IIFT 2013 Question Paper Analysis

By Parasharan Chari

Probably for the first time, IIFT repeated its format, literally verbatim. Anyone who would have read the last year’s analysis and would have seen those 2-3 sentences about how IIFT is evolving from being a content driven paper to a speed driven paper and how IIFT is unpredictable, would have given a thumbs down to that part of the article. And in case he would have gone on to read the detailed sectional analysis, he would have thanked God for the fact that the exact strategy sits right for IIFT 2013.

Here's digging deep to understand each and every section and the paper pattern:

Section I – Part A (19 marks)

Data Interpretation: 19 questions, 1 mark each

IIFT DI – as standard as it can get. That means, the section was calculation intensive and therefore time consuming. The ideal strategy would have been to manage a decent number of attempts in order to attain the sectional cutoffs. About 18-20 minutes should have been allocated to attempt around 14 questions from this section. Since the questions were easy, silly calculation mistakes would be the only reason to get a question wrong. A net score of 10 marks would be good.

Section I – Part B (15 marks)
Analytical and Logical Reasoning: 20 questions, 0.75 mark each

The diverse questions in this section contained those on arrangement and puzzles, coding-decoding, alphabetical and numerical series and Statements - Assumption and Statement. Most of the questions seemed familiar. Overall a very easy section. Ideal time would have been 22-25 minutes with an attempt of 18+ questions. Managing accuracy in this section should not have been a big challenge and hence one should manage a net score of 10+.

Section II (14 marks)
General Awareness: 28 questions, 0.5 marks each

This section carried questions picked from history, geography, bollywood, economics, current affairs, events, sports and people. The options were placed carefully as there were very few irrelevant options. One had to be very careful in eliminating the choices as two choices were often very close. An aspirant who has been following newspapers religiously would not have found it difficult to attempt 18+ questions. However for a well prepared student, an attempt of 18+ in a duration of 9 to 10 minutes would be considered as an ideal go. So with a reasonable accuracy rate, one should be scoring 6 to 6.5 net in this section of moderate difficulty.

Section III – Part 1 (15 marks)

Verbal Ability: 20 questions, 0.75 mark each

This section contained a diverse set of questions. Vocabulary driven questions received special focus. Questions on word usage and synonyms were simple. Questions on confusing words were also manageable. There were two questions each on parajumbles, para construction, synonyms, meanings, finding grammatically incorrect statements, fill in the blanks, figures of speech, antonyms, finding the correct spelling and odd one out . The section was of easy to moderate level. For candidates having a good command on Vocabulary, this section would have been a clear breakthrough. Overall a good candidate would have managed 16+ attempts in 15 minutes. An ideal net score for this section should be 9.5+.

Section III – Part 2 (12 marks)

Reading Comprehension: 16 questions, 0.75 mark each

This section consisted of four passages that were based on a set of topics ranging from economics & business to biography to philosophy. Out of the 16 questions, most of the questions were direct but there were 4-5 inference based questions. A student familiar with skimming and regression

techniques should have been able to attempt 11+ questions in 20 minutes. With a decent accuracy and about 8 correct questions should be ideal. Hence, a score of 5.5+ should be good.

Section IV (25 marks)
Quantitative Aptitude: 25 questions, 1 mark each

This section was very well designed with a good mix of questions. Except for a few tricky & difficult questions, all questions could have been attempted within one minute. Most of the questions were standard. Any candidate with sufficient practice from good quality reference material could have related to most of the questions. There was a good mix of difficult and easy questions and the spectrum was spread covering nearly all the topics of quant.

Overall 21+ attempts in 28 to 30 minutes can be considered ideal. A net score of 15+ should be good.

IIFT 2013 should be a high scoring paper with a higher cutoff than that of the last year because of the sheer familiarity of the paper. Had the same paper come last year, we would have managed to have similar cutoffs. Cutoffs could be close to 53 net score out of 100.

About the Author:

Parasharan Chari is an alumnus of SP Jain and is currently serving as the chief operating officer at Endeavor Careers and is also associated with the design and development of its online testing portal CatGurus.com

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- Check out IIFT 2013 - First Day, First Show!