January 31, 2006

NUJS 2006 Analysis and cutoff

Dear Students,

We are sure you all must have enjoyed doing the NUJS paper this Sunday. The paper was very close to what we all thought it would be like.

The paper was as we had predicted with no major surprises. It followed the pattern we had set in Mock 3, 4 and Mock 5.

General comments

• It was a pure objective paper with 180 marks in all and a time of 2 hours. All questions carried 1 mark each and there were no negative marks. As recommended to you all in the mail on “What can we expect on 29 Jan and how do we prepare for it", we expected you to attempt all questions since there were no negative marks. We hope you all have followed the advice.
• The only minor change this time compared to 2005 was that Science was not clubbed with maths and was a separate part. That in any case should not have mattered.
• We estimate a total of 3000 students have taken the exam all over India for 78 seats in the open category (2.8 %).

Now for a section-wise analysis of the paper:

English

It had approx 50 to 55 marks. We practised you with 55 marks in Mock 3 and 45 marks in Mock 4 and 5. We had predicted 25% weightage and instead it was 27.7 %. The types of questions were similar to those practised by you all in Mock 3, 4 and 5. Given below are the details of the type of questions but the number of questions in each sub part are approximate as it is from memory of students who appeared for the exam.

1. Identifying words or words closest in meaning (Mock 3, 4 and 5) Some Vocab were from our mocks some from old papers - 12 questions (You could have got 8 right)
2. Replace words with appropriate words (Mock 3, 4 and 5) (5 questions out of which you could have got 4 right)
3. Idioms. (Mock 3 and 5) (8 questions of which you could have got 5 right)
4. Odd word out (Mock 4 and 5) (5 questions out of which you should have got 6 right)
5. Antonyms (Mock 4 and 5) (5 questions out of which you could have got 4 right)
6. Reading comprehension (Mock 3)( 9 questions out of which you could have got 6 right) Some students found the vocab a little difficult in the RC. One had to get the answers by inference and so needed more time than the answers of facts from the passage. The inferential questions could have been left to the latter part of the time given.
7. Filling in the blanks with suitable words (Mock 3 and 4)( 6 words. You could have got 3 right).
8. Out of 50 you could have got 36 in this part and time taken 30 minutes.

Maths

It had about 20 questions. There were four from mensuration, one in speed and distance, two on work and time, CI and SI one each, number sequence two, two on variation. Some students found it tough as they were a little above the average. One question on the relation of the sides of a triangle with 30, 60 and 90 degrees was a new none and not taught in class of LST. The relation is a, a/2 and root 3a by 2 when a is the hypotenuse. Only some students may have known this. The rest were tedious in working out but not too difficult. One need not have taken too long to work out the answers in the beginning itself but kept it for the latter part of the exam time.You could have got 14 in this section and taken 25 minutes.

GK

It had about 35 to 40 questions. All the mocks (1 to 5) and the GK quizzes (1 to 6) on myLST seemed to have been a big help. Our mocks were about 55 questions.

1. Some questions which could have surprised some were like the Father of Bengali Literature (the name that comes to mind is Micheal Madhusudan Datt) and the Day of the Handicapped. There were the usual questions on Geography (Rivers in HP), books and authors (Vikram Seth), economics and sports (Sania Mirza), trade (Trips - 20 years for patents).
2. It was relatively easy if one had gone through the LST GK book and the online quizzes and the mock papers.
3. You could have scored around 25 and taken 15 minutes in all for this part.

Science

NUJS has special emphasis on science and so was it this time. We are reproducing our advice to you here, which we gave before the exam “Concentrate more on physics, chemistry and biology. Borrow your younger brothers textbook of the 10th and go through them. There were 3 questions on Physics. Bernaulli’s Principle (dealing with flowing fluid and pressure)and the priciple of the echo were some. Questions on diseases like tuberculosis and body temperature were on expected lines..." We do hope you went through your younger brothers' science books. You should get about 14 in this.

Logic

We had predicted Analytical and Deductive logic. Students said that was the case. This was perhaps the easiest of all the sections. You could have got about 12 out of nearly 20 questions in this portion and taken 20 minutes over this.

Legal Awareness

About 30 to 35 questions. The Legal Awareness supplement on myLST seems to have been a great help. There were questions on delegated legislation, advocates act which was in the supplement or in the mocks, CJI, Kyoto Protocol, Right to information act, Emplyment guarantee scheme etc., which were all known to you all. In sum there were no great surprises in this section. You should score about 20 marks in this and spent 20 minutes in this.

Summary of likely scores in the exam

Predicted Cutoff

If you think you could have scored about 120 you should have a good chance to be in Kolkata in June 2006.

Wishing you all the very best!
THE LST TEAM