Exam Preparation: Study Tips | Top Universities
It takes a lot of hard work to prepare for entrance exams but along with hard work, knowing some tips and tricks can only benefit your preparation. Remember, cracking an entrance exam is not about hard work but about doing your best in the examination hall. We bring you 12 tips to help you prepare for entrance exams.
One of the biggest fears every student has as they enter the exam hall is that their mind will go blank and they will suddenly forget every last thing they know.
It’s the stuff of nightmares, but fortunately, it’s highly unlikely to happen. First of all, you’d be amazed what facts start to come flooding back to you once you pick up a pen and start answering a question. Second of all, there are lots of memory tricks you can use that will help you recall information in a more formal and structured way. In this article, we’re going to show you just how much you can do to commit facts and figures to memory ready to recall them in exams, and we hope that as well as boosting your confidence, this should also ward off those nasty pre-exam nightmares!
Prepare For Entrance Exams:
1. Create a practical study plan
Students usually spend more time in planning than actually executing those plans. Planning is art of the possible. So, create a plan which can be successfully executed. Give more time to topics which you find difficult and keep a buffer so that you can complete some pending tasks.
2. Know your strength and weakness
Everyone has specific strengths and everyone has specific weaknesses. It’s pretty certain that if you are not clear on your weaknesses then you are not clear on your strengths either. Playing to your strengths and sailing through the weaknesses is the best exam strategy you can bet on.
3. Use fewer books for theory
Students have a habit of referring innumerable books for each subject even though most of them convey the same thing. Having too many books would lead to confusion during time of revision and most of your doubts would remain unresolved without a go to book. We have compiled a list of IIT JEE books recommended by our experts here.
4. Read the questions cautiously
Examiners try to trap students by playing around with the question and options. So read the question carefully to understand what is required and see the options with great concentration. Watch out for the questions which are designed to have more than one correct answer and you are supposed to choose the option with multiple correct answers.
5. Plan your exam strategy
Planning the way you attempt various questions is quite crucial to crack the entrance exam. You do not have to approach the question paper the way it is intended to be. The important thing is not to waste time over questions which seem to be difficult. Finish off all the sections which you are really good at so that you can dedicate more time for the difficult ones.
6. Train your mind for the exam
Your mind should be prepared to perform well during an exam. This requires consistency over a long period of time. If you are planning to give your exam in 9-12 slot, you should practice solving papers at the same time so that your mind is trained to be super active during that period.
7. Practice previous year papers
Practicing previous year question papers should be left for the last couple of months before an exam. These are actual questions which have appeared and you should time yourself while answering them so that you can compare your scores. Also, try to attempt the test papers in the same time slot as your final exam.
8. Use our cheat-sheet to revise formulas
Our experts have created cheat sheets which you can refer anytime you have a doubt or forget a formula. Revise these cheat sheets weekly and if required get them printed. It includes a comprehensive list of everything you will ever need to crack your entrance exam. You can sign up to access these cheat sheets.
9. Use method of elimination
Whenever in doubt use method of elimination to your rescue. Start by eliminating 2 options which have the least possibility of being correct. Sometimes irrespective of the question, the fact contained in the options itself can be used to eliminate them. Selecting a final answer out of 2 is sometimes tricky and if it’s worth the risk you can go with your gut at times.
10. Learn all the shortcuts
Every student has shortcuts which they use to prepare for entrance exams. Be it for remembering formulas or memorizing charts, use shortcuts to save your time. There are some standard shortcuts which you can tap into but creating your own wouldn’t harm either.
11. Stay Physically and Mentally Balanced
Keeping yourself and your mind healthy is quite neglected during exam preparation but it can have adverse effects in the final outcome. Exercise daily and sleep well so that your mind and body are fresh when you are taking the exam. Avoid sleeping late and tune your mind so that it works best in the time slot of your final exam.
12. Practice, Practice, Practice.
Finally, there is no substitute for practice. 70% of exam preparation is practice. Use this time very effectively by using our platform which can help you plan, save time and improve accuracy. Our students have improved 25% accuracy and saved 30% time by completing goals on our platform.
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Before we even get started on memory tricks, there’s something fundamental we need to begin with. If there’s one enemy of a good memory, it’s disorganisation. A cluttered working space with unfiled notes here, there and everywhere; a notepad filled with scrawl on numerous different subjects with no particular order; a poor computer filing system. All these spell disaster for your ability to recall facts in the exam room. So, start by getting yourself organised. Tidy your room, or whichever space you’re using for studying. Get your notes organised neatly into different subjects. Physically decluttering and bringing about order in your environment has the strange effect of doing the same to the mind (perhaps there is something in feng shui), making you far better able to cope with memorising and recalling facts.
1. Visualise a building or road. Populate your mental image with details, such as what you see in each room or what’s on either side of the road.
2. Mentally connect an image of each of the features you see – such as a chair in your imagined house, or a tree by the side of your imagined road – with a manageable chunk of information (such as a chemical formula). Think about the two together in depth and make sure you’ve really learned the information and its associated image.
3. To recall the information in the exam, simply retrace your steps through the building or down the road and pick out the objects you’ve associated with the information.
4. When you want to add additional information to your memory bank, you can simply add another room to your imaginary building or take a turn off your imaginary road that will house this new information.
This must be a foolproof memory trick because it’s been in around since Greek and Roman times. The Roman orator Cicero, who needed to be able to recall large amounts of information from memory when giving speeches, described them in his treatise on oratory, De Oratore. If it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for us!
If you’re lucky enough to possess a photographic memory, you can make the most of it by combining images with text to reinforce what you’ve learned. This makes it easier to recall the information, because all you have to do is bring to mind the image and you should be able to recall the information. Even if you don’t have a photographic memory, you can apply the same principle. Arrange your notes in a pictorial fashion, such as in a spider diagram (where you have the concept in the middle and arrows pointing out of it to different pieces of information). Then, when you need to recall a particular piece of information, the idea is that you remember whereabouts it was on the page and that jolts your memory of what it was about.
To help your brain absorb bigger chunks of information, another trick you could try is to break the information down and make up a story linking together each piece of information. It’s a little like the memory palace idea we discussed earlier in this article, but it plays with the imagination to a greater extent because the story you make up doesn’t have to be spatially limited in your mind. For example, if you need to memorise a complicated chemical formula, you could name the molecules with human names beginning with the same letter (Carol = Chlorine, for example) and make up a little story in which the actions of the characters mirror those of the molecules in the formula. This can be a remarkably effective method of learning trickier, drier information, as it helps to bring it to life a bit and gives it a more human touch that makes it easier to relate to.
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