Tresa Sankoorikal, JBIMS Batch of 2011
With less than three weeks to go for the D-Day, I am sure that there must be a lot of queries cropping up in this year’s Bajaj aspirants’ minds. Well, first of all I would like to quell the myth that CET is an easy test to crack. Though the level of difficulty is lower than that of CAT, the sheer level of competition is enough to give anyone the jitters- a meagre 120 seats at JBIMS, with more than one lakh aspirants! Here’s where the level of preparation comes in….For those who have taken other entrance tests such as CAT, XAT, FMS, etc. there is just a bit of fine tuning that is required. And for those who haven’t, there’s still no reason to worry as long as you have been putting in the requisite effort and continue to do so.
Especially for those who suffer from ‘Arithmophobia’, CET is your best bet to get into one of the top B-schools in India, as it tests candidates more in the application of logic than Mathematics. Personally for me, Visual Reasoning was something I had to struggle with. Hence, I would always skip the VR questions and solve the ones I could only after I was done with the rest of the paper.
Another common myth with respect to CET is that speed is more important than accuracy. Yes, speed is very important as there are 200 questions to be solved in just 150 minutes, but accuracy is just as important. The equation between the two would vary from person to person, but to believe that accuracy can be compromised at the cost of speed would be grossly wrong. Speed was never my forte, but a decent number of attempts with a high level of accuracy got me a score of 155 in my written test, which translated into a 99.98 percentile.
My advice to this year’s Bajaj aspirants:
1. Solve one paper a day, but most importantly analyze the paper to find out where you have gone wrong. Check if these are conceptual errors (e.g. related to a particular topic like Syllogisms), or silly mistakes (e.g. calculation errors).
In case of conceptual errors, sit down with a few papers & solve all the questions related to that topic till you get it right. If you are making too many silly mistakes, then you probably need to slow down a bit and concentrate more on accuracy than on speed.
When you solve the next paper, check and see if you are repeating mistakes made in the previous paper.
2. Solve papers from different coaching classes so that you have a feel of all the possible types of questions that you could come across, and how you are best able to tackle different combinations of these questions.
3. If you come across any question that looks like it will take more than 45 seconds, skip it in the first go and come back to it if you have time at the end.
4. Practise different strategies in your mock papers. Decide what works best for you and implement that in the final paper.
5. Don’t random mark as far as possible. Take calculated guesses if time permits i.e. narrow down your options to 2 or 3 and then random mark.
6. Be careful while marking in the OMR. Since you are required to mark with a pen, these minor things count, especially considering that a difference of even 1 or 2 marks could result in you not securing a seat in your dream college.
7. Try and score as much as possible in the written test so that your GD/PI will be smooth sailing. Easier said than done, I know!
8. Last but not the least, stay calm & give it your best. You still have time-it’s upto you to make the most of it!
All the best. Hope to see you next year at JBIMS!
Especially for those who suffer from ‘Arithmophobia’, CET is your best bet to get into one of the top B-schools in India, as it tests candidates more in the application of logic than Mathematics. Personally for me, Visual Reasoning was something I had to struggle with. Hence, I would always skip the VR questions and solve the ones I could only after I was done with the rest of the paper.
Another common myth with respect to CET is that speed is more important than accuracy. Yes, speed is very important as there are 200 questions to be solved in just 150 minutes, but accuracy is just as important. The equation between the two would vary from person to person, but to believe that accuracy can be compromised at the cost of speed would be grossly wrong. Speed was never my forte, but a decent number of attempts with a high level of accuracy got me a score of 155 in my written test, which translated into a 99.98 percentile.
My advice to this year’s Bajaj aspirants:
1. Solve one paper a day, but most importantly analyze the paper to find out where you have gone wrong. Check if these are conceptual errors (e.g. related to a particular topic like Syllogisms), or silly mistakes (e.g. calculation errors).
In case of conceptual errors, sit down with a few papers & solve all the questions related to that topic till you get it right. If you are making too many silly mistakes, then you probably need to slow down a bit and concentrate more on accuracy than on speed.
When you solve the next paper, check and see if you are repeating mistakes made in the previous paper.
2. Solve papers from different coaching classes so that you have a feel of all the possible types of questions that you could come across, and how you are best able to tackle different combinations of these questions.
3. If you come across any question that looks like it will take more than 45 seconds, skip it in the first go and come back to it if you have time at the end.
4. Practise different strategies in your mock papers. Decide what works best for you and implement that in the final paper.
5. Don’t random mark as far as possible. Take calculated guesses if time permits i.e. narrow down your options to 2 or 3 and then random mark.
6. Be careful while marking in the OMR. Since you are required to mark with a pen, these minor things count, especially considering that a difference of even 1 or 2 marks could result in you not securing a seat in your dream college.
7. Try and score as much as possible in the written test so that your GD/PI will be smooth sailing. Easier said than done, I know!
8. Last but not the least, stay calm & give it your best. You still have time-it’s upto you to make the most of it!
All the best. Hope to see you next year at JBIMS!