(IRMA by Satwick Thumu)
Editors note: Guest author Parasharan Chari, Chief Operating Officer of Ahmedabad-based test-preparation institute Endeavor Careers, analyses the IRMA Admission Test paper held on November 13, 2011 and predicts cutoffs for prominent rural management b-schools that accept this score.
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The Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) admission test on November 13, 2011 was the first test of the season that took us back to the old days of the paper-pencil based Sunday exams!
The paper, quite clearly, was meant for the well researched and the well prepared. When I say researched, I am referring to awareness of the paper pattern in the last couple of years and when I say prepared, I mean priming oneself to the peculiar general knowledge questions asked in the IRMA test and the overall aptitude tuning required for this test.
The test had a total of 200 questions, structured in the same four-section format drilled down to 40 verbal, 50 quant+DI, 50 AR/LR and 60 Social Concern.
The verbal ability section was an easy one according to me. The section followed a standard breakup of 13 reading comprehension questions, 13 vocabulary-based questions, 10 grammar-based questions and 5 logic based questions. A good attempt number for this section would be 32 questions.
As far as the QA+DI section is concerned, it felt as if the paper setters had forgotten to include quant questions (just kidding, of course!) but then, there indeed were just five questions from Quant in the paper. Instead, Data Interpretation dominated this section by contributing 40 questions, albeit of the ‘really easy’ category. All the DI questions required usage of concepts from ‘percentage increase or decrease’ and ‘ratio’ in some form or the other. This section too was easy. A good attempt count for this section would be 35 questions.
In my analysis, had test-takers started with GK and proceeded to verbal followed by QA+DI only to attempt the AR section in the end, their honeymoon period would have ended there. The Analytical Reasoning section contained four traps placed back-to-back, the kind that could put CAT AR questions to shame! This section was the ‘catch’ of the paper this year. Anyone maximizing their scores in this section would have a greater probability of reaching the cutoff. Other than the arrangement-based LR/AR questions, the rest of the questions in this section were easy and were drawn from syllogisms, decision making, coding/decoding and finding the odd one out. Attempting 25 questions in this section would have been sufficient.
I won’t go too deep into the GK section. As you all know, it is a black-and-white section — either you know the answers or you don’t. Either you would have prepared yourself to face questions in line with the IRMA GK topics or you would take random guesses and pray that they would turn out to be correct. 25+ would be a good score to have in this section.
Diving into the details of each section, here is how the paper looked like,
Section 1: Verbal Ability and Reading comprehension
All questions carried 1 mark.
There were 13 RC questions. 11 questions based on the passage content and two questions based on vocabulary (usage of boldface words in the passage). Difficulty level: Easy to Moderate.
Cloze Test: 10 questions. Difficulty level: Easy.
Sentence Correction: 10 questions. Difficulty Level: Easy.
Sentence Jumbling: 5 questions. Difficulty level: Moderate.
Antonyms: 2 questions. Difficulty level: Easy to Moderate.
Good score: 22+
Section 2: Quantitative Aptitude + Data Interpretation
Data Interpretation
Tables: 5 (5 questions)
Pie-charts: 2 (5 questions)
Line graphs: 1 (5 questions)
All questions were direct data-based and percentage-based questions. The questions needed basic arithmetic, mental calculation and approximation skills. Difficulty level: easy.
Data Sufficiency: 5 questions. Difficulty Level: Easy.
Arithmetic: 5 questions, with three on Probability and two on Ratio and Proportion. Difficulty level: Easy.
Good score: 30+
Section 3: Reasoning Skills
Data Sufficiency: 5 questions
Arrangement: 4 sets amounting to 28 questions in total. Difficulty level: Moderate to Difficult.
Syllogisms: 6 questions. Difficulty level: Easy.
Analytical Reasoning: 5 questions.
Decision Making: 6 questions. Difficulty level: Easy.
Good score: 20+
In the final analysis, one’s overall time distribution and accuracy of answering would have been an important factor in yesterday’s IRMA test paper. Given the kind of AR section that appeared yesterday, the best a test-taker could have done is to jump into questions based on one’s areas of strength and extract the best return on investment of time. An ideal break-up of sectional times sent would therefore be 25 mins for verbal, 35 mins for DI, 40 mins for AR and 20 mins for GK.
My personal feeling is that a score of about 107 would just be perfect for a candidate to get an IRMA call. As for the other prominent institutes that accept the IRMA score, one should get a call from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubhaneswar’s Rural Management Program at a score of 85 and Kalinga Institute of Rural Management at 78.
Here’s wishing luck to all puys who aspire to book a seat in this prestigious institute of management.
The author Parasharan Chari is an alumnus of SP Jain and is currently serving as the Chief Operating Officer at Ahmedabad-based Endeavor Careers and is also associated with the design and development of its online testing portal www.CatGurus.com.