also easy and could be done. The six questions on pie-charts were also easy and could be done.

A good candidate could have attempted around 20-25 questions with a very good accuracy.

Overall, even though earlier reports said that the paper was significantly easier than JMET 2010, as the dust settled, it became apparent that the cut-off might rise but not by a big deal. The cut-off for IIT-Bombay can be somewhere around 80-82 marks and DMS IIT-Delhis cut-off can be projected somewhere in the higher 70s.