Get your students to master Aptitude tests. Part (3 of 4)
This is the Part 3 of our 4 part series of articles on: Get your students to master Aptitude tests. Read the previous part here.
Aptitude tests are generally of two types: Speed-tests and Skill-tests.
In speed-tests, a student’s decision-making skills and self-awareness are tested. There are some tough or time-consuming questions placed in the test and the student has to make a decision quickly whether to answer or not. There is also hardly any time for the students to try out questions on the topics they are not good at. Hence, it becomes very important for a student to be aware of his strengths and weakness if he has to master this kind of tests. The time per question is typically between 60–75 seconds.
In Skill-tests, a student’s thought process is tested. The questions often involve application of a simple concept but the problem needs to be broken down into parts and decoded before you apply that concept. Here’s an example:
Question: There are 100 lockers in a high school with 100 students. The problem begins with the first student opening all 100 lockers; next, the second student closes lockers 2,4,6,8,10 and so on to locker 100; the third student changes the state (opens lockers closed, closes lockers open) on lockers 3,6,9,12,15 and so on; This goes on until every student has had a turn.
How many lockers will be open at the end?
Solution & Thought process:
Step-1: Understanding the pattern:
Person-1 operates on locker 1,2,3,4…..
Person-2 operates on locker 2,4,6,8…
Person-3 operates on locker 3,6,9,12…
Each person operates on the lockers which are multiples of his number. This can also be rephrased as a locker number is operated by the students who are its factors. That means Locker 8, for example, is operated by student 1, 2, 4 and 8
Step-2: Decoding the puzzle: When will the locker remain open? When the door is operated on an odd number of times.
Step-3: Applying the concept: A door will be operated an odd number of times if the door has an odd number of factors. What are the numbers that have an odd number of factors? Only Perfect squares have odd number of factors. And there are 10 perfect squares between 1–100.
If you look at the problem above, it is an application of a fairly simple concept from Number systems but, the thought process to arrive at it is difficult to come by the difficult part . Time per question here is atleast 120 seconds.
So, what are the features of a good aptitude program?
a. A lot of aptitude questions have traps or small mistakes that the user might commit. A good aptitude training module makes students aware of such traps.
b. All aptitude tests have questions that are easy to solve but consume a lot of time and hence shouldn’t be answered. A good aptitude training program sensitises your students towards this.
c. A good aptitude program takes a practice-centric approach. Aptitude exams test the problem-solving skill of students and test if students can arrive at that formula or concept once they see the problem. Hence, it is very important to take a practice-centric approach and expose students to as many problems as possible.
d. There is typically some gap between the training program and the placements. And this is the time when students spend time practicing. A good training program should have means of providing support during this time. They should also provide enough material in the form of mock tests, sectional tests or handouts for students to practice.
In our next article, we are going to look at what would be the structure of an ideal aptitude program that would maximize the number of students who cross this stage.
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