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Students with the passion to pursue engineering in the top
notch colleges of India must crack AIEEE, the most prestigious engineering
entrance examination. In AIEEE the
emphasis is on fundamental concepts and their application in
different situations. This differs significantly from the
Board examinations. The questions asked in the AIEEE seek to test the conceptual clarity and
the reasoning ability of the students.
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Most of the questions in AIEEE are
not difficult but they are just different & they require
a different approach, a different mindset. Each question has
an element of surprise in it & student who is adept in
tackling ‘surprise questions' is most likely to sail
through.
In this lesson I have tried to give smart preparation
strategies for the students preparing for AIEEE. This information will help you establish
new goals, develop a new sense of purpose and generate new
ideas that will be helpful in your preparation
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Strategies for smart preparation
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Well thought revision
plan: The first & foremost step is to
build a sound & feasible plan for your preparation.Divide
your entire time into a reasonable time chart with milestones
in between & plan your studies accordingly. Do not
overestimate the time you have. You are advised to leave free
time in between so that if any module gets delayed you don't
have to change the plan.
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Study the trend of previous year question papers & draw
marks distribution of each subject to find out which topics
are most important & which are least. Give priority to
important topics & try to put them in early stage of your
preparation to avoid any possibility of them being
left.Review your plan periodically to find out if there are
any lapses & how they can be covered up. To summarize I
believe that most of the student's fail not because of lack
of ability or intelligence but because of lack of desire,
direction, proper planning & discipline
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Strengthening
fundamentals: Most of the questions are based
on fundamentals & their applications. So, the first step
is to establish a solid base by mastering the fundamentals.
For mastering the fundamentals you have to be focused. Don't
refer too many books. Decide about the books after discussing
with your trainer and then stick to them. When you start a
new chapter, the learning curve is slow that you do not
accomplish similar amount of learning every day even though
you spend same amount of time everyday.
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So even if your learning process is slow, keep studying day
after day without getting discouraged. All the subjects are
equally important. Devote more time to subject/topic you are
weak in (remember most of us tend to devote more time on
areas we are strong & often shy away from our weakness).
In most of the examinations minimum qualifying marks are
there for each subject. Hence make sure that you do not
ignore any subject & allocate adequate time to each
subject.
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Strengthening Application of
fundamentals: Quality is more important than
Quantity: Doing 100 quality & concepts based questions is
more important than doing 1000 questions which have not been
selected carefully. Remember that the purpose is to sharpen
problem-solving skills. Start with conventional methods of
problem solving but improvise constantly & build you own
shortcuts & ways of attacking a problem. While practicing
the problem always try to solve the problem on your own. If
you are unable to solve a problem do not hurry to consult the
solution. Study the relevant theory again, paying attention
to the finer points and the problem in the back of mind.
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Experience shows that studying the theory with a definite
problem in mind is very effective and also sharpens the
problem solving skills. Remember that directly going though
the solutions is not going to help you at all. The key in
problem solving does not lie in understanding the solution to
the problem but to find out what clues in the problem leads
you to the right explanation. In case you are not able to
solve the problem try to find out the reason by analyzing the
level of problem & practice similar kind of problems so
that you can master the tricks involved.
While doing problem solving try to strengthen and develop
your conceptual understanding by analyzing deeply and
correlating the problem with real life situations. While
practicing identify your strong & weak areas (subject
wise/topic wise/question wise). Testing your preparation
chapter by chapter can do this. Through a structured test you
should be able to diagnose which chapter, which concept &
what type of problems you need to practice more.
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Strengthening Speed, Strike rate and
Examination temperament: Always keep track of
your average speed of solving questions.Participating in mock
test series helps in time & temperament management during
the final exams. It has been observed that most of the
students loose 15 to 20% of their marks not because they do
not know the subject but because they fail to apply the basic
concepts correctly. This is basically due to examination fear
& pressure. These marks that a student looses because of
silly mistakes (calculation errors, confusion, fail to apply
the right concepts, solving the problem by long method) can
be reduced if a student regularly participates in test series
based on the pattern & level of final exams.
Get a feedback on your preparation by getting yourself tested
by a body other than your College. Testing by expert faculty
and training institutes would give you an independent and
unbiased feedback about your performance. It is preferable if
these tests give feedback on National level. Please remember
that both speed & strike rate are important for success.
Continuously develop the ability to do things fast &
accurately. Keep interacting with people who are preparing.
Since the competition is on National level it is important to
compare your preparation with other students preparing across
the country.
In short I can say that "AIEEE is not necessarily test of
knowledge of basic fundamentals only but it is a test of
application of knowledge to solve surprise problems with
perfect time & temperament management.
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Speed: Speed building comes through
the following: Memorizing land mark problems
(remembering standard formulae, concepts so that you can
apply them directly) Being strong in mental calculations
(never use the calculator during your entire preparation, try
to do first and second level of calculations mentally,
remember as vocalization reduces reading speed, similarly
doing calculation on paper reduces the speed.
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Working with choices (see all the options and do not go for
last digit accuracy unless required by the problem) when you
are doing subject wise exercises you can also calculate speed
subject wise.Here we would like to highlight one more point
that just good speed is not enough because of negative marks,
so a high speed with less accuracy may be harmful
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Strike Rate: This
originates the second important factor, the strike rate.
Strike rate means the percentage of correctly attempted
questions.Strike rate can be improved with the help of
intelligent guessing. Intelligent guessing means guessing a
question you are not completely sure but have some idea
about. Your objective is not to solve the question but
choosing the correct option out of the 4 given choices. So
always try to eliminate the choices.
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Remember that if one choice is eliminated, chances of your
guess being right is 33% (in comparison to a blind guess
where the chances of being right is 25%) and if two are
eliminated the chances of hitting the right answer are 50
%.
So remember that a good speed or strike rate alone cannot
give you success. One without the other is a good way to mess
up a potentially good performance. So, what is required is a
good combination of both speed and strike rate.
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Question Selection:
It is very important to understand what you have to attempt
and what you have to leave. There is a limit to which you can
improve your speed and strike rate beyond which what becomes
very important is your selection of question. So success
depends upon how judiciously one is able to select the
questions. To optimize your performance you should quickly
scan for easy question and come back to the difficult ones
later.
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Always keep in mind that normally questions in any
competitive exams can be categorized into 3 areas
Easy: Approximately 25% questions in a paper are easy
Average: Approximately 60% questions in a paper are
average
Difficult: Approximately 15% questions in a paper are
difficult
The easy and average questions ensure selection whereas the
difficult questions make the merit. You should focus on
careful selection of the easy and average questions and avoid
difficult questions in the first and second round and come
back to them once you have completed the entire paper once.
Also remember that cut-off in most of the exams moves between
60 to 70%. So if you focus on easy and average question i.e.
85% of the questions, you can easily score 70% marks without
even going to difficult question. Try to ensure that in the
initial 2 hours of the paper the focus should be clearly on
easy and average question, after two hours you can decide
whether you want to move to difficult questions or revise the
ones attempted to ensure a high strike rate.
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All the best….
Image credits: Twaize, audreym, chippenziedeutch,
NeilsPhotography,
Amnemona ,
mr.smashy ,
Alex
France
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