“This post is written by one of my LUMS MBA Admissions test (LMAT) students, Ali Malik, who got admitted to the LUMS MBA program 2014. He appeared in both the LMAT 1 that took place on 9 March 2014 and LMAT 2 that was held on April 20 2014. In LMAT 1 he scored a 680 out of 800 (98 percentile) and in LMAT 2 he scored a 670 out of 800 (96 percentile). Here is his LMAT 1 scorecard and here is his LMAT 2 score card. He will be commencing his MBA program in fall 2014.”

Both LUMS MBA admissions test 1 (LMAT 1) and LUMS Managements admissions test 2 (LMAT 2) were of the same format but LMAT 2 was slightly more difficult. Here is a breakdown of the LMAT Test Pattern from 2014:

Total 6 sections

• 3 Quantitative, 2 Verbal and the 1 Writing.
• Time for each verbal & quantitative section: 25 minutes.
• Time for writing section: 30 minutes.

The overall process can take about 4.5 hours (since they ask you to reach the venue at 8:30 am and you finish around 1:00 pm).

The math and verbal sections can come in any order but writing is always the last section which has a separate answer sheet. There is no break between the verbal and quantitative sections, however there is a little break for the writing section due to distribution of the separate writing answer sheet.

Question types

Quantitative – all questions were problem solving, there were no data sufficiency questions like the ones you see on the GMAT. All major topics from GRE and GMAT like probability, sequences, coordinate geometry, arithmetic, speed/time, rate, triangles, circles etc. were covered. In fact it was a very comprehensive test as far as quantitative section was concerned.

Verbal – there were no critical reasoning questions like the ones you would see on the GMAT or GRE. Reading Comprehensions were simpler than both GRE and GMAT – here is the exact reading comprehension that I got on the LMAT 1. Same was the case with sentence correction, much simpler than GMAT – however there was another type of sentence correction question in which a certain portion of the sentence was underlined and it’s different versions were given in the options; which was even easier than the sentence correction questions.

Writing – one essay question, it was analysis of an issue – the topic was related to management.

Difficulty level was different for different questions but overall the problems were of medium to easy level (compared with GRE). I would say that overall it was easier than GMAT but some questions were tricky and took a lot of time. I feel the test was more closer in format to GRE than GMAT. But they did not test any vocabulary so there is no need to learn words or develop a strong grip on vocabulary. Students would find that preparing for the GRE rather than GMAT is much more realistic – moreover students must use the GMAT official guide as well.