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MAT is held four times in a year (February, May, September and December). What is the ideal time to appear for MAT? What are the benefits?
MAT is held 4 times a year -- in September, December, February and May. December and February are the ones preferred by a lot of test takers. They are also the MATs with maximum B-school participation.
December allows for students with an option of taking MAT in February in case their score is not up to the mark. May would be a little late as most B-schools are on the verge of winding up admissions.
September is too early as the admission is for next year, so taking the September MAT also may not be advisable.
Students can get more time to prepare themselves if they take the test in December or February. Some students might be interested in taking September MAT as a prep-test for the upcoming MBA entrance exams of the November-January season.
The difficulty levels of MATs might vary a little. In the recent years, February MATs are reported to be tougher than December ones - one cannot generalise this though.
Which are the top institutes that accept MAT scores?
This can, at best, be a list of good colleges. One cannot objectively and mathematically calculate the relative merits of colleges. The students may choose any five of the following:
- Christ College, Bangalore
- SIES College of Management Studies, Mumbai
- Amity Business School, New Delhi
- Institute of Public Enterprise (IPE), Hyderabad
- International School of Management Excellence (ISME), Bangalore
- MS Ramiah Institute of Management, Bangalore
- MIT School of Management, Pune
- New Delhi Institute of Management (NDIM), New Delhi
- School of Communication & Management Studies (SCMS), Cochin
- Indian Business Academy (IBA), Bangalore
- Institute of Integrated Learning in Management (IILM), Noida
- NILM Center for Management Studies, New Delhi
Prateek Rai is a Delhi Public School, RK Puram alumnus, and holds an MBA from Nagpur University. He has travelled widely and is an exponent in General Knowledge. He also conducts many workshops, seminars across India for aspiring management professionals and is known for his teaching and networking skills.
'Keep yourself abreast of developments in the corporate world'
Suggested Books for preparing Quant- RS Aggarwal's 'Mathematics for MBA' from S Chand publications and Trishna's 'MAT Super course' by Pearson publication.
How should a student prepare for the GK section in MAT? Is it counted in the final score?
Read the newspaper every day
This is the topmost preparation strategy as far as working on your Current Affairs is concerned. If you are studying for MBA, you must thoroughly read the newspaper daily.
It is more important to focus on the business pages. It's a must for a prospective MBA to familiarise himself with the latest happenings in the corporate world. You have to keep yourself abreast of all the developments in the corporate world. The more you read, the better it is for you.
Focus on your preparation
The GK/ General Awareness section usually follows a certain pattern of questions. For instance, there are some questions with reference to Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) that have been asked in the recent past.
Make sure to follow these developments closely and also prepare notes for the same. Also, make sure you are familiar with the names of bigwigs in the corporate world. Ensure you know about the different committees set up by the government.
Make it a habit to prepare notes and revise
It makes sense to make notes and refer to them at regular intervals, before your exam. Revise through your notes sometime before your exam so that your hard work is not wasted. Keep discussing current affairs with friends and family. It is a good way of revising and remembering things.
Watch news
It is extremely important to keep abreast of latest happenings and developments across the world. Watch the news daily. It keeps you alert, progressive and informed.
GK score is not included in the final percentile but it's not a good idea to leave this section completely because there are some institutes which may consider your GK score
Attempt only those questions of this section in which you find yourself 100 percent confident of.
'Speed and accuracy have to go hand in hand'
MAT is one exam which tests two important aspects: speed and accuracy. Both have to go hand in hand. You cannot attach undue weightage to any one of the areas.
For increasing speed, while practicing you should solve questions using alternate methods particularly in Math. You should devote time analysing questions and devising logical methods during your mock tests.
You should also keep an eye on the options available for the given problem and find out if you could eliminate some options without going for exact calculations you find the range of the answers and use options judiciously. This also works well of DI questions .
As far as language is concerned, there are no shortcuts . If you have devoted sufficient time developing your Vocabulary and have been reading a lot, this will clearly show in the exam.
Questions based on Vocabulary spotting errors and the like could be solved in less than 20 seconds per question, which can boost up the total number of attempts.
You could also give a cursory glance to the questions before you start the Reading Comprehension section. This way, direct questions could be answered quickly and you read the passage only if need arises -- for inference, tone-based questions.
Practice variety for LR and if you have spent quality time solving puzzles during your school and college days this area again pretty manageable.
If you have been regularly following and reading newspapers and magazines and have read different genres of novels, GK should not be a problem area for you. Although marks in GK section are not added for calculating the final score, that doesn't give you the liberty to skip the entire GK portion. This would also not be appreciated by good B-schools.
Ideally, you should not be spending more than 10 minutes on GK questions.
In a nutshell, 3-4 months of quality time could see you through in an exam like MAT.
What are the factors one must analyse before applying to an institute accepting MAT scores?
Before applying to the colleges which accept MAT scores one should do a thorough research and find out details of the following areas before arriving at a decision
- The location/ region
- Fees structure
- Industry interface
- Vision and teaching methodology of college
- Batch-wise placement record of the college
'Aspirants must develop a proper test taking strategy'
Any advice for the MAT 2011 December aspirants?
It is imperative to create a time-table and schedule for oneself each day which will help the individual to follow a specific plan during the day and discipline oneself especially if there isn't much time left for the exam.
It does not matter what time of the day/night one decides to study for the exam, they must bear in mind that it is not worth spending time studying too much for long hours.
If they do so, they wont be able to complete their studies in the given time period because of fatigue. A break now and then will do them a lot of good. The important thing to remember is that one should be mentally fresh and ready to absorb at that point of time.
Remember, quality is always better than quantity. Still, 6 hours per day is necessary in these remaining days to achieve a 95 plus percentile (700+ composite score).
The candidate should read newspapers and magazines, watch English language news channels to avoid monotony and thus also prepare for general awareness section.
One of the most important factors to consider while preparing for MAT is maintaining a good balance between accuracy and speed. The time given for completing the exam is limited (only 150 minutes for 200 questions) and hence answering the questions accurately keeping in mind the time consideration is the key.
Towards the last days of the test, developing a proper test taking strategy is an approach that a MAT aspirant has to develop in order to ensure that he is able to leverage the strengths while attempting the tests.
Any strategy that one intends to follow should revolve around the time saving measures to answer the maximum number of questions in the allotted time.
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