Anisha has done MBA in Marketing from NMIMS And Executive Management(PMNO) from Harvard Business School. She has been instrumental in growing CATKing Digital with her experience with Marico and Henkel in the past.
MBA-CET: A Mini encyclopedia MBA-CET (Common Entrance Test) is an entrance examination conducted by the Directorate of Technical Education of Maharashtra. This exam acts as a medium for getting admission to various MMS & MBA courses in the state of Maharashtra. If you closely examine MAH-CET, you may realize that it acts as a last resort for students to get admission into management colleges of the state. Common Entrance Test is comparatively easy to CAT, GRE, and GMAT. And, this is where the majority of students commit a mistake of taking the test lightly.
For preparation with Experts join our courses
The common entrance test is all about speed and accuracy and so, this is where students must focus on. After having given CAT, NMAT, and other entrances, CET shouldn’t pose a challenge to candidates. The best way to prepare for any examination is by going through the past papers.
Quantitative Aptitude & Data Interpretation This section was tough as compared to the previous year, where the section was pretty easy. Questions are tricky and were based on calculations. Arithmetic Questions are in the majority. There are 4 sets of Data Interpretation. Out of these 4, two were easy, one was moderate and the other was calculation-intensive. The sets covered Tables, Line Graphs, Pie Charts, and Case-lets. No questions from Numbers this year. A few questions were asked along with Data Sufficiency. Good Attempt: 30 questions and above with high accuracy.
Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension This section is one of the easiest and the least time-consuming. Questions are on the close test, para-jumbles, grammatical errors, spelling correction, synonyms, and antonyms. There are Reading Comprehension Passages with 5 questions each. Good Attempt: 40 questions and above with high accuracy.
Logical Reasoning It ia=s one of the toughest sections of the exam with a moderate difficulty level. Questions come from Cause & Effect, Statement & Course of Action, Statement & Conclusions, Statement-Assumptions, Critical Reasoning, and Syllogisms. Students found some questions on analytical puzzles to be a bit tough. Many questions included figures and diagrams. There are some basic questions, based on Coding-Decoding, Blood Relations, and Directions. Good Attempt: 48 questions and above with high accuracy.
Abstract Reasoning This is the easiest section for the students. Questions are standard. There are questions like finding the next figure, missing figure, or odd-one-out.
Good Attempt: 20 questions and above with high accuracy MAH-CET Preparation Tips
Eligibility to appear for the test All those who wish to appear for the common entrance test must ensure that they fulfill the following criteria’s-
- Candidates must have a bachelors’ degree in any discipline from any recognized university with a minimum of 50% marks, and at least 45% in case of reserved candidates.
- Final year students can also apply.
- Candidates appearing for CAT / GMAT / CMAT /MAT February / XAT/ ATMA are considered to be eligible for admission against the All India Seats subject to the fulfillment of eligibility criteria. Such candidates need to fill online application form according to the schedule.
Application form The registration form is available on the Directorate of Technical Education, Maharashtra website. Candidates need to fill up all the details mentioned in the form. You also need to upload your photo & your signature in a jpeg format. The site will ask you to verify your information before submitting it. After that, you will be provided with registration id and password. The price of the online form is 1000 rupees for those in the general category & 800 rupees for scheduled caste and tribe candidates. Payment for the form can be done via e-challan or online payment.
Hall ticket for the entrance Hall tickets are given to candidates on the basis of the information they provide on the online application. You need to visit the official website and download the hall ticket. Your admit card must be carried with you on the day of the paper and while submitting the documents.
CAT vs CET Insights from past CET rank holders
Jaideep Mehendale had secured 99.99 percentile in 2016 state level examination. Jaideep’s basics were almost in place before he began his preps. The strategy he adopted for the entrance mainly consisted of 2 things- firstly, solving mock papers & secondly practicing on visual reasoning set. “On the day maintaining a cool head is your biggest asset”, he quotes.
He admits that having a calm mind is the key to shine in MBA-CET. He is aware of many people with a calm mind outscoring those who were stressed during the paper. What makes MAH Common Entrance Test different from other entrances is that it demands high speed & high accuracy! Apart from this, the visual reasoning section makes CET stand out among others. Jaideep advises that having a high speed and accuracy always gives you an edge over other candidates.
This applies to all b-school entrance tests. On the other hand, Ajinkya Jain (99.99 percentile-r in 2014) worked on attempting as many practice sets as possible. After he had learned of the paper being conducted online, he decided to get familiar with the new format. He began preparing accordingly and gave online tests for the same. Talking about time management, Ajinkya had literally no time left to go back to any questions in the paper.
So, while solving the paper, he marked and left those questions. This assisted in increasing his accuracy & attempts in the paper. Ajinkya advised 2015 candidates to follow the following principles. 1. Introspect yourself including your abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. 2. Have a clear idea of your potential. Once you are aware of your weaknesses start working on it. NMAT vs CET
Abhishek Pandey, a 2013 topper shares his experience of preparing for the entrance. He appeared for 7 other b-school entrances prior to CET, so for the common entrance test he focused on certain strategies. He enrolled for classes for CAT and attempted sectional tests for MH-CET.
He also solved mocks from other coaching institutes. On the exam day, he didn’t do any experiments and solved those problems he was familiar with. He had managed to solve 100 problems in the first hour, which mainly consisted of logical reasoning. Luckily, he had the time to study the leftover problems. Abhishek noticed some fill in the blanks questions in the end. He decided to attempt them since that was a good opportunity to score in a less amount of time. He solved them before going to the lengthy questions. He then went on to solve quantitative and verbal questions. In the end, he succeeded in attempting 185 questions accurately.
Preethi Parthasarthy (a 2012 rank holder) shares her tips for the common entrance test. In order, to tackle her weaknesses, she started working on her basics. She recommends being well versed with the particular types of questions that appear during the exam. For the areas on which she wasn’t confident about, Preethi kept on practicing until her fundamentals were thorough. She kept solving mock papers, which helped to identify her weak points and also keep a tab on her progress. Also doing a SWOT analysis helped Preethi to draw her attention on the areas that she needed to focus on.
Her strategy for the entire year included working on her fundamentals thoroughly. For the same, she made use of her coaching classes study material. She recommends candidates to work on optimizing their accuracy and speed. Try working on one problem at a time and improve your pace for the same. It is necessary to maintain a sync between your pace and getting the problems right. This helped Preethi in recognizing her weaknesses and accordingly devoting time to them. For quantitative ability, she maintained a different book for formulas.
She used it to glance through the formulas every day. The best practice for learning verbals is to go through flashcards. There is no need to explain what needs to be done for visual reasoning as the practice is the only way to sail through it!
Is it possible to get a 99.99 percentile in MBA-CET within 3 months?
In life, anything and everything is possible provided that you work sincerely towards achieving it. Now speaking about MBA-CET, for obtaining a 99.99 percentile you must start with your preps from day 1 itself. You can reserve the initial month for working on your basics. For the rest of 2 months, the attempt at least a full length mock and do an evaluation for the same daily. Follow this routine and you will see progress in your performance with each passing day.
Those who had appeared for the common entrance test (2016) might be well aware of how scoring the paper was! The Venn diagrams, data interpretation, verbal ability, and arrangement section were quite easy. Candidates could have increased their attempts in these areas. Simultaneously, the visual reasoning was a bit time consuming and so, one could have skipped it to save time. There were some incorrect questions & grammatical mistakes reported by the candidates. Also, a small portion of the questions was taken from the SSC tier 1 paper.
On the whole, an actual attempt of about 140 can be called good. Nevertheless, a score under 130 may unlikely get you a call from JBIMS The best thing about MBA-CET is that there is no negative marking. Your aim must be to solve 175 questions within 115 minutes with a minimum of 85% accuracy. After that, you can randomly mark the rest of the questions. But, don’t leave anything unattended! If you have evaluated the previous year's paper, you might realize that the weightage on logical reasoning is significantly more. In the verbal reasoning, statement conclusion/ argument/ implicit statements form the basis of this section. For series and pattern associated questions, one can prepare from Bank PO practice sets. Try focusing on your speed and accuracy to nail the examination.
Below is the list of a few management institutes and their estimated cut-offs:
| Sr. No | Management Institutes | Estimated Cutoffs(All India) |
| 1 | JBIMS | 99.99 |
| 2 | KJ Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, Mumbai | 99.95 |
| 3 | Welingkar | 99 |
| 4 | Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education, Mumbai | 99.96 |
