How to attempt the Prelims paper?
( Divyanshu Nigam, AIR 44 strategy - For Solving Prelims MCQs )
The process begins one/two days prior to the actual day of exam. Keep on revising last minute factual stuff, from your notes. It is the time to maximise your short-term memory and picture memory (eg. notes on the margins, random scribbling). And constantly tell yourself that you have worked hard for it and you will qualify the exam … no pressure of topping the exam?… just qualify.
On the actual day, wake up early and go with a fresh and positive mindset which will boost your confidence.
Fill up all the details with good caution, don’t make any mistake there …. Else you’ll lose out time and mental peace.
Go with an approx. number number of questions which you will attempt. Attempt paper in 3 rounds.
1st Round —
Follow the sequence 1 to 100 and do three things :
(i) Do the questions which you know well.
(ii) Make a circle on the question on which you can eliminate two options.
(iii) Cross the question in big manner in question which you don’t have any clue about … don’t feel bad about it ….its more likely that you’ll end up marking it wrong.
2nd Round —
Brain storm on the ‘circle’ marked questions and try to do maximum out of them …if can’t …cross them entirely Now fill up all the question which you’ve marked on the OMR … this must be done around 90 minutes into the exam…will take around 10-15 mins, at maximum. Count the number of total attempted questions (actually count the ‘crossed’ questions and subtract from 100)
3rd Round —
Now if you’ve reached your approx. planned number of questions which you wanted to attempt (for me it was 87) then leave all the crossed question altogether. DON’T get greedy. Just put your pen down and head down. Now nothing can be done as OMR is filled.
If you’re some short of your number of attempted questions (87 for me)… then go through the ‘crossed’ questions and try to solve them, take gut shot etc. and try to reach out to your holy number (87).
That’s it…paper is complete. Come with a strategy and implement it…don’t enter the battlefield like a headless chicken.
How to know your magical number of question which are to be attempted?
For general unreserved, assume that cutoff will be around 105. Now you need to attempt at least 20 Full Test papers (not sectional) and try out different number of attempted questions and check your relative performance (I even did 100 questions once) and then after the tests are done….make an excel sheet with data on question attempted, right, wrong, marks, accuracy %, status of your intelligent guesses ….
Doing this for 20 papers will give you a rough idea what is that ideal number which will make sure you cross the 105 mark always. This number can vary for different people and there is no right or wrong answers….it can be 96 (low accuracy people) for some and 75 for others (high accuracy people). I did this exercise very scientifically and seriously….I even plotted graphs and line charts to gauge the performance.
(Make it a management project, data crunching!) For me the number was 85-89 (never touch 90) …. finally towards the end…I fixed my attempt at 87…. and in the actual paper also, I attempted 87 questions.
I hope things must be clear now. Enjoy the journey and Trust the Process.
Thanks a lot.