Nirma Education and Research Foundation (NERF) was established in 1994 by the well-known industrialist and philanthropist Dr Karsanbhai K. Patel with a view to promote and support higher education in India. That same year NERF set up the Nirma Institute of Management

The institute building, which is centrally air-conditioned, has an auditorium with a capacity of 450 seats, computer centres, a fully-automated library, an art gallery, faculty and administration blocks, conference rooms and other facilities. Modernity, aesthetics and grandeur characterise the building. The campus also has all modern sports facilities. The whole ambience is one of serenity that is conducive to intellectual pursuits.

Application forms may be obtained by sending in a request along with a demand draft of Rs 1,000 favouring Nirma Institute of Management, payable at Ahmedabad to the Deputy Registrar, Institute of Management, Nirma University of Science and Technology, Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Highway, Ahmedabad 382481. You can log on to their website www.nim.ac.in for more information.

Eligibility: For the MBA (full-time) course you need to have a three-year bachelors degree or its equivalent in any discipline recognised by the Association of Indian Universities/AICTE with a minimum of 50 per cent aggregate marks. Candidates appearing for the final examination of a bachelors degree may also apply.

Entrance exam

Applicants are required to appear for the Common Admission Test (CAT) conducted by the IIMs. Foreign nationals/persons of Indian origin/NRIs need not appear for the CAT. They can be considered for admission on the basis of their GMAT scores. Candidates shortlisted on the basis of their performance in CAT will be called for a group discussion and personal interview. The group discussion/personal interview will be held at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta and New Delhi. The final selection would be based on the candidate?s academic achievements, work experience and performance in the written test, group discussion and personal interview.

Pattern of exam

CAT consists of objective-type questions on quantitative ability, data interpretation, reading comprehension, verbal ability. It is a two-hour paper.

How to prepare

English: The exam usually has six to eight passages in the Reading comprehension section, with an overall length of 4,500-5,500 words. Candidates have to answer about 50 questions in about 30 minutes. Speed is the key, so you need to practise answering the questions speedily and accurately. GMAT by Barron is useful for comprehension. Reading a variety of books, both fiction and non-fiction, will certainly give you the required edge.

The section on verbal ability typically comprises sentence correction, sentence sequencing, verbal reasoning etc. Some good guide books for preparation are: Grammar by Wren and Martin, and English Grammar by Mason. This one includes exercises on comprehension as well. Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis is a good guide for the usage section.

In the quantitative ability section, questions are designed to assess the reasoning skills of the candidates, rather than their computational skills.

Data interpretation: This section presents data to the candidate in forms such as caselets, pie diagrams, bar graphs, etc and questions are set to evaluate the candidate?s skills at analysing the given information. Data Interpretation by S. Chand and R. Gupta can be a good source for preparation. Above all, maintain your cool and do your best.

Sample Test Paper

English

1. The following sentence when properly sequenced forms a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the choice given.
A. Compared to that, the $3 billion needed to build the facilities and relocate the tens of thousands of residents to the outskirts is a trifle.
B. Hanover, the site of the last such event in 2000, suffered a disappointing turnout.
C. But Shanghai sees it as a comparable to Beijing’s hosting of the Olympic games in 2008, an event that fill fix the world’s attention to the city’s and the country’s achievements.
D. Shanghai’s planners regard the World Expo as the city’s greatest opportunity to show off its resurgent glory.
E. Skepticism may abound about the ability of World Expos to generate profits.
a) DEBCA
b) EDBCA
c) DCABE
d) ECDBA

2. From the pairs of words given, choose the one that fills the gap most appropriately.
There was ____ among economists, bordering on ____, over the economy’s seeming inability to create jobs.
a) puzzlement, alarm
b) bewilderment, surprise
c) confusion, resentment
d) disorder, chaos

Quantitative ability

1. Six people are queued up at a theatre box office; three of them have only five rupee notes and the remaining three only 10 rupee notes. There is no cash in the box office when it opens and each customer
in turn is going to purchase a single five-rupee ticket.
Find the chance that no customer will have to wait for change.
a) ¼
b) 3/5
c) 5 /6
d) none of these

2. Find the number of integral solutions of the equations xy = x + y + 3
a) 4
b) 6
c) 8
d) infinite

3. The statements I and II are as:
I. A frog jumps along a line. Its first jump takes it 1 cm, second 2 cm, and so on. Each jump takes it either forward or backward. After 77 jumps, the frog cannot return to the point at which it started.
II. The numbers 1,2,3 …., 78, 79 are written on a blackboard. Any two numbers are replaced at random with their positive difference. After this is done several times, a single number remains on the blackboard and it is zero.
Which of the following is the correct answer?
a) Statements I and II both are true
b) Statement I is true but II is false
c) Statements I is false but II is true
d) Statements I and II both are false