Verbal & Logical Ability

No. of Questions: 35
This section had questions from the Reading Comprehension, Verbal and Logical Reasoning areas. There were 3 passages of about 300 words each. The passages required careful reading and considerable thought as they were of the abstract kind and were not easy to read and comprehend. The 5 choices per question further complicated things. The difficulty was apparent at first sight, and candidates would therefore have deferred attempts until the rest of the section was attempted. The answers were also quite difficult to arrive at, primarily because they tested interpretation, the understanding of implications, and reasoning.  The large number of Grammar questions tested the student’s knowledge of the nuances and if one was not careful, could have ended up with quite a few errors. There were 6 questions that tested the candidates' familiarity with figures of speech - difficult for those not up to date with their grammar preparation. There were 2 Qs on Para Formation that were quite difficult to work out and they took time, careful reading and some thought. The content would have been unfamiliar to most, being extracts from the book "Hegel, Nietzsche, and Philosophy: Thinking Freedom" by William Dudley. There were 7 questions in Logical ability – while some of them looked at analysis and evaluation of argument, the others looked at familiarity with reasoning method.

The expected score for this section should be around 7-9 in about 40 min. A score of 16+ should be considered excellent. The cut-off is expected to be around 11-12.