I had my NMAT today, and since many people are looking for a comparison with the mocks, I’ll try to provide one, with all the mocks that I took.
As far as the actual NMAT goes, here is my experience.
QA-
The section had almost 50% weightage to DI & DS. DI was highly calculation intensive, though DS was very straightforward. Pure Quant had very basic questions and almost 20 were sitters, but I felt some questions had unnecessarily long calculations. I had to leave more than 10 doable questions since they would have taken too much time. I found it better to do quant based questions, even if they came at the cost of DI.
LR- Set based questions were somewhat long, requiring more than a minute per question, but were very doable. Situation based reasoning wasn’t very ambiguous and was easier than in most mocks. Venn based questions were also easy and not time consuming. I was able to attempt about 35 questions, guessed 5.
VA- I’d say both the RCs were easy to moderate level. Cloze test was also simple, as were the grammar and fill in the blank questions. In Vocab, 2 words that I know of, were repeated from previous days. Options were extremely helpful in para jumbles. Every single question (except vocab, which I suck at) could easily be narrowed down to 2 options.
1) GMAC Mock (249, 83C): Obviously the closest one to the actual NMAT, especially in terms of QA. I’d say QA was pretty much a replica of the actual exam, in terms of difficulty as well as distribution. DI, again, was very irritating. I spent too much time on DI in the mock, and ended up screwing quant completely. I knew better than to do that in the actual NMAT. I solved 2 -2.5 sets and guess marked the remaining sets fully, and moved on. I found GMAC (and actual) DI to be the least doable among all tests that I took. In the GMAC, I found the LR to be significantly simpler than the actual exam. I got 30 correct. GMAC verbal was also very comparable to the NMAT. I got 25 correct.
2) Test Funda (216, 72C): A very lenghty quant, and a somewhat ambiguous Verbal. Ironically, I got 34 correct in quant but messed up the other two sections. QA and LR can be compared to the actual exam, but I didn’t find the verbal to be much similar.
3) AIMNMAT2 (261, 87C) & 4) Oliveboard NMAT1 (264, 88C):
I found both these tests were very similar in almost every aspect. QA was easier than the actual NMAT in both the exams, especially DI. It was possible to attempt 43+ in QA in both these exams. Verbal and LR were quite similar to NMAT.
5) Bullseye Mock 1 (252, 84C) : The QA section was way too easy to be real. I finished it 13 minutes before time. Good for practice and confidence building. Can be skipped though.
6) AIMNMAT 1 (231, 77C): QA and DS (not DI) of this exam were somewhat similar to the NMAT. I found the LR to be pretty long, especially the set based questions. I took this exam lying half asleep on the bed, so I don’t remember much ?
If I have to rate the mocks, in terms of closeness to the NMAT, I’d say:
GMAC > AIMNMAT 1 = Test Funda > AIMNMAT2 = Oliveboard >> Bullseye
P.S. They don’t let you take your own pen/pencil to the hall. Instead, they have those erasable notepads, to be written on with sketch pens. This approach, in my humble opinion, is a serious pain in the arse, given the condition of my hands barely 15 minutes into the exam.
This article has been written by a PG user @anngadsingh.