For the third consecutive year, the TISS test clashed with another biggie, this time JMET . How was the test? How did it stand in comparison to last year’s entrance. We interviewed Akanksha Sharma, Avneet Sethi, Kapil Sangvikar, Neha Seth and Dr. Sushrut Joshi who took the test today. They spoke to Pagalguy about the about the pattern, analysis and possible cut-off. Here are a few excerpts:

Part 1:

Traditionally, Part 1 of the test has been easy and the trend continued this time. The section had 50 questions distributed in three sub-sections Quantitative Ability (15 questions), Language Ability (20 questions) and General Awareness (15 questions). The time provided to solve this section was 45 minutes and for a serious aspirant, this much was more than enough to sail through the section.

The easy nature of the section coupled with the significantly lesser weightage this part of the test has in the calculation of the final score, should not affect an aspirants chances to a great extent either positively or negatively.

Quantitative ability, according to Neha, had a data interpretation set with the data provided in the form of a pie-chart. The questions were very much straightforward and could be done by observation and minimal calculations. There were questions from areas varying from profit and loss, time and work, ratios and also visual reasoning. One visual reasoning question had two identical options. It was announced at the center that marks would be awarded irrespective of the candidates response for the question.

Language ability was also very easy with one Reading Comprehension passage (6- 7 questions), a couple of parajumbles, fill-in-the-blanks questions, a set of five questions, where, missing words from a paragraph had to be filled., a question on sentence correction, questions involving converting statements from active to passive voice and vice-versa and questions involving multiple usage of a word.

General Awareness was very straightforward and a well-read candidate would be able to answer almost all the questions confidently. A few of the questions were:

• Full form of AIDS
• Scurvy is caused by
• Members of SAARC
• Article in the Constitution which deals with Jammu & Kashmir
• Vice President of India

Part 2 : (For HRM&LR; candidates)

On the whole, this part didnt see any major change as compared to last year. The only difference was the slight increase in the length of the paper and the reduced weightage to the data sufficiency questions compared to that of the last edition of TISS.

The section consisted of 75 questions which had to be solved in one hour. The overall level of difficulty was moderate and with the absence of any negative marking or sectional cut-offs, one should have attempted all the questions.

This part was divided into the following sub-sections:

Data Sufficiency:

The number of questions came down from 18 last year to around 10 in this edition. The questions were pretty much straightforward and a good aspirant could have easily attempted all of them.

Data Interpretation:

The sets were more difficult than those in part 1. Again, most of the questions did not involve lengthy calculations and could be done by observation and basic calculations. One set had a slight amount of ambiguity as it was not specified if one had to take the absolute difference or the percentage difference.

Reading Comprehension:

This was the big difference from last year. The passages were longer and the questions were a bit more difficult. There were three passages and 19 questions. More than half the questions were factual in nature and could be attempted. The only thing was that the sub-section was time consuming in nature and so, this could pull down the number of genuine attempts and hence the scores in this section. Also, few questions had five answer options and few had four answer options.

General Awareness:

This was again more difficult than that in part 1. The surprise was that, there was a data interpretation caselet amidst the GK questions. There were 15 questions in this sub-section(inclusive of the DI set).

Foundations of management:

This sub-section made up the rest of the part. The questions required a fair bit of thinking and one should have attempted these questions only after one was done with all the questions one was confident about.

Calculation of total marks:

The questions were of 1 mark each in both the parts and there were no negatives. Now, Part 1 contributes to 25% of the candidates final score and Part 2 contributes the remaining 75%. The total marks are scaled down to out of 70.

So, the number of marks contributed out of 70 will be:

Part 1: 50*0.5*0.7=17.5 out of 70

Part 2: 75*1*0.7=52.5 out of 70

Cut-off:

The overall cut-off was 41/70 last time around. This year, the general perception is that the paper was lengthier and a bit more difficult as well. So, the cut-offs can be pegged to be somewhere around 38-39 marks out of 70.