The Management Aptitude Test (MAT) is necessary for admission into a postgraduate diploma in management and equivalent programmes offered by the All India Management Association (AIMA) or other management institutes that participate in it. Some institutes that accept MAT scores are: Apeejay School, Noida; Centre for Management Development, Modi Nagar; Asia Pacific Institute of Management, New Delhi; Indian Institute of Finance, New Delhi; Warangal Institute of Management (ITM group), Warangal, Andhra Pradesh; Institute of Finance and International Management, Bangalore; Faculty of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Rural Management, Jaipur; Department of Management Studies, Goa, etc.

MAT has become popular with over hundreds of AICTE approved institutions and university departments. Several lakhs of MBA aspirants have availed AIMA?s testing services in the past few years. MAT was approved as a national entrance test conducted by the Government of India, ministry of HRD, from November 2004.

The MAT bulletin and application form may be obtained by sending a demand draft of Rs 690 drawn in favour of AIMA-CMS payable in New Delhi to 14 Institutional Area, New Delhi-110003. For more details, please log on to www.aima-ind.org.

Eligibility

The minimum qualification for appearing in MAT is graduation in any discipline from a recognised university. A final-year student in any undergraduate course (BA, BSc, BCom, BTech, etc) can also appear provisionally.

Entrance exam

MAT is usually conducted four times in a year in February, May, September and December in all major cities in the country and in leading cities abroad.

Pattern of exam

MAT is an objective-type test with multiple-choice answers. The test is designed to assess your general aptitude in the following areas: Language comprehension, Mathematical skills, data analysis and sufficiency, intelligence and critical reasoning, Indian and global environment. Each section is allotted 40 questions, and the total time of the exam is two-and-a-half hours.

How to prepare

To succeed in this exam, you need basic intelligence, proper planning, systematic effort and expert guidance. Accuracy with speed is very important. For English, brush up your comprehension and usage by attempting the exercises from Barron or Princeton Review?s GMAT/GRE guides and also from books by Wren and Martin and Norman Lewis. Revise the concepts of maths from books like Quantitative Ability by R.S. Agarwal and Mathematics by Tata McGraw Hill. Practise exercises from Test of Reasoning by R.S. Agarwal, and books by Edgar Thorpe and Tata McGraw Hill publishers.

To be well up with current affairs, read newspapers and news magazines like Outlook, Frontline, India Today, etc, regularly. You can go through GK guide books by Pearson, Spectrum or Manorama.

Personality development is the most important aspect that comes into play after the written exam. Group discussions and personal interviews are conducted by the various institutes to assess your suitability for the rigorous discipline of pursuing a management course.

sample test paper

Mathematics

A solid sphere is cut into four equal parts. If the total surface area of each part now is x times that of the sphere, then what is the value of x?

a) 1/4 b) 1/2 c) 3/4 d) 3/8

English

Which of the following words is
opposite in meaning of the word given in bold:

1. Myth
a) reality b) mystery
c) misery d) misconception

2. Extensive
a) intensive b) abominable c) inherent d) negligible

Intelligence and Critical Reasoning

1. Three of the following four are alike in a certain way and form a group. Which is the one that does not belong to that group?

a) wolf b) tiger
c) hyena d) monkey

Indian and global environment

According to the United Nations Human Development Report 2005, what is India’s rank in the Human Poverty Index?

a) 58 b) 56 c) 59 d) 57