IBSAT 2017 started on 21st December. The paper was pretty much without any surprises and most of the questions were straightforward. RCs were easy reads with most of the questions directly from the passages, questions in QA were also easy barring a few which were from higher maths. The DI sets had moderate to lengthy calculations.

Section I – Verbal Ability 1

This section had a mix of vocabulary, grammar and verbal ability questions.

Vocabulary included five questions each of synonyms, antonyms, analogy, one word replacement for a phrase, and idioms.

The Grammar area had 5 questions on error spotting where the sentence was divided into four parts. The fifth choice was labelled as ‘no error’. The grammar part also included five questions on underlined phrase replacement.

The verbal ability area within the section included five questions on double or paired fill in the blanks in a sentence and five questions on para formation questions where four sentences were given jumbled up.

Section II – Verbal Ability 2

This section had 5 questions on Paracompletion (Cloze Test). There were 5 words missing in the paragraph. The level of difficluty was easy-moderate.

Section III - Reading Comprehension

This section comprised four RC passages with a total of 30 questions. Two passages had 9 questions each and the remaining two passages had 5 & 7 questions respectively. The number of words varied from 380 to 870 words. The passages made for very interesting reading and the questions were also pretty much straightforward.

Section IV - Quantitative Ability

The Quant section had a good mix of questions from Arithmetic, Geometry-Mensuration, Algebra, and Higher Maths. Most of the questions can be classified as Easy to Moderate difficulty level.

The section had very few time-guzzlers. The Quant section this year had a toned down difficulty level as compared to last year’s paper. Below is the distribution of the questions from various topics:

Section V - Data Adequacy & Data Interpretation

The section had sets based on tables, and bar-graphs. There were three DI sets with two based on Tables and one on Bar Charts. There were 15 questions based on these sets.

Data sufficiency was dominated by Quant-based topics. Majority of the questions were of easy-moderate level of difficulty.

Good Vocabulary, high reading speed, smart question selection and keeping a tab on time would have ensured a student did well in the test. A total of 81-84 could be termed as a good number of attempts in this paper.

All the best!
Team T.I.M.E.