SNAP Averages, Mixtures and Alligation Previous Year Questions

SNAP Averages, Mixtures and Alligation PYQ, free to download as a 38-page PDF. The bank carries 26 solved questions from the 2006 to 2025 papers and takes roughly two days to work through, so split it across plain averages one day and mixtures the next.

Every question keeps the year it was asked and the options exactly as printed. An answer key follows the questions, then a full worked solution for all 26.

How the Answer Key Was Prepared

Worth stating plainly, because it is unusual. Symbiosis does not release an official answer key for SNAP, and the question papers we work from carry the questions only.

Every answer in this booklet was therefore worked out by our team from first principles, not copied from an official key. Each one was recomputed and checked against the printed option list, including the three questions where the honest answer is that none of the printed options is correct.

Each solution shows the full reasoning, so you can follow the working rather than take the letter on trust.

What the 26 Questions Cover

Averages sits inside the Quantitative, Data Interpretation and Data Sufficiency section and is among the most reliably repeated topics in SNAP, appearing in almost every paper since 2006.

• Average shifts, where someone joins, leaves or replaces another and the average moves by a stated amount
• Weighted averages across sub-groups of unequal size, including recovering group sizes from a combined average
• Mixture and replacement problems, where part of a solution is drawn off and topped up with water
• Average speed over multi-leg journeys, and halt-time questions built on the same idea
• Data sufficiency questions where the average is the unknown and each statement must be tested alone
• Statistical variants, including variance and the assumed-mean deviation formula

The Five Moves That Solve Almost All of Them

Across the 26 questions the same handful of moves keeps working. Naming them makes the section much faster.

• Convert every average into a total before comparing two stages; a person's own value is the jump in total, never the jump in average
• When someone replaces someone else, rebuild the new total by removing one value and adding the other rather than starting the sum again
• When a combined average is not the midpoint of two group averages, solve for the underlying group sizes first
• For a single mixture replacement, the remaining fraction of the original liquid scales by (1 minus the fraction removed), once only
• Average speed is always total distance over total time, never the average of the individual speeds

When the Honest Answer Is "None of These"

Three of the 26 questions resolve to an option saying none of the given numbers is correct, and all three reward a candidate who trusts clean arithmetic over the nearest-looking choice.

One asks for a corrected class average after three students' marks were misread; the correction works out to exactly 57, a whole number that appears nowhere among 56.5, 59 and 57.5.

Another gives the algebraic sum of deviations from an assumed mean of 23 and asks for the true mean, which is exactly 26.5 rather than any of the whole numbers offered.

The third is subtler still. Solving its two average conditions gives a greatest number of 32, but the question also insists the four numbers are distinct and ascending, which makes 32 impossible. The contradiction is the finding.

Two Questions Worth Doing First

If time is short, start here. Each teaches a move the rest of the set reuses.

2021, combined averages. Three classes with known averages, plus two pairwise combined averages, and the question wants the overall average. The combined figures are not midpoints, which is the clue that the class sizes differ and must be recovered from the data before anything can be combined.

2006, the wine and water swap. One litre of water moves into the wine pitcher, the mixture is stirred, and one litre moves back. The answer follows from both pitchers ending at their original volume, not from tracking concentrations, and the same argument works for any transfer size.

Watch Averages, Mixtures and Alligation Solved

Source: MBA Pathshala

How to Use the Answer Key and Solutions

Attempt the whole set before checking anything. The layout is built so an answer cannot be glimpsed by accident.

• Do all 26 in one timed sitting, allowing about ninety seconds each
• Mark the answer key in one pass, right or wrong only
• Read the solution for every miss and every lucky guess
• Each solution opens with a one-line quick solution, so you can stop there and retry

Traps These Questions Are Built Around

A handful of errors account for most lost marks here, and several questions exist only to catch them.

• Averaging two group averages directly when the groups are different sizes
• Rounding an intermediate total instead of only the final answer
• Forgetting that "first six" and "last six" of eleven numbers overlap at one term
• Reading "last five of six innings" as the first five
• Forcing the closest-looking option when the true answer is none of these

For the rest of the section, the SNAP Permutations, Combinations and Probability PYQs and the SNAP Blood Relations PYQs cover the other repeated topics in the same format.