This question crosses the minds of almost everyone at some point. If you like most aspects of IBA, you might wanna try it out. Statistically, the acceptance rate is around 1%. It’s not something you can gamble your future on. To make this easier, there's an open-for-all assessment test here on the website. Sit for this test without any prior knowledge or preparation. You can then measure what your chances are if you start preparing.

Just like the IBA exam, you will get 70 questions in total: 30 English, 25 math, and 15 analytical. The "standard" of the next intake can never be predicted, but I've tried to keep the questions close to the recent year's standards.

Each right answer gives you one mark. There's a -0.25 penalty for each wrong answer and no penalty for the questions you don't answer. You get a total of 90 minutes, so around 1min 15s per question.

You cannot use a calculator, but you can do rough work on a sheet of paper so that calculations are easier. In the actual exam, you'd have to do it in the space between the questions or the blank space at the end of the question paper.

In the IBA exam, the passing bar is dependent on the performance of the examinees on that test. It varies based on the difficulty of the questions and the quality of the candidates. That’s why it is very difficult to try and predict what the passing bar will be until it is announced in the final results. But having a roundabout assumption about the passing bar of each section is crucial to passing the test. Last year, the passing bars were:

English 6/30 Mathematics 4.25/25 Analytical 2.75/15 Writing Part 12/30 Viva 12/20
Total: 37.5/100 and 54.5/120

After you submit the answers, you will see a detailed test result page that shows your total score out of 70 and individual scores in each section. The standard passing bar of this assessment test is around 30% in each individual section. If your scores are too low in a section, then chances are you might miss the passing bar in the IBA exam in that same section as well. But if you're confident that you can improve significantly through preparation, you can still give it a shot.

You will see individual category performances with score, attempt, accuracy, and time taken per score. Attempt is the percentage of total questions you attempted. Accuracy means the percentage of attempted questions you got right. Try to get both to more than 60%.

You'll also get these analyses subcategory-wise so that you can figure out the areas you are lacking in and work on those. There's a share button on the test result page. You can also share it with someone to get their opinions on it.

You can also find the questions in a separate tab and check which ones you got wrong and why. There's an explanation as well. You will also see the time you spent on that specific question and figure out which questions take you more time. Unlike live tests, there's no leaderboard for the assessment test. Because this test will always be open to sit for.

If you start it once, you cannot pause it or switch tabs. So if you face any technical issue, sit for it again from a different Gmail account.

Go and sit for it now. Click this: tathirmichil.com/test