YOU CAN IMPROVE YOUR TEST SCORE BY DOING A CLOSE
ANALYSIS OF YOUR BEHAVIOURAL PATTERN DURING THE
DURATION OF A TEST. ARUN SHARMATELLS HOW
With just two months left for the all-important CAT exam, most of you must be revising
the syllabus, desperately covering new topics and definitely taking mock-tests. This timeframe
is most crucial for your CAT preparation. However, we have observed over the time
that most CAT aspirants are unable to utilise this time-frame well. And the typical
experience for most students is that their percentile scores get stuck in a certain range in
whatever mock tests they are taking. In today's article we will concentrate on a crucial
question that must have been appearing in the minds of CAT aspirants at this stage — "How
do I increase my test scores?" We want to communicate to you, at this stage, that a lot is
possible in this direction — provided you are able to find the right things to do.
So what can be done? You can work in three directions to improve your test score:
• Ability improvement
• Belief improvement
• Test taking behaviour improvement
In this article we would be elaborating on the third issue — the test taking behaviour
improvement.
In a past article, we mentioned that the statistics of CAT 2007 revealed — while a score of
about 110 out of 300 was sufficient to score 99 percentile, a score of 70 plus gave a score of
about 80 percentile. It is a moot point that a student scoring in a range of 80 percentile
would think that s/he was away from cracking CAT. However, we believe that improving test
scores by around 40 to 50 marks does not necessarily require a year's preparations. It could
be a matter of just a few days to a few weeks — provided you hit upon the correct strategy
and work dimensions to execute your preparation.
For every student, who will be able to increase test scores on his/her own, there would be
over 25 aspirants whose scores would get stuck in a range, which can at best be considered
sub-optimal when considered against the backdrop of his/her abilities.
In context of the marking pattern used over the last couple of years — four marks per
question and negative one for a wrong answer — increasing your scores by approximately
50 marks could just mean overturning about 10 errors.
A close analysis of behavioural patterns during the test can help in improving the test
score.
Your test score is directly dependant on your ability, as well as behaviour pattern in each
of the three sections of the paper. However, even while the multitudes focus heavily on their
ability aspect, little or no attention is given to the all-important aspect of behaviour.
You will be surprised how much change you can create in your test score by closely
analysing your behavioural pattern during the test. The primary reason for this is that if you
go back into the way your mind worked during the exam, you will realise that for major time
chunks, during the exam, your mind was not working at all! You were thinking suboptimally.
Perhaps this is the reason why most students have had the experience of having
got stuck and not being able to solve a question during the test period or being able to solve
the same question without the examination pressure within a matter of seconds.
What are the components that you need to measure under behaviour patterns?
1) Your inherent and expressed insecurity with a particular section:
Your inherent insecurity is the amount of residual fear that you carry within your mind with
respect to a particular section. If you carry negative beliefs in your mind about a particular
section (and/or a particular question type) it is bound to impede on your ability to score well
in that area. Your expressed insecurity is the amount of your inherent insecurity that is
brought out while solving the paper.
A negative belief that tells you: "I cannot solve Quant or data interpretation questions or
English section" is the main reason for these insecurities. If you allow any of these
insecurities to remain in your mind, it will hurt you badly inside the CAT.
Hence, your target before CAT is to remove these insecurities. In other words, in your
mind you should shift to "I can" from "I cannot." While doing this, your focus should be to
deal with each section by breaking it into different question types/chapters. We will be
discussing this process of dealing with insecurity in each section independently in later
articles in this series.
2) Your behavioural pattern in the first 5-10 minutes of the test:
This time period can be defined as the warm up time during a test. Students make the
mistake of either being overcautious or over nervous during this time period.
3) Your behavioural pattern in the last 15-20 minutes of the test:
We have often observed good students falter in the last 15-20 minutes of the test paper.
Does it happen to you too? If yes, you need to train your mind to keep its bearings when the
pressure is on.
4) Your reaction to not being able to solve a question:
There is a tendency among students to carry psychological scars of not being able to solve
one question or a set of questions into the next set of questions. If you also have this
tendency — you better guard against it through doses of positive thinking.
5) Your tendency to hold on to a question/inability to move out of a question within the
appropriate time:
Every exam that students take up until CAT, the philosophy is to keep trying a question till
you crack it. In CAT, the paradigm changes. Here you might be more rewarded for leaving
questions unsolved rather than trying it from different angles and wasting your time. For all
you know the next question might be a matter of 15 seconds. Hence, if you are having the
tendency to stick to a question, you need to train yourself to leave it as soon as it conveys
the first danger signals to you.
The above negative behaviour patterns have a profound impact on your test scores.
Unfortunately, while students work very hard on practising questions, they miss out on the
opportunity to raise their scores by making minute adjustments to their behavioural pattern.
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