How hard is the MATLAB coding section — theory vs hands-on?

Agree with the above. Pay special attention to cell arrays and struct operations — those tripped me up. Also make sure you're comfortable with error handling (try-catch) and reading/writing files. Those showed up more than I expected compared to pure math operations.

The exam I took had a mix — roughly 60% scenario-based multiple choice (read the code snippet, predict the output or find the bug) and 40% short coding tasks in a live environment. The coding tasks aren't huge programs, more like "write a function that does X" or "fix this loop". Syntax accuracy matters. Practicing in actual matlab online rather than just reading is the best prep.

Passed mine about two years ago so take this with some grain of salt since things can shift, but when I sat for it the breakdown was roughly 60% conceptual and 40% hands-on coding tasks. The theory side covers things like understanding matrix operations, control flow logic, and knowing when to use a cell array versus a struct — you don't write code but you need to trace through what a script would output. Honestly that part tripped me up more than I expected because the questions are worded to catch you if you've only ever run code without thinking about what MATLAB is actually doing under the hood.

The live coding section is where people either shine or fall apart. It's not like they ask you to build something from scratch — more like "here's a partially written function, fix it" or "write a loop that processes this matrix." The catch is you can't just memorize syntax. I drilled a ton of practice problems beforehand and it made a real difference, especially for the vectorization stuff where beginners instinctively reach for a for-loop when MATLAB really wants you to operate on the whole array at once.

If I could go back, I'd spend less time on the textbook theory chapters and more time just writing and debugging actual code. The conceptual questions mostly test whether you understand the output of real code anyway, so the two aren't as separate as they seem. Know your indexing conventions cold — 1-based, end keyword, colon operator edge cases — because that stuff shows up constantly in both sections.