On the whole the level of the test wasmoderate to tough. The test contained many moderate and difficult questions and hence the important factor was selection of appropriate questions to attempt.Quantsection was tougher than reasoning section. Verbal section wasmoderate. The key to getting a good percentile was time management and selection of questions.
The first passage (1-4) underscores the importance of adaptation and change for healthy cultural development of a society and its people. He in fact criticizes the over-enthusiasm for preserving old age tradition only because of their longevity. He attributes the prevalence of these cultures to their relevance and applicability to the present and not to their superiority as the God’s way or tradition. The level of difficulty of this passage was easy to moderate. The second passage (5-8) simply expounds on the scientific discovery of IRBP gene transfer from ancient bacteria which is helpful in explaining how human eye evolved over the million years. And the most amazing thing about this evolution is that, vertebrate ancestors acquired the original gene from bacterial DNA by horizontal gene-transfer rather than the usual vertical one. This passage had all easy questions, except one (8). In the third passage (9-12),author tries to explain that it’s not just the efficiency that decides the success or failure of alternative technological designs, there are other important factors too. Though mass resistance to a great extent is unavoidable, but the constructivists suggest many possible configurations of resources can yield a successful working device to increase efficiency. This passage was moderate to difficult in level. The author of the fourth passage (13-16) highlights the sorry condition of education and employment sector of India. It’s ironical that on one hand business is booming in Education industry and on the other hand quality of education is declining; rendering the job seekers and the employers helpless. He stressed upon the importance of skilled knowledge and practical education in schools and colleges. The questions (13-16) were a mix of easy, moderate and difficult in level. Questions (17-19) were based on Sentence Rearrangement and these questions were all easy, moderate and difficult. Questions (20-22) were Para-summary questions and were a mix of easy to moderate level questions. Questions 23 and 24 were based on ‘fit the sentence appropriately’ in the paragraph. This included one moderate and one difficult question. Overall, the verbal section of this mock was more on moderate level of difficulty with an expected level of 85% of accuracy with 90+ percentile if a candidate attempts around 16 to 18 questions.
The difficulty level of DI was moderate. There were 7 easy, 7 medium and 6 difficult questions in this section. The third blocks (Teachers from five famous colleges from five countries) was easiest and was must do and by attempting a couple of questions from rest of the blocks, one could have fetched a very good percentile.
In this section, one could have fetched 90+ percentile by attempting 8-11 questions with approx. 80 % accuracy.
Students found this section tougher than DI this time. The Quantitative section had 5 easy, 8 medium and 9 difficult questions. Selection of questions was important to crack this section. There were questions from varied topics like Geometry, Basic Numbers, Basic Algebra, Progression and Series, Arithmetic (Percentages/Time and Work/Mixtures/Percentages/SI-CI/Ratios). A good student could have scored 90+ percentile by attempting around 7-10 questions with approx. 80% accuracy.
The overall feel of the paper was moderate to tough, though for the students who knew how to manage the time available to the best i.e., not wasting much time in lengthy and difficult questions, could easily manage an overall good attempt. Quant section was tougher than reasoning section Verbal section was moderate. Most of the questions in quant section were from Arithmetic, Algebra, Number system and Geometry. For verbal section, one should have good reading skills as there were 4 RC’s and also a few questions based on paragraph summary. One must focus on contextual vocabulary as well to understand and score well in RC passages. Questions such as sentence rearrangement and finding the best placement questions require analysis and knowledge of tricks to answer the questions. It is not advisable to spend too much time on TITA questions especially in the verbal section.
