UCEED 2018 Exam Analysis

By Shaun D’Sa

UCEED 2018 was conducted today, January 20, 2018 across 20 test cities in the country. UCEED exam was conducted by IIT Bombay from 10 am to 1 pm. Candidates need to clear UCEED exam in order to secure admission at colleges accepting UCEED scores.

The UCEED 2018 paper had 85 questions in total. These were divided into three sections, A, B & C, each carrying 20, 25 and 40 questions respectively. The marks corresponding to each section were 80, 100 and 120 respectively. There were no surprises there since it was the same as the simulated online mock test as on the uceed website.

After talking to a few students, we found that the difficulty level of Undergraduate Common Entrance Examination for Design 2018 (UCEED 2018) as compared to the previous papers was slightly on the lower side. Questions on fonts, counting of shapes, puzzles which are regular aptitude questions were asked. Geometry was given some importance in this year’s exam besides regular arithmetic questions, and more emphasis was given on general knowledge like logos with importance to Indian art, culture, etc. A question was asked where the students were to arrange the artist Picasso’s self portraits in chronological order. This clearly strengthens the fact that students who covered general knowledge ‘in depth’, especially in art and design, would have had an edge.

The simulated mock test given on the official UCEED website would have been tremendously helpful to students who did go through it prior to the exam. It would make them familiar with the interface of the exam in advance because it would have helped them to understand how to flag questions which they could come back to later to cross verify. They would have known the difference between ‘marked for review’ and ‘answered and marked for review’. This would be critical to give the students that extra edge since the latter would be considered for evaluation.

There were plenty of resources available on the UCEED official website for students to refer to, like previous years’ question papers and simulated mock tests. Students who went through these and studied, based on these question types, found the exam relatively easy to moderate and were able to finish their exam well before time. Overall, the question patterns were similar to those of the previous years.

It is a known fact that most students who take UCEED also appear for NID Entrance Exam. So, we are sure that on a comparative scale, most aspirants would have felt that the difficulty level of NID Entrance Exam was higher as compared to this year's UCEED exam.

About the Author:

Shaun D’Sa has a Master’s degree in Industrial Design from IIT Delhi. He is Director at Design Quotient Labs (DQ Labs), a coaching platform for Architecture and Design entrance exams.

He began his career with General Motors Advanced Design Center at Bangalore, where he had the opportunity to work with design teams for car brands like Hummer, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Holden, Buick to name a few. Shaun has also been a part of many teams of International and Indian designers for design centric ethnographic studies across India and abroad. Due to his passion for Design and Architecture, he has travelled extensively abroad and has been a part of many design workshops in many countries across Europe.