TANCET MCA 2017 Analysis

TANCET 2017 was conducted on 25 th March, 2017 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Every year, Anna University conducts this exam on behalf of the Government of Tamilnadu. The exam has 100 questions to be answered in 120 minutes. These 100 questions were from areas – Quantitative Aptitude, Computers and Reasoning.

Snapshot of the Exam

Number of Questions	100
Number of Sections	5
Marking Scheme	1 Mark for every correct answer
Negative Marking	1/3 Mark for every wrong answer
Number of Choices	4
Duration	120 Minutes

TANCET MCA 2017 was a surprise to the test takers as it had questions only from three areas – Quantitative Aptitude, Computers and Reasoning. Usually, English used to be one of the test areas. There is no fixed number of questions from each area in the MCA paper. Last year, almost half of the paper had Reasoning-based questions while this year it was Quantitative Aptitude that had about 50 questions. Among the remaining, there were equal number of questions from Computers and Reasoning. Most importantly, at least half of the questions from Quantitiative Aptitude can be put under moderate or difficult category. On the whole, the paper can be considered as moderate and a score of 54+ can be considered excellent.

Quantitative Aptitude

This year, the Quantitative Aptitude part not only had the highest number of questions but also had more number of concepts whose difficulty level was on par with national level exams like CAT, NIMCET, etc. Apart from these, there was one set of questions on data interpretation that was based on tabular form of data and a set of 4 questions on data sufficiency. It was also observed that some of the questions had traps. So, one had to be careful while answering the questions. As in TANCET MBA 2017, even in MCA test paper, there were questions from Numbers which dominated the paper. Besides these, there were questions on Simple Equations, Probability, Permutations & Combinations, Geometry & Mensuration, etc.

The following table gives the topic-wise classification of questions in the Quantitative Aptitude part of the exam.

Area Number of Questions Difficulty Level Numbers 9 Moderate - Difficult Simple Equations – Ratio – Proportion - Variation 7 Moderate Time & Distance 4 Easy - Moderate Time & Work 2 Easy - Moderate Percentages 6 Easy - Moderate Permutations & Combinations + Probability 4 Moderate Geometry & Mensuration 3 Easy - Moderate Data Interpretation 5 Moderate Indices – Surds – Logarithms 4 Easy - Moderate Miscellaneous (Number Systems, Polynomials, Inequalities) 3 Moderate

Overall, this area can be considered as moderate in terms of level of difficulty. A well prepared student should be in a position to get a score of 24+ marks by spending about 60 minutes.

Analytical & Logical Reasoning

This year, about 25 questions were given from reasoning area. Surprisingly, questions based on sub-topics like non-verbal logic and deductions, which dominated the paper over the last few years did not find any place in this year's paper. There were questions from blood relations, coding and decoding, series, analytical puzzles, etc. The questions given on analytical puzzles were based on distributions, comparisons,etc and were slightly tedious to solve. Since one has to keep in mind the availability of time while attempting these questions, attempting the questions based on the set “the liking of colours of various persons” would have been a better choice. Among the other questions, we can consider the questions given on both blood relations, coding and decoding as easy to moderate.

A well prepared student should be in a position to get a score of 14+ marks by spending 30-35 minutes.

Computers

This year, the Computers part of TANCET MCA exam had questions mainly from fundamentals of computers, application software, operating systems, networking, hardware, etc. Most of the questions based on computer fundamentals and application software can be classified as easy while the questions based on hardware were moderately difficult.

Totally there were 25 questions based on this and a score of 14+ can be considered as good.