The Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi and Kolkata held its entrance exam for the academic year 2010-12 on Sunday, 22 November. Dr. L D Mago, Registrar, IIFT mentioned that around 44,500 candidates took the test all over India.
This year’s paper saw quite a few changes as compared to that of the last year. The number of questions were reduced to 122 from 150. Sections like English Usage and Reading Comprehension, and Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation were merged. Thus, the number of sections became four and not six. The marks in each section varied. When asked about the decrease in the number of questions, Dr. Mago said, “The difficulty level of the Quantitative Ability section was much higher than the others. So we presumed that candidates will take more time solving them and that is why the total number of questions has been slashed.”
The number of choices was four and the negative marking was one third of the marks allotted. The total marks of the IIFT entrance exam paper is 100. The cut-offs for IIFT Delhi and Kolkata are varied. IIFT Delhi has higher cut-offs than that of IIFT Kolkata.
The Quantitative Ability section consisted of 28 questions with 1 mark each. It covered the sections of Geometry and Mensuration, Probability, Percentages, Progressions, Trigonometry, Logarithms etc. It was undoubtedly the toughest section in the whole paper.
“Some of the questions involved ambiguity in language and errors in framing and students would have lost time tackling those questions and therefore the cut-offs will be lower in this section,” felt T.I.M.E. According to the MBA coaching institute, allocating 30 to 35 minutes of time in this section, along with nine to 10 attempts would be considered very well for the candidates.
According to Career Launcher, the English Section was of easy to moderate difficulty level. Total number of questions in this section was 40. Total marks in this section were 30. “The questions in this section comprised Antonyms, Synonyms, and Grammar; Fill in the blanks and Para jumbles,” mentioned Career Launcher. T.I.M.E. mentioned that allocating 25 to 30 minutes for this section with 18 to 20 attempts would be sufficient to clear the cut-offs for this section.
In the Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning section, the number of questions was 34. Each question consisted of 1 mark. PT Education mentioned that 23 questions were spread among the five sets of DI questions. “One DI set was based on Bar Graph, rest of the sets were on Tables,” mentioned PT Education. Whereas the 11 questions on LR consisted of topics like Direction Sense, Blood Relations, Data Arrangement, Quantitative Reasoning and Input Output. “An attempt of 15 to 17 questions with 85 to 90 per cent accuracy, in a time span of 35 minutes will be good,” said PT Education.
The General Awareness section was undoubtedly the easiest section in the entire paper. All the 20 questions in this section were of 0.4 marks which made it to a total of eight marks. “The questions were mixture of traditional and dynamic GK. There were questions from Business, Book Writers, Current Affairs and Economics,” said PT Education. The MBA institute mentioned that an attempt of 10 to 12 questions with 85 to 90 per cent accuracy within 20 minutes would be sufficient for the students to clear cut-offs.
According to the general estimates, candidates scoring more than 24 cut offs can expect calls from IIFT New Delhi, whereas more than 19 cut offs can expect call from IIFT Kolkata.
Dr. Mago mentioned that the results will be declared by Thursday, December 10, 2009. “Around 1200 to 1300 students will be called for GDPIs which are likely to take place in mid January,” Dr. Mago added.
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