Mocks: Test taking strategy & Analysis

 

Mocks

 

Mocks are valuable for your preparation. Mocks are useful for four things.

 

1. Mocks help you to design your D- Day Test taking strategy

2. Mocks provide you numerical data to do Analysis.

3. Documentation: systematic approach to keeping record of your activities optimizes       

    overall preparation time.

4. You can review and refine your Preparation strategy

As far as mocks are concerned we can use them for 4 activities. Given below is the flow of those 4 activities related to mocks.

Flow of activities:-

Activity 1: give mock test

Activity 2: solve not attempted & wrong questions without time limit

Activity 3: Do analysis and documentation

Activity 4: update your preparation strategy accordingly

 

1.Test taking strategy

1.1Diagnostic tests

 

You must start your MBA Preparation journey by giving a diagnostic test. Your first diagnostic test will help you to understand your current standing in terms of your current preparation level, your strong/weak areas, and your projected score/percentile/rank.

Once you are done with your first diagnostic test you can create first draft of study plan.

 

Your first 10-15 mocks will also act as additional diagnostic tests. Use them for analysis purpose. Use the analysis to refine your study plan in minute details.

1.2 strategies

 

Having a back tested test taking strategy will take you far ahead of your competition.

 

You must try to answer following questions.

What is back tested strategy?

What should be my sequence of sections?

How can I develop D-Day test taking strategy?

 

Let me answer those questions.

Back tested strategy is the one that you have designed for yourself and tried for 3 plus mocks. Your score in those mocks is in first quartile.

 

Sequence of section: for me VA-RC-LR-DI-QA was the best sequence in mocks.

I always scored better with above sequence of attempting mocks. Find out your sequence.

 

To develop D-Day test taking strategy you simply have to try various strategies during mocks and keep record of practices that give you best result. D- Day test taking strategy is the one which you have tried at least 8 times in your mocks with excellent outcome.

 

Following are some of the approaches/practices that you can experiment with.

1.    Make a ranking or order of every topic from each section to attempt. For example for me “geometry” and “time & work” topic were top two topics to start solving for quantitative ability.  “Permutation and combination” topic was the last topic for me to attempt.

2.    Scan the entire section for few minutes to identify level of difficulty of questions (easy/medium/difficult).

3.    Attempt only easy and medium level questions first.

4.    Attempt difficult questions only if you have time remaining.

5.    Do not waste time in solving very difficult questions. You will waste your time. You will end up marking wrong answer. You will run out of time for easy questions.

 2.Analysis

Once your mock test is over you can start activity number 2 i.e. solving not attempted and wrong questions without any timer.

If you are not able to solve any question then that will indicate knowledge gap. Note down the concept and learn it.

If your number of not attempted questions are high then it will indicate problem with your test taking ability (speed factor).  Speed will increase over time with regular practice

If your miss out on attempting easy and medium level questions then that will also indicate problem with your test taking ability (scanning ability). Ability to scan will improve when you learn to identify repetitive patterns and keywords.

Analysis of mock helps you to classify topics into strong areas and weak areas.

It is recommended that you spend 2-3 hours per mock for analysis.

This time can be reduced by using technology. I provide web portal where analysis is done and presented in systematic way. No need to waste your time.

 

Mock test score is just a number so no need to take this score seriously.  Many aspirants lose their confidence by giving excessive importance to mock scores.

 

Your performance in mock tests just indicates your level of preparation. For simplicity I have designed 7 levels of preparation as follows.

 

7 Levels of preparation based on outcomes of questions

Level 1: knowledge-correct/fast: This is your ultimate goal. Solving a question and doing so in optimum time. Once you reach this level all you have to do is just give mocks nothing else.

Level 2:knowledge-correct/slow: getting correct answer but spending excess time for that will eventually cost you in your percentile. To reduce the time required you must revise the concept regularly and find out alternative methods to solve the sum. Keeping a separate book with list of shortcut techniques is always recommended. Regular practice will help you to identify the questions of repetitive nature.

 

Level 3: knowledge- wrong: This happens when you make silly mistakes. Best way to avoid silly mistakes is following the principal “go slow to go fast”.  This means be extra cautious with the area where you make silly mistake. Double check your answer. Ask yourself “am I making mistake with particular topic/formula?”  If you are at this level then your job is to reduce your silly mistakes with every passing mock that you give.

Level 4: knowledge-unattempted /missed opportunities: When you know the concept but do not solve a question your percentile drops. This happens because your scanning ability is not properly developed yet. Scanning all questions before attempting to solve them will simplify your test taking strategy. When you scan a question you develop ability to rank them as easy, medium and difficulty level.

Level 5: Ignorance – correct: You don’t know the concept but still get the correct answer then its pure luck. Note down the concept, learn it, and revise it. Don’t rely on luck factor. Avoid speculations.

Level 6: Ignorance – wrong: If error in concept make sure to learn the concept. Give more focus on building your basics.     

 

Level 7: Ignorance – not attempted: When you are not able to attempt any question because you didn’t know the concept. Working on your basics is the only way to go.

Learn the concept, revise it, and practice it.

 

3 levels of difficulty of question

 

It’s always recommended that you classify every question or set as i) easy ii) medium iii) difficult with respect to its level of difficulty.

This practice will develop your selection skill. Selection based on level of difficulty of questions.

Proper selection of easy and medium level question will help you fetch more marks in short time frame. This will also reduce your mistakes.

Selection skill will save your time and energy by letting you skip difficult questions.

Time Factor

Your analysis will provide you valuable insights about your speed.

When you are giving any exam accuracy is important but time taken to solve a question is equally important.

Some parameters to assess your time related performance are as follows.

i)             Time taken to solve a question is better than national average time taken

ii)            Time invested is resulting into higher percentage of correct answers

iii)           How much time is available after solving easy and medium level questions?

 

Quantify

To summarize I will say one thing and that is use the analysis to quantify everything.

 

No. of Easy/ Med/ Hard questions answered?

What is your level of preparedness (out of 7 levels) for each question?

Average time taken to solve questions

How far or near you are from your target score.

 

3.Documentation

 

You must keep following documentation based on your mocks.

 

1.    7 Levels of preparedness

2.    3 Levels of difficulty

3.    Topic wise performance

4.    Speed wise performance

5.    Section wise performance

6.    4 level of competence

7.    Mistakes journal

 

Use MS excel, journal, diary, apps for this activity.

Separate detailed post will be published soon on how to do documentation.

 4.Preparation strategy

i)             Focus only on weak areas. Learn the concepts and practice easy questions. Give only one mock per week. Keep reducing your wrong and unattempted questions.

ii)            When you start scoring beyond 85 percentile in every section then you can give 2 or more mocks per week.

iii)           Give 3 or 4 mocks per week in the last month of your preparation.

iv)           Use your analysis to divide the study time between each section. Section with lowest score will have more time allocated to it for that week.

v)            For VARC break you study time in three areas a) RC b) grammar c) Vocabulary

vi)           For DILR keep improving your set selection.

vii)         For QA keep searching for shortcuts, tricks and alternative solutions.

viii)        Use technical features from your web portal for comparing your speed with top rankers.