The Common Management Admission Test (CMAT) is a National Level Entrance Examination for admission to Management Programme(s) in the country. This Test facilitates AICTE affiliated participating Institutions to select suitable graduate candidates for admission to the Management Courses in such institutions. The National Testing Agency (NTA) has been entrusted by the Ministry of Education with the task of conducting the Common Management Admission Test (CMAT) from 2019 onwards.

CMAT 2025 was conducted on Jan 25, 2025 in two slots from 9 am to 12 noon and from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm.

The exam was conducted in the Computer Based Test (CBT) format. The duration of the exam was three hours (180 minutes).

The test had five sections with 20 questions each. Each question was of MCQ type with four options. Each correct answer carried four marks while there was a penalty of 1 mark for every wrong answer. There was no sectional time limit, and the candidates could move freely across the sections throughout the exam duration. The total score was 400.

The distribution of the questions is as given in the table below:

Given below is a summary of the test based on students' observations and reactions post the exam.

Quantitative Techniques and Data Interpretation (QTDI):

Most of the questions were from Arithmetic, most of which were on the easier side. There was also a set on DI which was relatively moderate in difficulty level. There were a couple of questions from Probability. The questions were overall of easy to moderate difficulty level. There were only a couple of questions that could be classified as difficult.

The following is the snapshot of the QTDI section:

A well-prepared student will be able to attempt 13-15 questions easily.

Logical Reasoning (LR): All the questions were stand-alone – there were no set based questions. There were questions from areas like Statement and assumptions, Statements and conclusions, Clocks, Direction sense, Venn diagrams, Cubes etc. Overall this was a relatively easy section.

The four Verbal Reasoning questions, based on identifying the stronger argument were relatively tougher compared to the regular LR questions in this section. They were assertion-reasoning implicit argument and conclusion.

A good student could have answered 14-16 questions.


General Awareness (GA): This section was easier as compared to last year's in terms of difficulty level. Most of the questions were based on Static GK. The section had questions on:

• Geography,
• History
• Politics,
• Arts & culture,
• Sports and Games,
• Current Affairs & General Knowledge.

A good student would be able to answer around 8-10 questions in this section.

Innovation & Entrepreneurship (IE) :

The Innovation & Entrepreneurship section tested the candidate's knowledge and understanding of terms such as creativity, feasibility analysis and its process, cost-benefit analysis, venture capital financing, Fabian entrepreneurs, and bootstrapping.

There were three match-the-following questions that required identifying the meaning of equity financing, strategic alliance, break-even point, and entrepreneurial mindset; the role of an intrapreneur, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and distributor; and the function of market segmentation, revenue model, SWOT analysis, and a business incubator.

There was also a critical reasoning (assertion-reasoning) question in this section. 

Language comprehension (LC):

As in all the other sections, there were 20 questions in the Language Comprehension section —five based on Reading Comprehension, and 15 on Verbal Ability.

The Reading Comprehension passages were short and easy to read. The passages were about 60-80 words long and were fairly easy to read. The questions required the candidate to identify the narrative type and background of the text. The difficulty level of all the Reading Comprehension questions ranged from easy to moderate. One of the passages also had three Fill-in-the-Blank questions, which tested the candidate's ability to select the most contextually appropriate phrasal verb, phrase, and noun.

The Verbal Ability segment, which tested the candidates' grammar and vocabulary skills, made up most of the Language Comprehension section. It had a good mix of easy, moderately difficult, and difficult questions. The following is the general breakdown of the questions/question types:

- Active-passive voice (one moderately difficult question)

- Grammatically correct sentence (four moderately difficult questions)

- One-word substitution (two moderately difficult questions—one idiom-based, and the other based on a phrasal verb)

- Odd one out (one moderately difficult-difficult question requiring the candidate to pick the odd sentence out)

- Preposition (one easy-moderately difficult fill-in-the-blank question)

- Critical Reasoning (one moderately difficult assertion-reasoning question that tested the candidates' knowledge of articles and subject-verb agreement)

- Compound sentence identification (one moderately difficult question)

- Sentence Reordering (one easy question)

- Para Formation (one easy-moderately difficult question)

- Noun types (one easy-moderately difficult match-the-following question)

- Synonyms (one moderately difficult-difficult match-the-following question)

Overall, the Language Comprehension section was moderate-difficult, and a well-prepared student could have completed it in 25-30 minutes.