SNAP 2016 Analysis & Expected Cutoff

SNAP 2016 had following changes:
  • Current Affairs 30 Questions compared to 40 Questions in earlier exams
  • Analytical & Logical Reasoning had 40 questions compared to 30 questions in earlier exams
  • Analytical & Logical Reasoning questions were of one mark compared to two marks earlier.
Difficulty level was higher in Quant Section, rest of the sections were of same difficulty level compared to previous years' exams. The broad distribution of the test was as follows:
SectionMarksNo. of QuestionsGood number of net attemptsIdeal time allocation (min)
General English404020-2225
Quantitative, Data Interpretation & Data Sufficiency404021-2340
Current Affairs (of last 2 years)303012-1515
Analytical & Logical Reasoning404015-1640
Total15015068-75120
Let us have a closer look at each of the sections -
General English
We will look at this section area-wise
The detailed break-up of the section is given as follows:
Topic
Number of questions
Difficulty
Reading Comprehension (Two passages)
11 (6 + 5)
Easy
Para Jumble (Six sentence and five sentence)
3 (2 +1)
Easy- Moderate
Verbal Analogy
3
Moderate
Foreign phrase
1
Easy
One word substitution
1
Moderate
Idioms
2
Moderate
FIB - Vocabulary based
2
Moderate
FIB - Grammar based
4
Easy
Synonym
3
Easy - Moderate
Antonym
3
Easy - Moderate
Common Confusable
4
Easy - Moderate
Identify figure of speech
1
Difficult
Critical Reasoning
2
Easy
Unlike last year, this year’s paper was much more balanced. There were the usual vocabulary based questions which were quite easy to attempt. 3 questions of vocabulary used the same words as that in the IIFT paper. They asked to find two answers for a few vocabulary questions which is similar to the GRE pattern. Sentence Correction was a surprise miss this year. So were the figure of speech questions. There was only one question which asked the candidate to identify the type of the word used. There were two RC passages and all but one of the 11 questions asked were factual in nature. The options were straight forward and easy to select. The two passages came from the areas of Fuel Conservation Technology and Brexit issue respectively. They were lengthy but easy to read. There were two six-sentence para-jumble questions and they were tedious to read. However, the options were not close. The idioms and migratory word questions were quite easy. Three vocabulary questions contained words which had already appeared in IIFT this year. One common confusable question came from CAT 2007 paper. The analogy and CR questions were very easy. Overall, a student should have attempted 35-37 questions in this section with 90% accuracy. One should have taken 22-25 minutes in this section.
Critical Reasoning & Reading Comprehension This RC area consisted of 2 passages each with 6 questions.
The passages were lengthy in nature at around 650-700 words.
Passage 1: "The Euro crisis and different ideas about how the currency should be managed." The question types were unique with questions on “Who could be the authors of the passage and what is the main highlight of the passage”, "Classifying the viewpoints of the countries".
Passage 2: “Fuel from sewage is the future – and it's closer than you think” This passage had direct questions and is a must attempt in this area. As a strategy, the second passage could have been attempted first as all the questions in the second passage were relatively easy and the answers could be picked up directly from the passage.
There were 2 CR based questions, one on conclusion and another on weakening argument.


Quantitative Ability, Data Interpretation and Data Sufficiency
The Quantitative Ability, Data Interpretation and Data Sufficiency section was a little lengthy and relatively trickier section.
The detailed break-up of the section is given as follows:
Topic
Number of questions
Difficulty
Percentages, SICI
1
Easy - Moderate
P&L
3
Easy - Moderate
TSD, Work
5
Easy - Moderate
Averages
1
Easy
Number System
7
Easy - Moderate
Algebra
4
Easy - Moderate
Logarithm
1
Easy - Moderate
Geometry, Mensuration
7
Moderate -Difficult
P&C
2
Moderate
Probability
2
Easy - Moderate
Set Theory
1
Moderate
DI-Pie Chart
3
Easy
Table
3
Easy - Moderate
The difficulty level of this section went up considerably compared to that of the last year. Overall, the difficulty of the section was moderate. There were 4-5 questions that were lengthy to read. Questions from Number System, Arithmetic and Algebra dominated the paper. There were a significant number of questions from Modern Math. Though data provided for a couple of questions were not adequate to find the required quantity, there were no such options like ‘Data inadequate’ and ‘Cannot be determined’ in these questions. A student would have done well to attempt all the DI questions. Thus, those questions can be considered as erroneous ones. An attempt of 25-27 with 85% accuracy should fetch a good score in this section.

General Awareness
The General Awareness section had 30 questions.
The biggest difference in the paper this year was in this section. As announced earlier there were only Current Affairs questions in this section. Most of it was from 2016 with a few of last year as well. The detailed break-up of the section is given as follows:

Current Affairs


Topic
Number of questions
Difficulty
Persons
8
Easy - Moderate
Business Awareness
6
Easy - Moderate
Sports
5
Easy - Moderate
Current affairs- Science &technology
4
Easy - Moderate
Current affairs-Awards
3
Easy - Moderate
Government Programmes/Operations
2
Easy - Moderate
Current affairs-Geography
1
Easy
Current affairs-Miscellaneous GK
1
Easy
This section was a good mix of all the areas of Current Affairs(Persons, Business Awareness, Sports, Science &technology, Awards, Government Programmes/Operations, Current affairs-Geography and Miscellaneous GK ).
Questions were asked from various categories as below.
  • Sports (Davis cup/Test cricket/Oscar Pistorius, English Premier League, Finalists in 2015 FIFA world cup etc.)
  • Awards (Oscar for best picture, Lata Mangeshkar Life Time Achievement Award, Noble prize for Literature, the person inducted into International Astronautics Federation etc.)
  • Famous people (Matching people with their professions – Janet Yellen, Urijit Patel, Mario Dragi, UN Secretary General, Vice president of the US etc)
  • Government Schemes/Operations (Code name of the rescue operations conducted in Sudan, Sethu Bharatam etc.)
  • Business (Name of Google's Instant Messenger, Company that acquired Linkedin, Indian company in the top 150 R&D spenders, Company that Flipkart acquired etc)
  • Science & Technology (Name of the mini satellite made my the Pune engineering college students, Humanoid Robot unveiled by China etc.)
  • International Affairs (Kigali Agreement)
Around 12-15 attempts in the section in around 15 min would have been good for this section.
Analytical & Logical Reasoning
This section had 5-6 questions that could be put in Quantitative Aptitude section as well. There was surprising no case-let based set in the section. Almost all the typical areas of the Reasoning section were present with the special focus on mathematic based and series questions. The detailed break-up of the section is given as follows:
Topic
Number of questions
Difficulty
Blood Relation-Tree Based
2
Easy - Moderate
Coding-decoding
1
Easy
Series
8
Difficult
Seating Arrangement
2
Moderate
Distribution
1
Moderate
Mathematical
11
Moderate - Difficult
CR
2
Difficult
Puzzles
1
Moderate - Difficult
Visual Reasoning
5
Difficult
Input-output
4
Easy
Clock
1
Moderate
Calendar
1
Moderate
Venn diagram
1
Moderate
There were a significant number of questions from Visual Reasoning. To solve a couple questions in the section, one needed to have some factual information. The questions based on series and visual reasoning were quite difficult. An attempt of 24-26 and a score of around 20 can be considered a good score.
Cut-Offs:

Likely cutoffs (Score) for SIBM - Pune and SCMHRD:

 
General
SC
ST/DA
SIBM P
73+
60+
40+
SCMHRD
70+
55+
35+
SIIB and SIBM B
68+
45+
30+

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