CEED 2016: Exam Analysis

December 6, 2015 was the day that decided the fate of thousands of students appearing for the design entrance exam called CEED. This three hours paper shows whether a design aspirant has what it takes to get admission for Master in Design (MDes) course offered at IITs and IISc.

Though the score of the exam does not directly guarantee admission, but it does eliminate almost 90% of the candidates from even appearing for the interviews held at IITs and IISc. Therefore, CEED 2016 paper was the first important step for many towards a star-studded career in design.

Read more: Top colleges accepting CEED 2016 scores.

CEED is divided into two parts, namely, Part A and Part B, each of 100 marks. Part A is largely comprises of objective questions which assess the candidates’ knowledge about design field, while Part B tests her/his ability to solve real life design problems. If a candidate wants his CEED 2016 Part B to be evaluated, then he/she must score above certain cut-off in Part A. While Part B score is reported as CEED score, Part A serves only as an elimination round.

Shiksha.com spoke to many students in order to find out how the test pattern for CEED 2016 was. Most of the students shared that as per them, CEED 2016 was very lengthy and tough.

Go through the complete student feedback for CEED 2016 exam here.

Exam Analysis of CEED 2016 by Experts

Now getting on with the exam analysis for CEED 2016. This year the pattern of CEED paper was quite similar to CEED 2015 paper. In CEED 2016 the first 20 marks were allocated to 10 Numerical Answer Type (NAT) questions as against 10 marks for the same last year.  This section was followed by Multiple Select Questions (MSQs), which stood at the same number as last year, namely, 10 questions of 2 marks each, with no negative marking. And the balance were Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) which carried 2 marks for correct answer, deduction of  0.6 marks for every wrong answer and zero for not attempting the question.

Similar to last year, CEED 2016 Part B consisted of 50 marks compulsory questions followed by a single 50 marks question which can be selected from 4 set of questions. The pattern for compulsory question was slightly different than last year that 30 marks were allocated to memory drawing, followed by 20 marks for idea generation question and final 10 marks for story writing. For the optional 50 marks question, the pattern of last year was repeated, where a candidate could choose to attempt a question out of 4 choices. These 4 choices were chosen from a specific branch of design, namely, product design, animation, visual communication and interaction design.

CEED 2016 Exam Analysis: Answer Paper Quality

One noteworthy point is that the quality of the answer sheet in CEED 2016 was better than the previous years. The organisers provided a smooth and slightly thicker paper for candidates to sketch and write on. Normally, in CEED candidates dread using sketch pens because they tend to bleed on the other side of paper, but this year, I tried sketching with sketch pens and was delighted to see that the paper actually was of decent quality. Perhaps I should recommend the readers to use sketch pens or even markers if they feel like. Though I did not carry out any colouring with poster colours, I am sure that the paper would have sustained the poster colours as well!

CEED 2016 Analysis: Exam Pattern as compared to Previous Years

CEED is an exam which tests the ability of candidates to design and think. When the Part A was first introduced in CEED 2012, it contained general knowledge and design questions such as “suggest the best material for ...” or “identify the given product...” This year the trend was completely broken when, Part A was largely based on aptitude questions and English comprehension.

Since there is no fixed syllabus for CEED 2016 Part A, the students had meticulously prepared for general knowledge and design aptitude questions, but in the paper they were served with questions which they would have likely seen in CAT paper! Therefore there was a general disappointment among the candidates. Many candidates found themselves short of time or Part A to be too lengthy. This can be attributed towards the fact that most of the candidate had not expected an aptitude-heavy Part A.

Maybe the organisers thought that a designer is supposed to think of innovative solutions to questions, which needs her/him to have good aptitude. And this may be the reason why the paper contained so many observational questions such as “count the number of cubes”, or reasoning questions such as “find the fifth shape in the series” or critical reasoning questions such as “draw conclusions from the paragraph”. Adding to this there were general English language questions such as “find the number of spelling mistakes in the passage”.

The condition of CEED 2016 Part B was no better. Unlike Part A, Part B contained compulsory questions which required the candidates to draw a large number of objects as observed in perspective, in relatively short time! As compared to previous CEED papers, which required the candidates to draw 3 to 4 objects, CEED 2016’s paper required them to draw about 10 objects along with 2 human figures.

To offset this, the idea generation and story writing compulsory questions were easier. Similarly, the candidates found the optional questions to be too exhaustive and many were not able to finish the paper in time. A general consensus is, compared to all the earlier CEED papers, CEED 2016 paper takes the cake for being lengthiest CEED paper.

About the Author:

Prasanna Gadkari is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore. Along with a career in Product Design spanning over eight years, Prasanna has mentored hundreds of aspirants to reach their dream of doing Master in Design (M.Des) from IITs, IISc and NID. He runs TeaCupBlog, a place where he and other students share their tips and experiences on pro bono basis.