How to prepare for entrance exams

How to prepare for competitive exams

Nowadays, education institutes take students on the basis of their abilities such as understanding of concepts, sharpness of mind and knowledge; therefore, they launch common exams for all students. These common exams are specially designed to test special characteristics of student and are often called Competitive exams or Entrance Exams because they create lots of competition among students. Through competition exams, institutes are able to choose cream of students. So, they find competitive exams as best method to find best students among all.

Now question arises, how to prepare for such type of exams? You may hear about students which study whole year but still not selected and many such instants. Actually, what happens is these students do not have a proper strategy to prepare for competitive exams. Competitive exams are completely different from school or university exams. Competitive exams are different from other exams because with such type of exams, institutes want to test not only your knowledge but also your concepts, common sense for subject and sharp mind; therefore, students which dependent on knowledge only, cannot be selected for competitive exams .

I have read somewhere that your mind should be God Gifted to clear Competitive Exams. Yes, it is true that God Gifted people such as Newton, Einstein are superior to us but everybody, selected in entrance exams, is not Newton or Einstein. A normal human mind can easily clear competitive exams but you have to modify some basic strategies regarding preparation for exams. These strategies are listed below:

1. Self Belief: You should believe in yourself and your abilities. You should believe that you belongs to the competitive arena and you can clear these competitive exams if you can perform to best of your abilities. Belief is everything and everything can be achieved through belief. There is a famous quote: “The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen”.

2. Knowledge: Knowledge is a necessary element to clear competitive exams. You should have proper knowledge about your concepts. We don’t have to acquire extra knowledge as conceptual knowledge is needed for competitive exams. We can prefect our conceptual knowledge by practicing questions based on these concepts.

3. Time Management and Data: We have to study minimum of 4 hours a day for competitive exams. We can manage this time by preparing timetable for each day. We also have to record weekly data which ultimately helps in representing our performance graphically. We can take inputs such as time for each subject, part of syllabus completed, time for revision, questions attempted and so on to record data.

4. Sharpness: Sharpness of mind is mandatory for competitive exams. A sharp mind has many advantages such as concept understanding, quick response to a tricky question and speed. Main purpose of these competitive exams is to differentiate sharp minded students from others. The best method to sharpen your mind is to do as many questions as you can. Try to do questions in as minimum time as possible. I used to took challenge of doing 100 questions in one hour or so. Challenge yourself as its all about improving yourself and sharpen the skills. I have also noticed that fast reading with proper understanding sharpens your mind immensely.

5. Sample Papers: Here comes my last and most important trick.The best way to perform in any exam would be to do so many similar types of such exams or Sample Papers. With the help of these sample papers, our mind is able to build so many stragies and tricks about particular type of questions which ultimately helps us during Entrance exams.They have huge advantage as you can feel the mental atmosphere similar to that in competitive exams through these sample papers.Attempting so many sample papers helps in mental coherence during main exams.Sample Papers also helps in achieving a hard, stable concentration during competitive exams.

Often, I read comments from students about having problem in a particular subject or topic. Its very common to have problems particularly in topics. But how to tackle problems? You can tackle problems by changing your mindset. Usually, a student gets upset and stressed when they have problems in particular topic, they think they can't get over this subject. Well, this is negative mindset. A negative mindset will attract nothing but more negativity. A positive mindset will try to find solution to the problem instead of taking stress and getting upset.

So, lets say you are not talented enough in physics. What will you do now? Develop stress or develop talent? Of course, you should work on developing talent in physics. How can you develop that talent?

Well there are three steps to develop new talent

1. Inspiration: Seek inspiration, find your role model. If you know of any student or teacher who you think is excellent in physics, make him your role model for the time being. Try to become excellent like your role model. Your role model is your goal, try to get as close or even ahead if possible.

2. Amount of practice and learning from failures: Well you can't become your role model with one day of practice, can you? So, you need regular practice with lots of enthusiasm. Regular practice will make your subconscious mind develop the new talent in your conscious mind, isn't this great? yes it is!

You will have bad experiences or bad days or failures. Don't shy away from failures instead learn from them. Thomas Edison failed like 8000 times before making first "Electric Bulb". You don't have to have 8000 bad days but don't get upset with one odd bad day, instead learn from mistakes.

3. coach: The third and final step which is also the most imprtant is to have a good coach or teacher. Well, you can't develop the new talent yourself, you need to be guided by a coach, a good coach. Quality of Coach decides how much talent you will develop. So, try finding a good Coach/teacher. Understand the topics from teacher and do the self study yourself. A book can be a good coach too but I prefer you to go with a good teacher.

So, here is what we need to develop new talent! Find a good teacher, understand all the topics from him, practice a lot at home using the guidance provided by your teacher. Get inspired daily.

You must have heard of students which got 95% marks in Board exams but can't make it to even below 1 lakh rank in Aieee. Its not their fault, such is the nature of entrance exams. To clear entrance exams, you need to regularly keep on improving and should regularly work on increasing the level of mind.

How can you do it?

I would advise you to detach your emotional side from Entrance exams and think of cracking entrance as a game. It can be any game such as Tetris.

You are currently at level 1 : You are completely Dumb

Slowly increase to level 2, level 3 and so on. Let me define some levels for you.

Level 2: Learn the basic concepts of one chapter

Level 3: Learn the concepts of 3 chapters

Level 4: Learn the concepts of 3 chapters + 60 questions completed

Level 5: Learn concepts of 5 chapters + 100 questions completed

Level 6: Learn concepts of 7 chapters + revision of 5 chapters + 150 questions completed

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Level 20: Learn concepts of 50 chapters + 1000 questions completed + 40 chapters revised

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Level 30: Concepts of Physics and Chemistry completed + 2000 questions + all chapters revised + 5 chapters from Maths or Biology

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Level 35: Concepts of Physics and Chemistry completed + 2000 questions + all chapters revised + 15 chapters from Maths/ Biology + 400 questions from Math/Biology

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Level 45: Concepts of Physics, Chemistry + Maths/Biology completed + 4000 questions( of different type)

LEvel 46: Level 45 + 5 sample papers/test series papers

Level 47: Level 45 + 10 Sample Papers/test series + Rank of less than 100 in test series

Level 48: Level 45 + 20 Sample Papers/series + Rank of less than 50 in test series

LEvel 49: LEvel 45 + 30 sample papers/test series + Rank of less than 20 in test series

Level 50 : Rank of less than 5 in test series + you are extremely confident + exceptional Mental Stamina + Everything good you can imagine

Your goal is to reach level 50. First decide on which level you currently are and then increase your level accordingly to level 50. It should be enjoyable and reward yourself after passing through each level.

While studying regularly for 6-8 hours a day per day, there will come a point, after some time(usually in days), when it will be almost impossible to study and understand, this point is called Saturation point. During this stage try to gave your mind as much rest as you can and after one or two days of rest, you can continue again.

Actually saturation points are very good signals for the mind as it indicates the growth of mind, mind is going to higher levels which is very important in entrance. They comes according to capacity of mind. Usually they comes in 2-3 weeks. But don't try to fake the saturation points, if there will be saturation, you will know yourself.

I have seen this article and it perfectly suits our scenario. One who is studying the entrance Exams should follow this article and I am sure there will be definite progress. Here is the link to the article: http://www.bubblews.com/news/999284-what-can-students-learn-from-bhagwadh-gita-best-quotes-of-gita

Guys,

I usually try my best to answer student queries as timely as possible. But sometimes I cannot get access to my PC for months but I comes online regularly through my phone. So, in case you need some urgent help then you guys can message me through facebook. My facebook ID is: http://www.facebook.com/ysyogeshsingh