Management Aptitude Test or MAT is one of the most popular exams in our country. It is the gateway to a large number of B-Schools. MAT is conducted four times in a year.
Students have a choice to take either paper based or computer based MAT. The last MAT of the year 2015 was conducted on Sunday, December 6 in paper pencil based mode and
Saturday, December 12, 2015 onwards in computer based mode. Let's see an overview and detailed section wise analysis of December 2015 MAT.
December 2015 MAT - Overview
The pattern of the December 2015 MAT exam remained the same as that of the previous years.
- There were 5 sections of 40 questions each.
- Every question had 4 options.
- There was negative marking of 1/4th mark for wrong answers.
- The overall difficulty level of the exam was slightly higher than that of the previous MAT exams. While most of the questions were easy to moderate in terms
of level of difficulty, a few were difficult as well.
| Section |
Subject Area |
Number of Questions |
| Section I |
Language Comprehension |
40 |
| Section II |
Intelligence and Critical Reasoning |
40 |
| Section III |
Mathematical Skills |
40 |
| Section IV |
Data Analysis and Sufficiency |
40 |
| Section V |
Indian and Global Environment |
40 |
Language Comprehension
Out of total 40 questions, there were 20 Verbal Ability and Verbal Reasoning questions and 20 Reading Comprehension questions. As far as Reading Comprehension is concerned,
there were 5 passages, all with 4 questions each. Three passages were about 500 words long and two were about 300 words long.
Most of the questions were on the easier side except Para jumbles, which had close options and were of moderate to difficult level of difficulty. Following is a detailed breakup of this section:
| Topics |
No. of Questions |
| Reading Comprehension |
5 passages with 4 questions
each - 20 |
| Para-jumbles |
4 |
| Fill in the blanks - word pair |
4 |
| Part of the sentence has an error |
4 |
Four different ways of phrasing the complete
sentence |
4 |
| All of the following options are true except one |
4 |
Students who have scored well in this section had an attempt of 25-30 questions; with about 85 % Accuracy.
Intelligence and Critical Reasoning
Generally, this section is a mixture of Verbal Reasoning and Logical Reasoning questions. In Verbal Reasoning, there were 4 questions each on Statement/ Conclusion and Assertion/
Reason types. The LR questions included some question types that were not included in the past frequently. There were 5 questions on Venn diagrams and 4 questions on cubes.
The emphasis on arrangement type of questions was low in this exam.
A good time allocation for this section would have been 30-35 minutes in which 23-25 questions could be solved easily.
Mathematical Skills
The Mathematical Skills section was dominated by Arithmetic and word based problems. A surprising feature was the difficult questions on Permutation & Combination, involving the Theory of
Partitioning. There were three questions on trigonometry involving angles of elevation and depression. A number of questions (especially on arithmetic) involved lengthy calculations. As a
whole this section was one notch more difficult than the Mathematical Skills section in MAT exams in the past.
A good strategy would have been to attempt about 20-22 questions in 35-40 minutes with 85% accuracy.
Data Analysis and Sufficiency
For Data Interpretation, the selection of questions was very critical as a couple of the sets were easy but quite a few questions involved calculations and were time-consuming.
The 8 questions based on Data Sufficiency were on the easier side and should have been attempted. There were 8 questions on Quantitative Comparison. These questions were on the
easier side and should not have been left. The Following table shows the break-up of the questions in this section.
| Topics |
No. of
Questions |
| Four bar charts showing responses to a survey |
5 |
| A pie chart + a bar chart on expenditure of a company over two years |
4 |
| A line graph on FDI inflows in 3 different countries |
5 |
| A logical caselet involving tennis tournament |
5 |
| Two pie charts on Heavy artillery |
5 |
| Data Sufficiency |
8 |
| Quantitative Comparison |
8 |
Around 22-24 attempts with 85% accuracy, in about 30 minutes, were good for this section.
Indian and Global Environment
Questions based on current events of past few months were common, so anyone who was updated of current economic and political affairs in India and abroad
and regularly read the newspaper would not have found this section too difficult. About 28 questions were based on national events and 12 on international
events. For a person who had prepared GK well, about 25 questions could be called easy, 10 moderately difficult and 5 difficult.
This section could easily be attempted in about 15 minutes. A good attempt would be about 20 questions, with 75% accuracy. It should be noted that this section
is not considered for the final consolidated score.