Getting Behaviour and Test Taking Skills right
Students tend to make the following 3 mistakes:
- Wasted Attempts/ Careless mistakes specially in Chemistry. These are mostly caused because of overconfidence or carelessness on your part. Embibe is really good at detecting when you under-compensate on effort. Wasted attempts have to go to zero. These are killer mistakes which cost you on average 5 marks in the test. The way to decrease these is to take a deep breath before every attempt. You attempt them fast either due to panic or overconfidence. Visualise Sachin Tendulkar batting and Brett Lee bowling. As pressure mounts, Tendulkar starts sweating in the anticipation of the next delivery. Brett Lee’s face looks more and more tense.
Technically, each ball is independent.
What connects them is their tension and expectations. The way to decrease that stress is to breathe deep. Check this article out to further learn about stress management used by students who take the GMAT!
As a top student you will also have a tendency to go too fast and get things right. But why take a risk? The remedy is to take a deep breath before every question and remember the weightage. Don’t let the psychological effect of one question influence the next.
Note the chapters in which you have wasted attempts — you will be able to see this in detail in the question wise analysis or even in the test taking strategy part of the analysis.
Clicking on each ‘dot’ gives you the video solution and amazingly detailed explanations as well as the concepts used in each question! Video solutions are available for all full tests!
Take chapter wise tests on these chapters and also all unit tests in Chemistry to make sure you curb the habit of over speeding. Go to this link for all tests and use the filter to select the appropriate test.
2. Time spent on questions not answered: This will be visible in the ‘How did you spend your time view’ as shown below:
Even if you score high — e.g. the student, Advaith in question here scored 267/360 (not bad, you would say) and still spent 41 minutes on questions he didn’t actually end up attempting! Chances are you are wasting a lot of time on questions you don’t actually answer, look for this number. If you score 250+, we would say stick your neck out and try for a 100% attempt — see what happens. Then systematically solve for your weaknesses as shown below in Step 2.
A lot of students tend to get questions overtime even in their first attempt. The goal is to score as many perfect attempts and leave the questions you are not sure of to the end.
3. First Look Accuracy: I cannot stress this enough. Two things — make sure your first look time is less than 120 minutes when you go through the paper to have a very strong, confident start. We looked at the first look times for Ranks 1,2 and 3 and others for JEE Mains & AIPMT/NEET tests and realised that all of these guys get through the paper at least once within the first 1.5 to 2 hours of the test. They then spend time on the tougher questions and finally have time for revision. As illustrated in the very beginning, make sure your first look time is between 1.5 to 2 hours. Also aim for a first look accuracy of 90% plus. Targeting this will make it very comfortable for you to navigate the paper at ease without ever feeling pressure. You can see your first look times and accuracy in the ‘Test taking strategy’ section as shown below.
