How to prepare for IPMAT while you are in Class 12
A workable weekly routine for a Class 12 student preparing for IPMAT alongside boards, including how much to attempt in a paper with negative marking.
5 Nov 2026 · 3 min read · Draft - not indexed
Class 12 is a crowded year. The students who do well at IPMAT are usually not the ones who studied the most hours; they are the ones who did not let the two syllabi fight each other.
Start from the dates, not from the books
In its 2026 cycle IIM Rohtak opened applications on 6 February, closed them on 6 April, and held the aptitude test on 10 May, with interviews in the first or second week of June. The institute marked all of it tentative.
Read that backwards and the shape of your year appears. The test comes after your board exams, in the gap most students waste. Your real preparation window is the months before boards, when you can only give the test an hour a day, plus the four to six weeks after boards, when you can give it everything.
So the plan is: build the base slowly through the school year, then peak after boards.
Why your board marks are part of the exam
At IIM Rohtak the final merit list is 55% aptitude test, 20% Class XII marks, 15% personal interview and 10% Class X marks. Nearly a third of the score is your school performance. There is also a 60% minimum in both Class X and Class XII, 55% for SC, ST and DAP candidates.
This settles the question students keep asking. You do not choose between boards and IPMAT. Boards are a scored component of IPMAT admission.
A routine that survives a school week
Monday to Friday, one hour a day. Thirty minutes of quantitative ability, twenty minutes of reading, ten minutes of reasoning. One hour, protected, every day beats four hours on Sunday.
The reading half-hour is not optional. Verbal ability is 40 of 120 questions at IIM Rohtak, and IIM Indore tests proficiency in English. Read a newspaper editorial or a long article daily. Vocabulary built from context stays; vocabulary built from lists does not.
Saturday: one timed section. Forty questions, forty minutes, no pauses. The point is not the score. The point is learning what your brain does under a clock.
Sunday: analysis, not new material. Go through the Saturday paper question by question. Mark every question as one of: knew it and got it, knew it and rushed it, did not know it, should have skipped it. The fourth category is the one that wins you marks.
Attempt strategy, because of negative marking
IIM Rohtak awards 4 marks for a correct answer and deducts 1 for a wrong one, over 120 questions in 120 minutes. One minute per question, and guessing has a price.
Work out your own attempt limit in mocks. Most students settle somewhere between 60 and 80 attempts with high accuracy, and score better than classmates who attempt everything. A question you skip costs nothing. A question you guess costs you a mark and the thirty seconds you spent on it.
After boards: the four weeks that decide it
Once boards are over, switch to full papers. Two full-length mocks a week, each followed by a full analysis session, and daily drilling on whichever section your analysis keeps flagging. Then begin interview preparation, because at IIM Rohtak the interview is 15% and at IIM Indore there is a Written Ability Test and interview stage too.
Interview preparation is not a script. It is being able to say why management, what you have read lately, and what you do outside school, without padding.
The mistake we see most
Students collect material. Three books per section, four YouTube channels, a question bank nobody finishes. Pick one source per section, finish it, and spend the time you saved on analysing your own mistakes.
Check the official pages for your cycle's dates and eligibility before you plan around any of this.
Want this applied to your own preparation?
Send us your class, your target exam and your last mock score, and we will tell you what to change first.