I just was review written on exams and I though I should be writing one. I used to study only for half an hour before exams and pass. My friends have taken my tips and passed and they have been even com more extreme. Since I am a commerce student I can give advice only in the degree and post degree level. Even p.u.c. and school students can benefit. But I am not sure if professional courses like medicine and engineering will be the same.
But you are free to try First I will start with beating the system. All exam papers are set using set of questions. This happens in almost any faculty. Even in subjects like BBM I have had students (negative ones) tell me that BBM is having too many subjects and it doesn’t work like that but one of my friends proved them wrong. Let’s get down to business. You have to keep at least 5 years(10 years if there no syllabus change) of previous question papers. Just start writing down all he questions on a sheet of paper. If they appear more than once you can just put a 1 in front of the question that appears the most.
You will end up 20-30 questions depending on the subject. Then you take another sheet of paper and list the questions down according to the rank. You can do this with objective questions. You may end up with many more options but still you will be able to get important questions form it and you can limit your studying. Now you can choose the top 10 questions. According to my experience( I have helped a lot of friends set questions from art, commerce, bbm, science theory, 12th) that most of the subject you can get 100% with 12-16 questions. When I mean 100% it based on the previous questions. This is how you do it. After you have short listed these questions based on their frequency. You can obviously omit all the questions that have appeared once and twice. Then you take the short listed questions and see if you can answer all the previous question papers. Just imagine you have studied all the questions and go through the previous papers and see if you can answer them all; simple. People who want to play it safe and those you are used to studying a lot(they will find that the short listing almost cuts down the study portion by half) can now go ahead and just study these questions. For the rebel and renegades you can go ahead and follow next steps which will reduce your workload all the more. Almost all subjects have choices and you go through it carefully and see if you answered 1 question if you can omit an equally important question. IT is like in economics paper we would always have the 1 question as choice between law of demand and what is an offer. If you were doing that economics you would see both these question high on the repetitive ranking but then you can still omit one question even though it is highly ranked. You have to be very careful though. Then does the same thing over, that is try to attempt all previous question papers. The same way you can shortlist the questions all the more just for 1st class(60%) After omitting the questions you can again attempt all the previous question paper and see that you should be able to answer at least 60% of the questions in each paper and you are done. I have tested this method in different ways. Once I just took the previous 5 years but did not take the immediate last years paper. So I used the same method and then after that checked with the last years question paper and it worked. So that means if I or maybe the last year’s students had done this thing last year it would have worked. I used to always shortlist 6 questions study only 2 questions properly and then just browse through the remaining 4.We had 5 questions(double choice) and each paper(80marks) had at least 2 questions that would come. So the two questions if answered perfectly would fetch at least 14 marks but to be on the safer side lets count it at 12 so that makes it 24 marks. Which leaves us with only 4 marks to get from the remaining 4 question which we would get even if we only wrote the points down? If you don’t have internal then you would need 36 to pass which means another 12 marks instead of four . That means from the remaining 4 questions you have to score at least 3 marks each which is no a big deal because if you just write down the points then they normally give you at least 5 marks. With this method I have found that if you studied 12-16 questions you can get 100% it is possible. The best way is to write all those questions down make the perfect answers consult you lecturers and then keep on writing it 6 hours a day at least. IF you want to pass then you can study only 6. My friend once took my 6 questions and only studied only 4. But he studied it well and guess what, those 4 only came and he passed with more that 70%. But I would not advice you to take such risk. Stay above the 6 questions mark. Now for the other part of studies. Always remember that a healthy body leads to a healthy mind. If you are not used to exercising then don’t start now. But you can always include a long walk in the morning before studying. A brisk level road walk early in the morning before studying does wonders. Remember always do the important studying just before you go to sleep. Because sleeping helps the memory. Yes it is important that you sleep before the exams. Staying all night doesn’t help. Do the shirsasana. That is standing on your head with your forearms flat on the ground you can use the wall for support. Try to do it for more than 2 minutes but less than 5 minutes.(my friend a C.A. Student told me that this helped him a lot, he passed) Eat a lot of curds and even having a vitamin supplement like zincovit will help. See that you have multivitamins with zinc and selenium(iron is not needed) Have light food sticking to vegetarian if possible but see that you don’t stuff yourself. To stay awake at night. Avoid sugar, sugar gives you high but when the sugar level comes down it makes you very lethargic and doesn’t help. So this means keep your coffees and teas sugarless.(avoid milk too) Have your meals early before 7:30p.m. Breakfast idli with sambar or other fermented food recommended. Avoid oily parothas and chapattis. The best way to stay awake is to get a spray if you can get your hands on the ones the barber has then that is great. I used to use the first rexona deodorant bottle it was non-aerosol and you could open it. You can find substitutes fill it with water and spray generously if you feel too sleepy. But see that you get at least 4 hours of sleep every night. Keeping the room cool helps a lot. Your mind works best at a temperature of 22-24 degrees. People with ac will help. Try and study on a chair with a good back rest. If it is uncomfortable change it immediately or do some adjustments. IF you feel two sleepy or bored writing what you have learnt is the best way to keep awake and alert. If you keep on reading you will just doze of. It is difficult to doze off while writing. Well I hope this helps. Remember the with the above method it will be like someone just leaked the question paper to you ;-). Follow the tips for better studying. And please drinking doesn’t help nor does ganja. And don’t use drugs and avoid smoking. I know it is difficult to leave smoking but you have to be careful because you can smoke ton during exams and if you get a chest infection or congestion then it will do more harm than good. I am not talking about the health part of smoking.