If this question has intrigued you, it means you have decided to take the leap of faith and give your shot at Post Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics, jointly offered by IIM Calcutta, ISI Kolkata and IIT Kharagpur. Before coming to the PGDBA strategy, I will categorize PGDBA aspirants into two different categories:
- The first category – this category of students is preparing for CAT (as their first focus) or any other entrance exam for management courses
- The second category – this category of students has not prepared for CAT; hence, they are starting their preparation from scratch.
There is a slight difference in the PGDBA 2021 strategy for the above two categories; hence, I am covering them separately.
Let’s talk about the first category.
If you are preparing for CAT, my assumption is that you already have prepared for Verbal, Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation sections pretty well. Since these sections are almost same for both the exams (rather, I find PGDBA difficulty level for such questions lower than CAT.), you don’t need to prepare too much in addition to what you are preparing for CAT. The verbal section of PGDBA is essentially a subset of the verbal section of the CAT exam. Logical reasoning and data interpretation are more or less same, with PGDBA having a lower difficulty level.
Now, coming on to the Quant section – there exists a good difference in the syllabus for both the exams. Key additional topics in the PGDBA quant syllabus are functions, limits, continuity, derivative, maxima & minima, methods of integration, evaluation of areas using integration, conic sections, matrices and determinants, among few others. So, if you are preparing for CAT exam, you would not have covered these topics. My suggestion to you guys would be to focus on CAT exam right now and give your best shot. Once you are done with the CAT exam, you would have 2-3 months (mid-November to mid-February) to prepare for these additional topics. Focus on these additional topics during that time and revise/brush up other topics before the exam.
Now, let’s talk about the second category that is not preparing for CAT, but is focusing on PGDBA.
You guys need to pull up your socks and start preparation right away. You need to focus on 3 sections for the exam:
- Verbal
- Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation
- Quantitative Aptitude
Let’s talk about each of the sections one by one.
Verbal
In the past four years of examination, there have been five different types of questions which have been asked. The breakup of these five question-types has been given in the below table.
| Question Type | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
| Reading Comprehension | 4+6 | 4+6 | 4+6 | 5+5 |
| Jumbled Sentences | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Identify Incorrect Sentence | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Incorrect Word Usage | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Arrange A Sentence in Order | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Looking at the trend of questions asked, it is fair to assume that the admission committee will continue with reading comprehension and jumbled sentences. The other 2 question types (Identify Incorrect Sentence and Incorrect Word Usage) are more based on grammatical usage of words.
Though there is no fixed number of questions or passages that you should prepare, we believe you should aim to practice the bare minimum of 15-20 reading comprehension passages and 20-25 questions of other types, each. If you have time to practice more questions, please do.
Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation
Though most of the times this section has consisted of a set of 5 logical reasoning questions and one set of 5 data interpretation questions, 2018 showed a slight deviation in the trend for logical reasoning questions. The admission committee might play with this section and a variety of questions by breaking one set of 5 questions into 2-3 sets of 2 or 3 questions each.
| Question Type | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
| Logical Reasoning | 5 | 5 | 1+1+3 | 5 |
| Data Interpretation | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
We would suggest you practice at least 15-20 sets of each of logical reasoning and data interpretation for the exam. If you have time to practice more questions, please do.
Check our PGDBA 2020 exam analysis.
Quantitative Aptitude
This is the most important section for all the aspirants since this forms 50 per cent of the overall exam score. Quite a few of the topics covered in this section are not part of any other management course entrance exam, so both categories of aspirants should focus on this equally.
In case you have not been in touch with mathematics for a long time, we suggest you begin with class 11/12 NCERT books, and revise your basic concepts and practice a few questions. Once you are done with NCERT books and feel confident about the concepts and your understanding, you should move to difficult questions.
For the topics that are also a part of the CAT syllabus (such as combinatorics, algebra, basic geometry, linear equations, quadratic equations, among others), you may pick up any CAT preparation book and practice questions from there. For the topics that are not a part of CAT syllabus, you may pick up class 11/12 mathematics reference books such as RD Sharma or others. Additionally, you may pick up IIT JEE entrance exam preparation books and practice questions from there.
There’s no specific number of questions as to how much you should practice. Whatever time you have till the written exam, practice enough so that you don’t feel that you should have practised harder later on.
[…] pattern of the questions in the verbal section of PGDBA 2020 is the same w.r.t PGDBA 2019. (Check here for past years’ question analysis on verbal section). Two Reading Comprehension passages were […]