In a few days time, students of Senior Secondary level will be completing their Plus Two level Board Examination. The days ahead of them, will be more crucial in their career. A series of Entrance Examinations are to follow during the months of April, May and June. Majority of the students would be appearing for an entrance examination for the first time in their life.
The strategies adopted for the Board Examination cannot be followed as such for the entrance examinations. The number of aspirants for admission to any course will generally be very high compared to the number of seats available, particularly for the most sought-after courses. So, the ultimate aim of each and every student attending the Entrance examination must be to score the maximum marks in it. There is no such competition for qualifying examinations unless admissions are made based on the qualifying mark alone. So the competition is very tough in Entrance examinations as majority of the major admission processes select students based on marks in the Entrance examination and not based on the marks in the qualifying examination.
The most important aspect to be remembered on Entrance examination is that there are no choices between questions. In the case of qualifying examinations, there are choices for the questions so that the candidate has the freedom to choose one among several alternative questions given. A selective preparation is possible in case of qualifying examinations. If it happens to be his/her day, the candidate will be lucky to get the questions from the topics that he/she has not skipped in preparations. But in case of the Entrance examination, the candidate has to answer all the questions and the choice comes within each question only.
Questions in majority of the Entrance examinations are of the objective type with multiple choices. So a large portion or even the complete syllabus can be covered through the 100 or 200 questions that come for the Entrance examination. This shows that a student cannot score high marks with a selective study as far as Entrance examinations are concerned.
A deep and concentrated study of the topics in the syllabus, going to the minute details of the topic has to be done. Narrative writing is rare in entrance examinations (the candidates generally get no chance to write any answer as the process requires the candidate to ‘select’ from the alternative given), the answers is to the point. There will be questions that have to be worked out to find the answer. In such cases the candidate has to recollect the formulae studied. So a thorough revision of the topics would make the task easier.
In a qualifying examination, one does not lose marks even if the answers given are not correct. So guesswork can be done. But generally in Entrance examinations, there are negative marks for wrong answers. The marks obtained through the correct answers should not be lost through guess work.
Even a single mark can change the fate of a student. When the mark comes below a certain level, the changes occurring in the ranks for even single mark would be much higher than one can imagine. If there are no negative marks for wrong answers, there is nothing wrong in making a guess.
In Entrance examinations a better score by a candidate need not fetch him/her a good or high rank. It is not the performance of an individual that matters, but it is the performance of an individual in relation to the other candidates that matters ultimately.
These days examinations are computer based and spread over multiple sessions with different sessions having different set of question papers for the same examination. Several examinations use the percentile score to decide the rankings to overcome the possible differences in marks on account of differences in questions.
Here, the rank is decided based on the number of students scoring below or above one’s score. So always work and prepare with the maximum mark in mind. The pattern of marks or outcome in an examination depends on several factors like the standard of the students attending the examination, the difficulty level of questions etc.
Managing the time available in an entrance examination is very important. The average time that can be spent on a question should be computed first. Every question paper will have simple, moderately difficult, difficult, very difficult and questions of high standard, in varying proportions. So the time needed for answering each question will be different. The time saved on simple questions should be used for finding answers to difficult questions. The answering of questions may be completed through several rounds. All simple questions for the candidate should be answered in round 1. In round 2, he/she may go over to moderately difficult questions. In third round, answering of difficult or very difficult questions may be taken up. In the final round, one may try to answer the higher order questions.
If this process is adopted, it would be possible to make the best use of the available time. In this process, it must be ensured that the answers are marked against the correct question numbers. The candidate gains nothing by completing the answering before the scheduled time. Reading through the entire question paper before starting to answer is not advisable. Seeing the presence of some difficult questions in the question paper may affect the confidence level of the candidate. Finding out the most appropriate answer than the ‘correct’ answer is also very important.
More than all these, reaching the examination centre well before the examination, keeping the admit card, id card and other items to be carried to the examination centre ready, the previous day itself, working for the next day’s examination after one examination is over without discussing the details of the earlier examinations are some other factors that will keep the confidence level of the candidate high. It is a race. Only the best will win. Prepare well and try to be among the ‘best’!
(The author is former joint commissioner of entrance examinations, Kerala)
