7 tips to prepare for the NDA/NA written exam in a month.

Fast track your preparation for the NDA/NA written exam.

         The written exams for the UPSC NDA/NA exams are around the corner. They will be conducted soon on 9^th September of 2018.It’s almost like 50 days to prepare for the exam. So today in this post I’m going to share few of the tips to prepare and crack the exams easily.

         Every year lakhs of students write the NDA written exam and only around thousands get selected. So the probability of getting selected is less than 1%. For now, let’s dive into few points which I feel can help you in the last few days of your preparation.

         The first point is Select your area of expertise. If you look at the scores of the candidates who got recommended in the NDA merit list, you get to see that even the toppers score only around half of the marks in the written exam.

If we look at this result of 2017 1 NDA, the toppers have scored around 500 marks.

And if we look at the cutoff of the written exams of the past years then they are always hovering around 300 marks. So in my opinion you need not study all the topics to get selected in the written exam.

          Out of the 20+ topics that are needed to be prepared for the maths exam, select 10-15 topics that you feel are easy for you and you need not break your head to prepare for them easily. If you ask me which topics I had prepared elaborately then my answer to this question would be quadratic equations, permutations and combinations, trigonometry,2d and 3d geometry, probability, simple statics, matrices and determinants and differentiation.

The reason I chose these topics was because I felt that some of them required more of mental work than mechanical work. Integral calculus was a nightmare to me as every time I used to prepare for it but still one or the other question used to come in exam which used to consume my time and at the end I would have not solved the problem also and would have wasted most of my time.

        The reason why I’m telling you to do this is because in the final exam nobody will be able to solve all the 120 questions of maths. An average candidate may solve around 60 to 70 questions and if even 50 are correct out of it then it’s enough to qualify for the SSB. So I feel it’s better to drop a few topics that you feel are very difficult and need most of your time. So that you will maximize your chances of scoring more marks in the final exam.

        When it comes to the second paper if you are a science student then the science part would be very easy since its all the basics of the 11^th and 12^th.So if you are good with the basics of class 11^th and 12^th then you will be easily able to score 40+ correct answers. The scope of preparation for social science is very vast but one thing that is game saver in this part is the civics. It has got a predefined and limited syllabus. According to me geography is a bit off the limits and few questions in history are always above my head. If you are average in English, then it will easily fetch you 30+ correct answers. So totally with all this you will be able to make a 300+ score.

         

       The second point is solving the previous year’s question papers. Since you still have more than a month with you, you must try to solve at least 10 previous question papers. It will require around 4 hours for solving correcting and understanding the maths paper and around 2 hours for the GAT paper. By solving the previous year’s papers, you will learn to manage time especially for maths paper. Time management isn’t needed for the GAT paper as even I slept in GAT exam for an hour after completing the full paper.

         Every time few questions repeat in the maths paper exactly and some reappear with different values so if you would have solved that before than you will be easily able to solve it and save time. You will also gain confidence that “Yes I can solve these papers”.

       

        The third point is make a formula book. Or be smart and Xerox your friend’s formula book or purchase one. Sometimes the questions in the maths paper are directly based on a formula. Directly substitute values and you will get your answer. You can revise the formulas in your free time or when you are travelling from a place to a place or standing somewhere.

      The fourth point is don’t solve a question for more than 5 minutes. It so happens that sometimes we get struck in a question and we are very determined and we want to solve that question in any condition. We end up wasting hours together on that question and still don’t get an answer. I have done this many times too. The best solution here would be to accept that you don’t know the answer for that question and approach someone who knows how to solve that question and understand how to solve that question. This will save you a plenty of time and a lot of frustration. You can become a scientist after the exam and use all the time in the world to solve a single question. But not now.

   

      The fifth point is practice the reverse approach. In few question you can easily find an answer to the question if you substitute the options and check in the question. This will also save you a lot of time.

       Here if you think that you will be able to do this directly in the final exam then you are wrong. You will be too confused in the final exam that you will use both the traditional and reverse approach and end up without getting an answer and waste a lot of time. So by practicing you will be easily able to identify in which questions you can use the substitution method and solve the question.

       The sixth point is get off social media. Most of the young generation including me have lost the track of what they are doing and what they are supposed to do because of the incessant use of social media and mobile phones. Phones were invented to be our tools but now we have become their tools. You might give an excuse that you are using phones to prepare for the exams but believe me nothing is a better substitution for books. On internet what we learn is superficial and our attention is fragmented, so we won’t be able to learn better. Thus it’s my sincere request to you guys that if you are actually interested and determined to crack this exam then forgo these gadgets for a month. Believe me you will see wonderful results and thank me for this advice.

     The last and the final point is that I urge you to add any more points that you feel are important and I have left them out.

    Hope these points are worth reading and worth sharing with all the aspirants and your friends who want to clear the exam and Donne the stars on their shoulders….