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. Reasoning section was tougher than Quant section. Verbal section wasmoderate to tough. The key to getting a good percentile was time management and selection of questions.
The first passage (1-4) highlighted the concern over violence and terrorism against academic researchers. Be it on campus or in field, these researchers run risk of being a victim of human-rights violation. Author suggests that they should not deter from their work and live in fear for the pursuit of their science. In terms of difficulty, this was a moderate level RC. In the second passage (5-8), author highlights that there are different mechanisms/ways to respond to different stimuli. He does so by highlighting the response of three people with a rare genetic disease, where they don’t fear anything. This belief as challenged by evident fear and panic against inhaling carbon dioxide shows, we humans yet do not know everything about the subtleties of workings of the brain. This passage was easy to moderate in level of difficulty. The third passage (10-13), which is an editorial excerpt from a newspaper, presents a criticism of violent actions against students who protest against some social, political or ecological issues and propagates their rights to voice their opinion. Author suggests that peaceful protests should in fact be the spirit of democratic country and Educational institutes in them. This passage was moderate in level, with one difficult question (Q-11) and some tricky but amazing vocabulary. The fourth passage (13-16) is an autobiographical excerpt from William Egginton’s Biography of ‘Miguel de Cervantes’; in which his novel ‘Don Quixote’ and its characters have been praised as commendable and exemplary in world of fiction. Egginton, in a laudatory tone praises his ability to draw such convincing and rounded characters without being bitter at all. The questions (13-16) were all moderate in difficulty level. Questions (17-19) were based on Para-jumbles and these questions were moderate to difficult on difficulty level. Questions (20-22) were based on Para-summary and the questions were a mix of easy, moderate and difficult level. Questions 23 and 24 were based on ‘fit the sentence appropriately’ in the paragraph. These were also moderate to difficult on difficulty level. 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 High. There were 1 easy, 10medium and 9difficult questions in this section. The first blocks (The digit related to the alphabet was to be determined) was easiest and was must do and by attempting a couple of questions from rest of the blocks, one could have fetched a decent percentile. In this section, one could have fetched 90+ percentile by attempting 5-6 questions with approx 80% accuracy.
Students found this section a little lighter than DI this time. The Quantitative section had 2 easy, 10 medium and 10 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 around7-9 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 attemptReasoning section was tougher than Quant section. Verbal section was moderate to tough. 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 misfit 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.
