IAT Syllabus, Exam Pattern and Marking Scheme

Who uses the IAT and what follows it

The test feeds one rank list for the seven IISERs at Berhampur, Bhopal, Kolkata, Mohali, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram and Tirupati. Through it you can apply for the five year BS-MS dual degree and for the four year BS programmes that some campuses run, such as the BS in economic sciences and the B.Tech courses offered at IISER Bhopal in recent cycles. IISc Bengaluru also considers IAT scores for its BS (Research) programme, and in recent years IIT Madras and a handful of other science institutes have joined the list.

1. IAT: one computer based paper.
2. Rank list: a common rank plus category ranks.
3. Counselling: you fill preferences for institutes and programmes, and seats are offered in rounds.

IAT exam pattern and marking scheme

Every question has one correct option. The IAT marking scheme awards 4 marks for each correct choice and deducts 1 mark for a wrong answer, while an unattempted question scores zero. So a single mistake wipes out one fourth of what a correct response brings, which means an educated guess after removing two options still pays on average, but a blind guess does not help much.

Three hours for 60 questions works out to three minutes each, far more relaxed than JEE Main. Use the spare time on the subject you find hardest rather than rushing to finish.

Biology topics in the IAT syllabus

Biology questions follow the NCERT textbooks closely and often test understanding of a process rather than a bare fact.

• Class 11: the living world and classification, plant and animal kingdoms, the outer form and inner tissues of flowering plants, structural organisation in animals, cell structure and cell division, biomolecules, photosynthesis, respiration in plants, plant growth, breathing, body fluids and circulation, excretion, locomotion, neural control and chemical coordination.
• Class 12: sexual reproduction in flowering plants, human reproduction, reproductive health, principles of inheritance and variation, the molecular basis of inheritance, evolution, diseases and immunity in humans, useful microbes, biotechnology with its applications, organisms and populations, ecosystems, biodiversity and conservation.

Genetics and molecular biology tend to bring calculation style questions such as cross ratios and DNA sequence logic, so practise those with a pen in hand.

Chemistry and physics chapters to cover

Chemistry

• Physical: mole concept, atomic structure, chemical bonding, thermodynamics, equilibrium, redox reactions, solutions, electrochemistry, chemical kinetics.
• Inorganic: periodic properties, coordination compounds, the elements of the p block and the transition and inner transition (d and f) series.
• Organic: biomolecules, amines, carboxylic acids and the carbonyl compounds (aldehydes with ketones), phenols, ethers and alcohols, the halogen derivatives, hydrocarbons, and the basic principles and techniques of organic chemistry.

Physics

• Class 11: measurement and units, straight line and projectile motion, the three laws of Newton, work and energy with power, systems of particles and rotation, gravitation, how solids and fluids behave under stress and flow, heat and temperature, the laws of thermodynamics and kinetic theory of gases, then oscillations along with waves.
• Class 12: electrostatics, current electricity, magnetism and moving charges, induction and AC circuits, the electromagnetic spectrum, optics (both ray and wave), dual nature of radiation, atoms, nuclei and semiconductor devices.

Mathematics in the syllabus of IAT exam

• Algebra: sets, then relations and functions, complex numbers with quadratic equations, counting through permutations, combinations and the binomial theorem, linear inequalities, sequences and series, matrices and determinants.
• Calculus: limits, continuity, differentiation and where derivatives are used, definite and indefinite integration including area under curves, and differential equations.
• Geometry and vectors: lines and the conics in a plane, vectors, and coordinate geometry in three dimensions.
• Trigonometry: trigonometric functions and inverse trigonometric functions.
• Statistics and probability: measures of dispersion, probability including conditional probability and Bayes' theorem, linear programming.

Expect the difficulty to sit nearer your school exams than the JEE Advanced paper, but they reward clean concepts. Biology students who dropped maths after class 10 should know that maths carries a full quarter of the marks.

How the rank and cut off work

There is no fixed pass mark printed for the IAT. After the test you receive a score and a rank, and seats are filled in counselling rounds in order of rank, separately for each category. Whoever is the final student offered a seat in a programme sets its closing rank, which is what most students mean by the IAT cut off. When people search for the IAT exam pattern and cutoff together, this closing rank is the number they are after.

Closing ranks shift every season depending on how many students apply, the difficulty of the paper and how many seats each campus offers. Popular campuses and newer programmes such as data science fill faster. Instead of chasing a target mark, try to stay safe in each of the four subjects, because a near zero in one section is very hard to recover with the other three.

A 12 week plan built on the four sections

Most IAT candidates are also writing boards and JEE or NEET, so the plan below assumes about two hours a day for this test on top of school work.

1. Weeks 1 to 4: repair your weakest subject first. JEE students start biology from the NCERT class 11 book; NEET students revise calculus and coordinate geometry.
2. Weeks 5 to 8: one class 12 unit per day in rotation across the four subjects, with 15 topic questions after each.
3. Weeks 9 to 10: full timed papers of 60 questions. Mark every guess and check later how many came out right; this tells you how far to push with the minus 1 rule.
4. Weeks 11 to 12: revise formulae, reaction names and diagrams, and sit the mock test that IISER puts up on its admission portal so the screen layout feels familiar.

Books and resources for the IAT

The NCERT textbooks for classes 11 and 12 in all four subjects are the core, because the paper is framed on them. Read the exemplar problems for physics, chemistry and maths after the chapter exercises. For biology, the NCERT text itself, including diagrams and the boxed notes, matters more than any thick reference book.

Your board preparation overlaps heavily with this test. Our CBSE class 12 syllabus and CBSE class 11 syllabus guides list the same chapters. Sitting the national tests too? Set this page beside the JEE Main syllabus and the NEET syllabus, and browse other options in our entrance exams section.