Competitive examinations are the norm for most jobs as well as entry to higher education. There are many candidates who take multiple attempts at cracking these exams but with the right approach you will be able to crack those at one go with the right kind of preparation. While success is not guaranteed, preparing the right way and having the required mindset will allow you to crack competitive exams with ease.
- Set achievable goals and improve on them
Once you begin your preparation you need to set a target for yourself to achieve. Be it a high enough percentile or a sufficient rank that can help you the job you want or the institute you want to get into, you need to assess your ability and set a goal. Before setting your goals you need to look at the past cut offs and ranks for various colleges/institutes and set a standard for yourself. Once you begin your preparation and become consistent in achieving your goals over time, you may want to raise the bar and try to increase your scores as much as possible.
- Analysis is the key to any competitive examination
Before preparing for any competitive examination you need to prepare the right strategy by looking at the past papers and understanding the structure of the paper. Simply studying all the topics in the syllabus is just not enough and you need to understand which topics require more focus and which question types are likely to appear in the examination. In some examinations negative marking is relevant and you need to be careful about the accuracy. Identifying your strengths is very important and focusing on your strengths will allow you to score better. However, you also need to keep the basics of the topics you are not too comfortable with covered. It’s very likely there will be some sitter questions spread throughout the article and you do not want to miss out on a few crucial marks by leaving out any topics.
- Make a study team
Preparing for you examinations in a competitive environment is highly important. You should make a study group and prepare notes to help each other out. Practicing quantitative problems and logic based questions in a group allows you identify different approaches to the same problems. Understanding multiple approaches will allow you to identify strategies that will help you solve questions faster. Current affairs is also a great topic that can be prepared in a group, you can conduct pop up quizzes to brush up your current affairs. Also some exams require that you prepare a strategy of applying to various institutes based on the score of the exam. Working in group would help you in figuring out that dream list of institutes where you stand a chance.
- Mock Tests
Mock tests can be greatly beneficial when it comes to competitive examinations. You should pick up past papers or sample question papers and solve them within the amount of time that is allotted to you in the actual examination. This will allow you to understand how many questions you are likely to attempt and how good your accuracy is. Giving mocks is not the end of the road, you need to assess your performance and identify your mistakes. Knowing where you are going wrong is important and it will allow you to rectify your mistakes and perform better in subsequent examinations. You should also leave a sufficient gap between each mock to revise the topics you made mistakes in.
- Identify tricks to solve questions in a jiffy
There are many tricks that can be applied in competitive examinations that allow you to find the right answer without actually solving them. One of the most commonly used methods is the elimination method where you strike out the options that are most definitely not correct and identify the right answer in the process. Questions based on data sufficiency are critical, you only need to identify if the data that’s provided to you is sufficient for solving a given question or not. Also, learning tables, cubes, roots, square roots etc. can help a lot in solving mathematical questions faster.
I hope this helps. 🙂
ALL THE BEST!
