Strategy to Crack Exams!

By God's grace, after being able to crack and qualify all India competitive exams such as UGC-NET, IIT-GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering), NIT-NAT (National Aptitude Test), Global certification exams such as Oracle certification exams and MNCs exams of Deloitte Consulting, Pega Systems, Wipro, Tech Mahindra etc, I've gained some insight on how to crack these and similar exams, which I have shared below. Apart from competitive exams, there are academic exams which every university/college/school student has to pass to get their respective degree/credits. I cover these as well below from my academic experience at IIM Lucknow, BITS Pilani and other academic experiences.

For simplicity, I have divided this article into two parts - Competitive exams (Objective type) and Academic exams (Subjective type).

1. Competitive Exams (Objective type):

i). In competitive exams your aim is to score at every question to maximize your overall score. Each loss of question is a loss of marks which will lower your competitive position significantly. Don't start by thinking to avoid any question or topic. Your ability to answer each question will increase your score.
ii). Study the syllabus of the exams and get previous years papers of atleast 5 years. Incase previous years papers are not available, try to get mock test papers. Remember practising questions which are at par with exact exams is very important. It elevates your mind and brings your mind to the level of actual exam. You develop mental stamina to face actual exam properly by practising at par previously otherwise you will mostly be unable to do well in actual exam. It's similar to an Olympian practising minimum at par with actual competition.
iii). Start solving the questions. Even if you are able to get any one question right it is a good start. Identify the topics from which you were able to solve and from which you were not able to solve. This will act as a mirror that which are your strong areas and which are your weak ones.
iv). For strong areas, start perfecting in them so that you achieve mastery and are able to solve all questions from your strong areas. (Exceptional questions can come but in general you should be able to answer all questions from your strong areas). In my GATE exam I applied this strategy and achieved 100% score from my strong areas.
v). For weak areas, identify them, write them down and conquer them one by one till you cover your syllabus and all the practice questions set. Identify one topic from syllabus or practice question which you were not able to solve, study it, do practice questions from that topic and achieve mastery on it. After covering all the topics, give mock retest and achieve 100% in all the 5 practice tests. After completing all the five practice tests, get more practice tests from online or institutes that have(buy from them, its worth). Keep this practice of solving questions till exam. This might take time but I assume you have 6-7 months to prepare for your exam. Normally 8-10 days is enough to master one topic for eg. Probability, if studied for 4 hours per day with deep focus.
vi). In a negative marking exam you should only attempt those questions which you were rationally able to arrive at the answer and avoid those which you cannot arrive at correct answer even after solving and eliminating options.
vii). In exam aim is to maximize score. Don't start with a mindset to experiment in exam. Start with answering questions from your strongest areas to the least strongest ones. We have limited energy and time. Use it to maximize your score. Have a strategy to start exam with attacking those questions which are from your strongest and comfortable topics to the least strongest and uncomfortable topics. Have a timer for each question which depends on total questions and time available.
viii) As the time passes by navigate through questions from your strongest areas to the least strongest ones. Your mental stamina and emotional attitude should be high during the exam. If unfortunately you are not able to solve any question from your strong area in the initial minutes of exam, leave it for later and move on to the next question.
ix). By this, question by question from your convenient and strongest areas to the least strongest ones you progress towards maximizing your score.
x) Lastly, have a positive attitude during exam. Never exhaust or get emotionally down in any exam. Attempt each question with respect and deep focus. Don't treat any question lightly. Exams have a big role in making a good career.

2. Academic exams (Subjective type):

i). In academic subjective exams also starting point is syllabus and previous years question papers of atleast 5 years or atleast 5 mock test papers.
ii). Go through the full question papers and try to write answers by yourself - unaided.
iii). See how many of those you were able to answer well, unaided. For the remaining ones, study the topic, understand them, memorize them (where needed) and rewrite the answers unaided.
iv). Keep doing this exercise until you are able to write answers well of all the questions unaided and understandably. This will tune your mind to be able to do well in actual exam. We are developing mental stamina and intellectual ability and not just memorizing questions because needless to say they will not be same in actual exam, but your mind will be prepared to handle those questions because it has practiced with similar questions which were at par with the actual ones. Your mind is intellectually capable to handle those well.

These are general strategies. If there is any specific exam that has specific approach remember to practice like the actual exam, whichever it is. Practice on real exam situation and mastering over it is the key!

All the best!

Corporate Interviews Strategy

Being in the interview panel for multiple corporations, I have observed few focus areas and responsive styles which were highly valuable and result oriented. I want to share with fellow readers and interviewees on what they should focus on to improve their interviews. It is not just what you know that counts but how you present it by making the connect with the interviewer and making him travel through your thoughts that counts. I was well pleased by those who were able to thought travel with me even if it was a simple theory or a complex project explanation.

Few points to focus on:
1. Thought travel with the interviewer. Understand well on what the interviewer is asking.
2. Make interviewer connect with the dots of your thoughts. Your dots should be rational, backed by a reason on why they are present.
3. Create a new scenario and make interviewer understand well in depth by defining what the components are and how they are related.
4. Never repeat or speak any memorized answer. For any answer try to explain with real world example. Example: What are data structures. Ans: Data structures are a way to organize data so that retrieving data is simple and logical. Another Ex: Windows operating system uses tree data structure to organize files into folders where folders form the root and files are leaves or intermediatory nodes.
5. If you don't know the answer try to expand the horizon of the question and find opportunities where you can answer. You must try to show your thinking abilities and not get stuck blank at any question. For example you can ask what is the domain of the question and try to get into those areas of domain which you know.
6. Never argue or get in a negative tone with the interviewer. Try not to get stuck for long and blanking out answers. Try to circle out of the question domain and find the opportunities to answer.
7. Stay humble and be polite. Body language and a positive mindset carries heavy weight.
8. Smile and get well groomed. It shows the seriousness by demonstrating external preparation for the valuable interview. Everyone likes to interact with a well groomed, smiling person.
9. Study well the scope of the interview. Go with preparation and try to mock interview yourself by self video recordings. With this you can see your areas which need improvements.

All the best!

How Indian law supports feminism

Recently in my free time I was reading section 376C of IPC in one law book. I have spend considerable time in reading law books and have got the lenses through which justice is given. Fairness, equality and freedom from bias are few of those lenses. However in this section 376C, I found equality and freedom from biasness is compromised. This section says (In a nutshell) a supervisor or a person in authority is to be punished for having sexual relationship with a women under him. It blatanly assumes that only man is commiting offense by going in a relationship and does not say anything on woman if she freely choses to enter into a relationship with a man who has power(authority) and offcourse money. False promises can be made by women to lure men into relationship and if man has authority, chances of him being lured by many women increases. In my view, Section 376C should be amended to check if the woman was in a relationship with her consent then the man should not be the only one to be punished. It must be mandatory to prove that she had no free will and was forced into the act. There must be complaints made by her immediately when she got freedom to do so (Was out of influence of man). Without these evidences an innocent man can be framed to extort money for his reputation. And if relationsip was consensual, either both should be punished or none to ensure equality and freedom from bias.

Happy life

Happy life starts the moment we start to believe and follow God. One can't be truly happy without having God in one's life. When God is with us he gives us so much happiness that can't be expressed in words, we just experience it. But this happiness lasts only till we have determination, commitment and love for God.

The world we see today seems that it is devoid of goodness. But it is not so. It is the way of looking at things. Two persons looking at same thing may see it differently.  Person having negative thoughts will always see the bad and evil things of this world. He will say the world is corrupt, everyone is corrupt, why should I do good things if others are doing bad things and are enjoying so he will suggest others to become bad, whereas a person having good, positive and godly thoughts will always see positive in things around him. No matter how much he has suffered, got hurt in life he continuously makes good efforts, good judgements & never gives up. God sees our determination towards goodness. God gets happy when we believe in him and do good deeds inspite of suffering. Getting what we want can be achieved by hardwork, planning and honesty but getting what God wants can be acheived only when we obey God.
God is our maker, he knows what is our purpose in life. Creation cannot know its purpose without its creator similarly, we cannot know our purpose without knowing our creator. Only our creator knows why he has created us and he directs us when we surrender ourselves to him. Thus by being in fellowship with God we know what is our purpose. Once we know our purpose we can be at peace and once we are at peace we achieve true happiness. Without peace, true happiness cannot be attained.
When we are children we want to grow up quickly but when we grow up we want to become children again. We live the whole life as if we have never lived. Life is a  gift of God because he created us and loves us very much. Making everyone happy, sharing their grief, giving not only just to needy but to everyone when we can give him/her, caring for not only our dear ones but to anyone for God and making him happy is what is going to give us everlasting Happiness. We don't have to run after happiness, instead we have to follow what God wants us then automatically happiness will follow us!
So when God will ask us I have given you the whole life - The Earth, the environment, food, money, parents, body, heart, lungs, job etc what have you done with it and have given me?  The answer of this question is the way of having  happy life, a life of purpose because you know that everything created by God is for purpose.
Take care friend, unite with God, read his word and surrender to him in prayer with humble heart. He will see your heart and will come and uplift you in his hands. When God is with us everything is taken care of. Jesus said seek first the kingdom of God and rest all will be done for you. So we just have to continually seek kingdom of God. Rest all is taken care by God just as he has taken care of us till now by providing us life, earth, water, oxygen, food, body, finances, parents, home etc.
God Bless you! :-)