Common Management Admission Test (CMAT) is a national level test conducted by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for admission in all management programs in AICTE approved institutions. The test was first introduced in 2012. In 2015, CMAT was conducted from 19th February 2015 to 22th February 2015. The pattern was almost the same as that of last year. However, the paper was difficult in comparison to the previous year's paper. The test has in all 100 questions to be solved, in a time span of 180 minutes.
| Time allotted | 180 minutes |
| Total no. of questions | 100 |
| Marking Scheme | Correct Answer: +4 |
| Sections | 4 |
| Number of choices | 4 |
| Negative Marking | -1 |
| Expected cut-offs* | A score of 230+ was appropriate to clear the cut off |
| Sr. No. | Sections | No. of Questions |
Difficulty Level |
| 1 | Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation (Number system, Algebra, Linear equations, Profit & Loss, Averages, Mixture & Alligations, Mensuration, Probability, Modern Mathematics, Geometry, Data Interpretation, Logs) | 25 | Difficult |
| 2 | Verbal Ability (Reading Comprehension, Idioms, vocabulary, Critical Reasoning, Para jumbles, Fill in the blanks, Sentence Correction, Analogy, Sentence rearrangement, verbal reasoning, FIJ ) | 25 | Moderate-to-Difficult |
| 3 | Analytical Reasoning (Data arrangement, Family relations, Blood relations, Linear arrangement, Coding-Decoding, Visual Reasoning, Alphabet and number series , Direction based questions, Syllogisms, ) | 25 | Moderate |
| 4 | General Awareness (Banking, Sports, Arts & Culture, Geography, History, Politics, Business) | 25 | Moderate - Difficult |
Sectional Analysis
Evaluation:This section in CMAT was of moderate to difficult level. A few questions were lengthy and time consuming. It was a mix of questions based on Algebra, Permutation and Combination, Mensuration & Geometry, Profit & loss and Numbers. There were 2 questions on calculation of remainders, one on averages (of 2 groups of persons), one on cubic equation & one on functions (Simple functions), one difficult question was on Profit & Loss, one on Mensuration, one on trigonometry, two on Co-ordinate geometry, and two on Heights & distances (with angles 75 and 15 degrees, values were given). Further, higher maths section had one question on P&C and one on logs. The two questions from DI were individual questions, one on pie chart and other with a combination of pie chart and a bar graph. A good attempt would be around 16-20 questions.
Evaluation:The section can be considered as well-balanced as it had questions covering all the conventional areas of verbal ability. There were four RC passages - the first three passages contained three questions each and the last passage contained six questions. The passages were moderate to difficult in terms of understanding and the questions based on them were tricky. So a test taker should have tried his level best, to understand Reading Comprehensions completely, in order to score well in this section. All the passages were present at the end of the verbal section. There were ten Non-RC based questions. Non RC questions contained two Fill in the blanks, one FIJ (Fact, Inference, and Judgment), and one Para - completion, one synonym, one antonym, one on identifying wrong part of a given sentence and one on arranging the given lines to form a paragraph. The sentence completion had moderate to difficult choices. Even vocabulary and analogy based questions were of good level. The sentence correction questions were based on punctuation marks and their usage. A good attempt should have been of thirteen - sixteen questions.
Evaluation:The reasoning section of CMAT was of easy to moderate level. The majority of the questions were based on Analytical reasoning, Blood Relations, Input/ output, Alpha-Numeric Series, Visual Reasoning, and True/ False Statements. This section was dominated with analytical reasoning questions. Two to three questions were from Deductive Logic and two on Data Sufficiency (one based on Syllogisms and one on Blood Relations). It was the most scoring section of this paper, although there were three or four time consuming questions as well. However, the questions could have been solved by the elimination of options and that could have been a good strategy. A good attempt should have been sixteen-nineteen questions.
Evaluation:This section, as always, was one weak area for most of the students. In this section there were plenty of questions on Constitution, Fiscal Policy, World affairs, Sports, Taxation and General Science etc. The overall break- up of the questions has been quite like the previous year's CMAT papers. Though the majority of the questions were from static general knowledge, there were eight-ten current GK questions as well. As far as the current GK questions are concerned, one could have attempted four-five of those questions, if one had read newspapers regularly. Besides the above mentioned areas, the static GK questions were from Awards, Politics and Art & Culture. Students who could attempt fifteen-seventeen questions of this section stand a pretty good chance of scoring well in this section.
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