Crack Competitive Exams by Following These Tips
Cracking a competitive exam is a rigorous process. It requires a lot of planning and strategizing. Every year, millions of students sit for a large number of entrance exams, but the success rate is somewhat around 1%. What do this 1 % of students do which the others fail to manage? This blog will give you some interesting tips on the ways you could crack a competitive exam.
Follow a Time-Table
Preparing for a competitive exam requires a planned approach. For that, you must develop a time table and follow it religiously.
Take your time and put in the effort, while preparing this routine because you will have to follow it for a long time. That’s because competitive exam preparation takes a minimum of 6 months to 2 years and often, longer.
You must be mentally prepared to study along with this time-table, changing it in between will hamper your preparation.
Your time-table should consist of a clear time allocation for controlled study, mock tests, doubt clearing sessions, priority chapters, and breaks in between as well.
Most students do make a routine but end up not following it. Haphazard ways of learning will not bring you success. To be in the top 1%, you have to go by this time-table.
Take Practice Tests Seriously
Practice tests are the most important thing before any exam. There are several apps and websites that conduct these tests. Practice tests consist of chapter-wise tests, weekly tests, objective and subjective question tests, and a full syllabus test.
Once you take these tests, you can instantly know your number, percentile, rank, strong and weak areas and your average performance as compared to others. These indicators will give you an idea as to where you stand in the competition.
Based on this feedback, you will have to act accordingly. Many students make the mistake of waiting for their syllabus to be over and then start practicing with a full mock test. Don’t fall into this trap.
Finish every chapter and sit for a test. Sit for weekly and monthly tests as well. This is because you should know your potential from day one. Take these practice tests seriously.
If you are ranking in the top 5-10%, know that cracking the competitive exam will not be a big deal.
Get An Idea from Past Question Papers
Past questions papers, as we all know, give us an idea of the question formats and crucial chapters to study. Today, getting hold of the last 3-4 years of question papers is easy. It is available on the internet. Just download the pdf files and study them carefully.
Solve it yourself and get it corrected by your tutor. See how much you can score. But don’t start celebrating if you are doing very well, because question formats often get changed some months before the exam. The markings vary and the time allocation also changes.
While going through the questions, find out the chapters that can get you easy marks. Also, don’t leave complex problems. Start solving them as well.
Slowly you will find that your grip on the subjects is increasing and you go into the examination hall, fully prepared to face the questions and solve it faster.
Know The Syllabus, Patterns, and Weightage
Competitive exams have become very tricky of late. The syllabus keeps on changing every year. As a student, you must be aware of every single minor change, that is being announced by the authorities.
Examination CAT and IIT-JEE keep on modifying their pattern, weightage and syllabus quite frequently. Students who are not in touch with the latest updates will be shocked during the examinations.
Arrange your routine and examination strategy based on these three parameters.
When you are creating your time-table, make a provision for a systematic revision every month. This is to make sure that if there is a change in pattern and syllabus, you have also included those into your routine.
Keep Yourself Updated on Current Events
Read newspapers daily. News apps, social media, websites all are fine, but make sure to take a reputed English newspaper and read it in your free time.
The reason why Newspapers are essential is that unlike social media, they have genuine, verified news. It will boost your current affairs.
News on business, sports, tech, politics, health, environment and politics are very important for your knowledge building. In a competitive examination, you will have questions on recent appointments, awards, acquisitions, defense deals, and many more.
Keep a notebook and write down ten important news of the day. Follow as many news channels you can, bookmark a reliable news outlet on your screen, and keep reading it every day.
Revise
Revisions are very important while preparing for competitive examinations. It needs to be done every 2-3 days. If you are studying a chapter on Monday, try answering some questions on Thursday, to test whether you can remember and apply the concepts correctly.
As you keep on completing more chapters, the time given for revision should proportionately increase. When you are done with half the syllabus, divide your time-table into a 50-50 format where you give half of the time to study and the other half in revisions.
Solve chapter wise questions, clarify your doubts and when you are done with all these, start practicing harder questions. It will tax your brain more, but preparing one level up is an advantage for you during the examination.
Sleep Well and Relax
Remember, nobody will kill you if you cannot crack a competitive exam. Nor will your family disown you. So, prepare hard to achieve your dreams, but give your body adequate rest.
Eat and sleep well, listen to music, go out with your friends, talk to your partner, plan a family outing, exercise and play..do whatever you like, and stay mentally fit.
Make sure to have at least 6 hours of sleep every day. Have a protein-rich diet, go to the gym if you want to; in short, if you don’t look after your health, then you will crumble after a point.
These examinations do open the doors of your dream institutions, but there are always thousands of other options waiting for you. Prepare, but don’t overstretch yourself.