There were six sections and each section carried a sectional cut-off. The details of the sections are as follow:

	Section	Total no. of questions	Marks per question	Total Marks	Good Attempts	Achievable Score	Sectional Cutoff	Ideal Time (in minutes)
Section 1	General Awareness	18	0.50	09	5	2	0.83-1	8-10
Section 2	English Usage	20	1.00	20	12	8.5	3	15
Section 3	Reading Comprehension	16	1.00	16	12	9.33	4.5	22-25
Section 4	Quantitative Ability	20	1.00	20	12	9.33	3.5	30
Section 5	Logical Reasoning	20	1.00	20	13	9	4	23-25
Section 6	Data Interpretation	18	0.75	15	5	3	1.5	10
	Overall	114		100			38 - 40

*Cutoff for General category students is most likely to be in the range of 38-40 marks. The corresponding figures for NC/OBC and SC/ST/PWD should be around 33-35 and 28-30 marks respectively. The cutoff for ST might go lower if number of applicants are lesser

General Awareness

Topic	Number of Questions	Level of Difficulty
Business and Economy	6	Difficult
Miscellaneous	1	Difficult
Brands	6	Moderate
Geography	1	Easy
Personalities	1	Moderate
Sports	3	Difficult
TOTAL	18	Difficult

English Usage

The Verbal Ability section of IIFT threw in some major surprises. For starters, the obsolete grammatical rule based questions crawled out of some linguistic cave. There were questions that asked students to identify whether the underlined part was a clause or a phrase. Then there were excruciatingly lengthy questions on punctuations and passage improvement. These questions required some technical knowledge of semantics and sentence structure. Out of 20, 14 questions belonged to this area and no guess work was logically possible. The verbal analogy questions were confusing. The three jumbled word questions were tough. Hence, out of 20, a good student could have attempted 12 questions. Cut-off is expected to be around 3. However, if a student had some basic knowledge of the functions of parts of speech, these questions were sitters.

A detailed breakup of the section is given below:

Topic	Number of Questions	Level of Difficulty
Phrase/Clause identification	5	Difficult
Punctuation	3	Difficult
Prefix/Suffix	1	Easy
Verbal Analogy	3	Difficult
Jumbled Words	3	Moderate - Difficult
Passage Improvement	5	Easy - Moderate
Total	20	Difficult

Reading Comprehension

The Reading Comprehension section threw in just one surprise. It went back to its usual lengthy self. The last year’s RC pattern turned out to be an anomaly. Three out of the four passages belonged to the area of Business and Economics. Ironically, one passage in RC was about how to read. Hence, it can be safely inferred that someone at IIFT is in possession of a wry sense of humour. The questions were not difficult. Out of 16 questions, around 12 were fact based. The options in majority of the questions were not close. Hence, a student, who has a good reading speed, could have easily attempted 12-14 questions. Given the nature of the VA section and the overall length of the paper, RC can turn out to be the saving grace for majority of the test takers.

A detailed breakup of the section is given below:

Topic	Number of Questions	Level of Difficulty
Passage 1: Groupon	4	Easy
Passage 2: Close Reading	4	Moderate
Passage 3: Currency crisis	4	Easy-Moderate
Passage 4: Analytics Competitors	4	Moderate
Total	16	Easy - Moderate

Logical Reasoning

Apart from the 5 questions on matrix (MBA students), which was lengthy, and one of the sets between input-output and football the rest of the questions were easy to moderate. All other sets were easy in nature and could have been attempted. All singlets were very easy and must have been attempted all in order to maximize. A good candidate could have attempted 12-13 questions in 25-30 min.

Topic	Number of Questions	Level of Difficulty
Distribution	7	Difficult
Directions	2	Easy
Sport (Football)	2	Moderate
Input Output	4	Moderate
Syllogism	1	Easy
Data Sufficiency	2	Easy
Selection	2	Easy
Total	20	Moderate

 

Quantitative Ability

Difficulty level of this section increased significantly compared to last year. The section was evenly distributed between Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry. Few questions required knowledge of Trigonometry. A well-prepared candidate could have attempted 11-12 questions in 28-30 mins.

Topic	Number of Questions	Level of Difficulty
Arithmetic	7	Easy
Algebra	5	Easy-Moderate
Geometry, Mensuration and Trigonometry	5	Moderate
P&C and Probability	2	Moderate
Number System	1	Moderate
Total	20	Moderate

Data Interpretation

After a year’s hiatus IIFT showed its true colours wrt DI. An attempt of 5-6 would be very good and students who had attempted just about 2-3 questions with 100% accuracy should sail through the cutoff

Topic	Number of Questions	Level of Difficulty
Mixed Graphs	5	Difficult
Tables	15	1.5 doable sets (Difficult)
Total	20	Difficult

 

All the best! Keep working hard for the forthcoming examinations.
Team CL

Disclaimer: The analysis given above has been prepared by Career Launcher experts. The information given here has no bearing on your actual score. Career Launcher does not take responsibility for any discrepancy between information in this document and the actual result.