“Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

The Narsee Monjee Management Aptitude Test is the first step for those students who want to start out with a career in management at the 12+ level. The NMAT is exclusive only for Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS). At the end of this 3-year course, with a BBA degree in your hand, your dreams of scaling the management ‘staircase’ will materialise.

Another salient feature of this institute is its 12-year old post graduate diploma in business management which has a custom-designed architecture reflecting the central theme of preparing the student for leadership of his/her family business. The pedagogy works towards fulfilling this central theme. There are a limited number of programmes offering this specialization and for those who have inherited a business, there is nothing more apt than going in for one of these programmes.

Students also have a chance to enter the Health Care sector directly by enrolling in a five-year integrated programme in MBA (Pharma Tech) at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai.

This year’s paper pattern of NMAT (C) for B.B.A.caused a few ripples. The expected 200 questions were brought down to 120 with equal emphasis on all sections. Even the sections were not spared; 5 sections were slashed down to three sections with 40 questions each. Predominantly missing were the DI section, DS-QC section and the GK section.

Section I-Quantitative and Numerical Ability section included questions on geometry, partnership, angles in a triangle and time/ work. The questions based on BODMAS maintained their tradition of making up most of this section. The sums no doubt were time consuming because a lot of calculations were involved. Reviewing this section, we can conclude that it was moderately simple.

Section II cashed upon the inherent logical and general intelligence of the students. There were two simple caselets on Analytical Reasoning. Questions based on alpha numeric series and number series were also a part of this section. Cracking the coding/ decoding sums and locating the odd man out would have proved to be your score builder. Evaluating this section, most of the sums ranged from being easy to moderate.

The final turning point of the paper was the Verbal Ability section. Undoubtedly the vanilla of this paper was simplistic in its approach and visually appealing. A Reading Comprehension passage had 15 questions. Most of them were straight forward, idealistic questions which could have been solved if the passage was read thoroughly, and the six synonyms were a piece of cake. Some of the other questions were Confusing words, Errors in parts of sentences, Double blanks, Correct spellings, Rearranging letters to form a meaningful word. Synonyms and Antonyms did not give you the goose bumps that is normally the case.

Starting from the bottom rung of the management staircase this exam will undoubtedly transcend you to glorious heights by the time you reach the end of your ascent!