Last Minute Strategy for IPMAT 2017

Integrated Program in Management (IPM) by IIM Indore is a BBA+MBA 5 year integrated program. A large number of students who are done with their class 12 boards must have applied for IPMAT entrance exam for IPM. With the exam just one day away most students must be getting the jitters for the D-Day.
It is very important to carefully analyze the pattern of the exam that you are going to appear for as it will help you to strategize for the exam. In the analysis, the aspects to carefully evaluate are the sections you can focus on, the no. of attempts, the cut-offs required etc. To help the aspirants to warmup to the exam, a breakup of IIM Indore’s Aptitude Test for IPM is given below:

IPMAT Exam Pattern
This exam contains only two sections Verbal Ability and Quantitative Ability. It has no questions from Reasoning and General Awareness. The paper pattern has changed from the last year and the latest pattern has been tabulated below.

Verbal Ability: Reading Comprehension, Synonyms, Antonyms, Jumbled Sentences, Para Completion, Word Usage, Phrase Replacement and Fill in the Blanks are the main topics that feature in this exam. Since, most of the question types are covered in various other entrance exams, this section doesn’t necessarily require any specific preparation strategy.

Quantitative Ability: Questions are asked from varied areas – Number System, Percentages, Profit and Loss, Average, Alligation, Mixture and Solution, Ratio and Proportion, Simple Interest-Compound Interest, Time speed and distance, Time and work, Progressions, Geometry and Mensuration, Inequalities, Logarithms and Graphs.
Though most of the questions are based on basic concepts of Arithmetic and Algebra, they are not straightforward and require some time to arrive at the answers. Students should keep in the mind the slight increase in difficulty level of this exam, vis-à-vis the other BBA entrance exams.

Effects of the Change in Pattern
The exam pattern has changed from last year’s 60-40 to 65-35 questions of Quant and Verbal respectively. The 65-35 breakdown means that the cut-off will mostly go down as number of questions in Quant have increased. This is estimated based on the understanding that usually students find it difficult to attempt more questions in Quant. Also, till previous year there was no sectional limit. Now with time limit, the attempts in the Quant section would go down and the cut-off will eventually decrease.

While the previous year’s cut-off was 203, this year’s cut-off is expected to go down to about194-195 to expect a call from IIM-Indore for IPM.

Last Minute Strategy
Go through the analysis of each of the mocks you have attempted so far. Know the topics that are your forte. Do not attempt questions that you are not comfortable with or are doubtful about to avoid negative marking. It is always advisable to play to your strengths and care about nothing else. Make sure you capitalise on your strong areas and score as high as you can in these.

All the Best!

GP