Pearson VUE, the testing agency that will conduct Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai’s NMAT exam, today released a demo test and an orientation video on its website.

“The demo test and video are designed to familiarise NMAT applicants with the test process including the test interface functionality,” said a Pearson VUE spokesman.

The NMAT 2011 Test Demo takes the test taker through different steps of the actual NMAT Non-disclosure agreement, tutorial and the test portion. The demo test has 15 indicative questions divided into 3 sections (Quantitative Skills and Data Interpretation; Logical Reasoning and Language Skills). The demo runs in a timed mode and provides the test taker an option to flag questions for review making the exercise a near simulation experience for the candidate.

In the actual NMAT, Pearson VUE adds, there would be 120 questions that would need to be answered in 120 minutes. “Also, the functionalities displayed in this video are representative and may not include all the functionalities of the actual NMAT computer based test,” said the spokesman.

Along with the demo test, NMAT also released a video describing the NMAT registration and test-taking process. The video contains an animation sequence featuring a typical MBA aspirant who is taken through the NMAT registration and test process by a voiceover.

Prima facie, the NMAT test interface is not too different from that of Prometric’s CAT test interface. Both interfaces display questions one by one and the test-taker can move between questions by clicking on ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ buttons. A timer on the left-top side keeps the time. Just like you can ‘mark’ questions for review in the CAT, you ‘flag’ questions in the NMAT.

However, the NMAT review screen shows questions separated by sections and also indicated the number of attempts in each section. This summary of attempts is a convenience that the CAT interface lacks.

Unlike in the CAT, you cannot reach the Review screen of the NMAT test from any question in the test. You have to reach the last question each time you wish to see the Review screen. Also for some reason, in the Review screen, I could not see any flag icons against the questions I had flagged. That seemed like a bug in what was generally a poor-quality demo created using low-quality screenshots of the actual interface.

Both the CAT and NMAT demo tests are simulations of the actual test in Adobe Flash. However, I have to say here, that the CAT demo test is much better packaged than the NMAT demo test in terms of quality and being representative of the actual test.