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 TISS 2009 : Exam Analysis
Another luminous chance to make it big in the Management career has been successfully navigated! The Tata Institute of Social Sciences, TISS which has carved out a niche for itself in the field of human service professional education and applied social science research, held its entrance exam today, the 13th of December 2009.
“There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them”. This is exactly what this Entrance Exam of 2009 proved today. A prepared student had a field day with today’s paper. A chance to get a coveted seat at the prestigious institute came alive!
December saw a gamut of management entrance exams being conducted, with TISS rubbing shoulders with The JMET.
The Institute offers Post Graduate Master degrees in Developmental Studies, Disaster Management Education (Elementary), Globalization and Labour, Health Administration, Hospital Administration, Human Resources Management and Labour Relations, Media and Cultural Studies and Social Entrepreneurship. Admission to these programs is based on your performance in the written test.
 Highlights
There were three main things about the TISS exam this year which were striking:
- Maintaining its tradition, Part I, the general aptitude test was easy to tackle – 50 questions in 45 minutes
- Easy to eliminate answer options
- The paper was characterized by two parts Part I and Part II. Part I of the Admission Test was common for all study programmes.
- Characterized by no negative marking and no sectional cut-offs.
Structure of the Paper
- Part-I was an objective, multiple choice test, with 50 questions to be attempted in 45 minutes, and aimed to test a candidate’s analytical reasoning ability, language ability, and social awareness and general awareness
- Number of options for Part I was four
- Each question carried equal weightage
- Part II was given 75% weightage leaving the rest 25% to Part I
Sections |
Number of Questions |
Possible Attempts |
Analytical Reasoning
and Quantitative Ability |
15 |
12-15 |
Verbal Ability |
20 |
15-16 |
General Awareness
about Contemporary
Social Issues |
15 |
8-9 |
Part II was a program specific section where students applying for different programs took different tests. This part of the paper was objective as well as descriptive based on the type of program the student had applied for. The time allotted was one hour.
The much in demand HRM and LR program test was vaguely divided into five sections namely Data Interpretation, Data Sufficiency, Reading Comprehension, Business Knowledge ( Economic as well as HR), and Foundations of Management.
Step-by-Step Analysis
Part-I
Verbal and Ability Section
A single passage of 450 words was simple to comprehend. The theme of the passage was about the travails facing India’s silk and cotton industry. The author was making a comparison pre and post 19th century, where once Indian silk was popular throughout the world, today, despite mechanization and variety, it only contributes to 2% of the textile industry exports. The RC had a total of 5 questions.
The rest of this section was made up of one summary (gist of the paragraph was on Indus valley civilization), sentence corrections, four fill in the blanks (grammar based and double blanks), identifying the grammatically correct sentence and replacing the underlined phrase. The one single analogy, two odd man out as well as the jumbled paragraphs too did not cause any interruptions in the thought process.
This section can be termed as easy with hardly any difficulty level.
Analytical Reasoning and Quantitative Ability Section
This section comprised of only three Visual Reasoning questions. In comparison to last year there were no questions based on Linear Arrangement but there was one question from syllogism.
The remaining seven questions were based on profit and loss, averages, and series of numbers. There was a lone problem based on geometry and time and work. If one remembered their high school mathematics then this section was a cakewalk.
The data interpretation questions were characterized by a bar graph which had four questions based on percentage calculation and comparison. The questions could be answered by mental calculation and some were so simple that the fingers did the job.
All put into a nutshell this was the easiest section amongst all three.
Quantitative Ability spared the students the effort of thinking too hard. It is a well known fact that mathematics needs fundamental concepts to be firmly in place. No amount of guessing can get you marks in this particular section. But there was really no need for guessing, the sums were straight out of the tenth standard text book.
General Awareness about Contemporary Social Issues Section:
A total of 15 questions which ranged from topics covering the Preamble of the Indian Constitution, awards and prizes from the Literary Field, GDP, static general knowledge and current affairs. Everything under the sun was covered in this section… all one to have is a good solid memory.
General Awareness cannot be characterized by any difficulty level as this one area where you have to be mentally storing information in your mind in your daily intake of reading whether it is newspapers or magazines or business chronicles.
Some of the questions asked were
What is the full form of UNESCO?
What was Darwin’s theory based on?
The clone Dolly was which animal
Mother Teresa worked for which charitable organisation
Part II
This was the ‘Programme-Based’ Test and the duration was one-hour with seventy-five questions..
Human Resource Management and Labour Relations
This part of the paper was entirely objective in nature with multiple choice options (four to five options).
Data Interpretation
Most of the questions were in tabular-format and one could pick out the answers from the tables itself. This required keen observation skills while reading the given data. No amount of exhaustive calculations would have given the correct answer option.
Data Sufficiency
There were simple questions with 5 options. Most of the questions required a basic knowledge of mathematics, especially in numbers/ geometry/ algebra and arithmetic principles.
Reading Comprehension
There were two passages for Reading Comprehension. One was based on "Industrial District Concepts" and the other was based on "US medical indurance Policy". The length of each passage went into three pages. The first passage was more into the economic technicalities and hence was difficult to comprehend for students who are not aware of the jargon of the subject. The second passage was lengthy but was easy on the eye and could be comprehended easily provided one gave sufficient time to attempt the questions. Given the time constraints attempting the second RC was a judicious move.
Economic and Management Fundamentals
Here general awareness on the social front was tested. It was more specialized in character in the sense that one needed to possess knowledge of several management and economic theories and concepts.
In Part II, the Data Interpretation and Data Sufficiency sections, as well as the the Social, Management and Economic Fundamentals section was on the easier side.
Media and Cultural Studies
This part of the paper was subjective with no multiple choice questions.
There were two questions where the student had to use his/her creative thinking ability and put forth ideas and critiques on social issue topics.
The first was a critical comment in not more than 750 words on one of the following:
- Films like Slumdog Millionaire give the real picture of life in the urban slums
- Media presents a one sided story of Naxalites
- Reservation in Higher education is a way of ensuring social justice
- Development for one causes denial for the other
The second question was building a story around four given sentences using your creative thinking.
If you were cut out for a career in media and cultural work then this question would have brought out all the creative juices within you and you would have had a field day answering it!
Again there is no difficulty level that this section will exhibit because it was subjective and needed only ideas to be put down on paper!
This Part II was slightly more time consuming and tougher than Part I.
For students who had opted for Counseling as their specialization, the first section comprised an essay-writing exercise (again three choices were given) with a word limit 1000 words.
An exhaustive but exciting paper and for an aspiring TISS candidate a dream career awaits them!
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