Important Notice-
This is to inform all the aspirants of full time MBA (International Business) and MBA (Business Analytics) Programmes that for the academic year 2024, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade will accept CAT 2023 Score.
IIFT 2019 Exam is conducted by Indian Institute of Foreign Trade across India. It is usually held in the first week of December every year and has six sections (with sub parts) – Verbal Ability, Reading Comprehension, General Awareness, Logical Reasoning, Data Interpretation and Quantitative Aptitude.
The Verbal and RC section will constitute 31 percent of the total weightage and thus is critical in boosting your score and final percentile. Let us take a look at the salient features of the IIFT 2019 exam:
- IIFT 2019 exam is a paper-based exam
- There will be sectional cut-off and overall cutoff for the IIFT 2019 paper
- The maximum marks are 100 and maximum time allotted for the IIFT 2019 exam is 2 hours or 120 minutes
- The total questions vary from 114 to 125 in the IIFT exam. There were 114 questions in IIFT 2018 exam paper
- The total marks for every correct answer vary for different sections between 1, 0.75 and 0.5 marks
- There is one-third NEGATIVE marking for every incorrect answer
- The questions are multiple-choice based questions.
Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension Section - Details
The VA and RC sections constitute 31 percent of total weightage. Here is a break-up of the two sections:
IIFT 2019 Section |
Total Questions |
Correct Answer |
Incorrect Answer |
Total Marks |
Verbal Ability |
20 |
+ 0.75 |
- 0.25 |
15 |
Reading Comprehension |
16 |
+ 1 |
- 0.33 |
16 |
Total |
36 |
31 |
Note: The number of questions in VA and RC section are interchangeable with each other and may vary.
The difficulty level of the VA and RC sections is moderate. The ideal time, ideal score and cutoff for VA and RC sections is as below:
IIFT 2019 Section |
Total Questions |
Ideal Time (in Minutes) |
Ideal Score |
Cut-off |
Verbal Ability |
20 |
12 to 15 |
7 to 8 |
2 to 3 |
Reading Comprehension |
16 |
20 to 22 |
7 to 8 |
2 to 3 |
An overall score between 30 to 33 is considered to be a safe cutoff. If you score between 7 and 8 in both VA and RC sections then you are already half-way (14 to 16) through the overall cutoff mark. Hence, having a good command over grammar and vocabulary in IIFT 2019 can prove to be a differentiator.
Verbal Ability Section – About
The VA section has questions on the following topics:
Topics |
No. of Questions |
Analogy |
2 to 3 |
Etymology / Word Roots |
4 to 5 |
Error Spotting |
~ 2 |
Fill in the Blanks |
2 to 4 |
Jumble Words / Letters |
~ 3 |
Match the Columns |
1 to 2 |
Sentence Completion |
2 to 3 |
Para Jumbles |
2 to 3 |
What helps?
- Having a strong vocabulary
- Having a good command over tenses, figures of speech, clauses, and sentence structure
- Having knowledge about word origins
Reading Comprehension – About
The RC section has the following structure:
- 4 to 5 RC passages
- 600 to 1000 words each
- 3 to 4 questions per passage
- Mix of direct and inference-based questions
What helps?
- Having a good reading speed
- Having being able to do selective reading
- Having a strong vocabulary
Reading a variety of articles, practice papers and timed sectional mocks will help you ace this section.
Stay informed, Stay ahead and stay inspired with MBA Rendezvous