MAT Overview

MAT is conducted 4 times a year – February, May, September and December. The February and December MAT are taken by most of the students because the scores of these two are accepted by good institutes. MAT does not have a fixed format and throws up different test patterns – sectional test, grouped test where questions pertaining to a particular area are clubbed together and completely jumbled paper where questions from different areas appear in a random manner.

MAT Year	Total No. of Qs.	Number of GK questions	Marks per Question	Comments
September 2009	200	40	1 mark	0.25 negative marking. Sectional test.
May 2009	200	40	1 mark	0.25 negative marking. Jumbled test.
February 2009	200	39	1 mark	0.25 negative marking. Grouped test.
December & February 2008	200	40	1 mark	0.25 negative marking. Jumbled test.
December 2007	200	40	1 mark	0.25 negative marking. Jumbled test.

Topic-wise break-up of questions –

Topic	No. of qs in Feb’09 MAT	No. of qs in Feb’08 MAT	No. of qs in Dec’07 MAT
Awards and Prizes	2	2	2
Famous Personalities	0	1	1
Arts and Literature	2	1	0
Business and Economy	16	13	14
Technology and IT	2	1	0
Government and Politics	15	14	17
History	1	0	0
Geography	0	0	0
Science	1	3	4
Mythology	0	0	0
Sports	1	5	2
Quotations	0	0	0
Total	40	40	40

In MAT one would find a high percentage of questions based on current affairs.

Usually, topics and events about a year old constitute almost 60% of the GK questions. For example in 2008 MAT, there were 8 questions exclusively on Beijing Olympics 2008. Sections In Mat are not always marked but the test usually has 40 questions in GK.