Question selection is very vital when it comes to competitive exams. And that is especially true when it comes to IPMAT as well. Since this is unlike the regular school examinations we are so used to writing, there are a few adjustments that need to be made. Therefore, question selection plays a very crucial role, considering that there are negative marks.
But before we delve deep into the idea of question selection in IPMAT, there are some very basic ideas about the examination that we need to get right.
If you are looking for a comprehensive guide on ‘How to prepare for IPMAT?’, head here.
IPMAT marking scheme
The IPMAT examination consists of two types of questions – Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) and Short Answer Questions. Every correct answer to an MCQ fetches 4 marks, and every wrong answer attracts a penalty of 1 mark.
For the Short Answer Questions, there are no negative marks for wrong answers.
What is your point?
The idea is that you need to very wary about selecting the right questions, especially in the MCQ type.
Why is this important?
There are several factors to highlight the importance of choosing the right questions, OR the ones that you are very confident about.
- This is not an examination where you are expected to score 100 percentage. Remember that 100 percentile is different from 100 percentage.
- In the zeal of attending too many questions, you might end up getting a lot of negatives.
- The total marks that are required to receive a call from IIM Indore and IIM Rohtak (now IIM Bodh Gaya as well) are not going to be more than 60% of the total marks (going by the trends so far).
Question selection – how does one go about it?
There are few overarching themes on how one can approach question selection. Then, there are specifics around the Verbal and Quant sections, respectively.
The big picture – when should you leave questions?
Ah, this is the crucial aspect, is it not? More than knowing what kinds of questions you need to attempt, it is of utmost importance to know which questions you ought to leave, at any cost.
Here are some of the circumstances during which you SHOULD definitely leave questions.
1) When you do not know what the question is about
It is not a crime to not know a question. There are topics which might not fall within your forte; sometimes, you will tend to not get the answer for a question from a topic you are familiar with.
If you are faced with one of these scenarios, move on. Leave and try the next one. Wasting time on a question which you are not going to get anyway is a costly mistake you should not commit. AT ALL.
2) When you are in doubt
If you are oscillating between two options – and this happens a lot of times especially in the Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC) – leave. Oftentimes, these are answers on which you tend to lose a lot of marks.
Just because you feel like something is right, do not mark it right away. ‘Feeling‘ that something is right and ‘knowing, with conviction‘ that something is correct are two different things. The latter fetches you +4 most probably, while the former results in you getting a penalty in most cases.
This differentiation between ‘feeling’ and ‘knowing’ is very vital when it comes to question selection in IPMAT.
3) When the question seems to require a lot of time
IPMAT is not always about knowledge. Knowledge is important, and there are no two ways about it. But there are few other attributes that a candidate must possess in order to sail smooth in this examination.
The question paper would, at times, comprise questions that are tantalizingly well-framed, but those that would require an enormous amount of time and effort in order to arrive at the final answer/solution. Leave these at least during the initial stages; if time permits towards the end, and if you have answered all the easier questions, come back and try to solve these types of questions.
You would rather solve 3 easy questions than going for 1 impossibly tough question. There is no extra score for your choosing the diabolical ones, remember? 12 marks take precedence over 4 marks. ALWAYS.
What is the question selection strategy?
“Strategy” – sounds like a battle-day jargon. Nevertheless, it is important to plan on how you are going to go about attending or leaving questions during the IPMAT examination.
For the Verbal section
There is no unique solution
See how we used an Algebraic idea from Quant, even when we are talking about the Verbal section?
Anyway, there is no one way to identify the right Reading Comprehension (RC) passages. But if you spend time reading a passage, it does not mean you have to answer all the accompanying questions for sure. There is no rule that mandates you to answer 4 questions because you spent 8-10 minutes.
But…
When you read two paragraphs of a passage, or even the entire passage, but even later the passage feels Greek and Latin, there are two options.
- Leave – This is the easiest of the two options. The path of least resistance, if I may. Leave merrily and march ahead.
- Have a go at it again – this requires some amount of resilience and endurance. You should have the confidence in yourself and say, ” I know I read the whole passage once and did not get it at all. But maybe I will get it if I read the entire thing once more.” The flipside to this stance is the perspective that you should be ready to face the brutal fact; even after two or three reads, you might not get the idea behind some passages, sometimes. This should not pressurize you because you have lost time.
For the Quant section
There is a classical way to approach the questions in the Quant section. There are three steps to it.
- Attack or leave
- Take guard and be on the lookout
- Do not bother
Let us go one step further and explore what these battlefield strategies mean in the context of IPMAT.
Attack or leave
This is the first level. Here, you attend only those questions that can be solved in under a minute. Even if there are questions that are from the topic you know very well, leave those if they would take a lot of time.
Take guard and be on the lookout
Now that you have got the low hanging fruits, you must aim to go one step further. Remember those questions that you had left in the first round because they appeared to be time-consuming to solve? Those are the ones you should be targeting NOW.
Put your head down, solve meticulously and mark the right answers.
Do not bother
Save for a very small chunk of the populace that takes the IPMAT every year, there is very less to no probability that you will know all the answers in one section, let alone from all the different sections.
So when you do not seem to get the hang of the terms and ideas mentioned in a question, do not bother. You are not losing because of leaving questions; you are losing only because you try to mark something and end up getting penalties.
Summing up…
Question selection is not an idea that you can master in just a single day. It takes time, but is not something that is not conquerable.
The mantra when you are preparing, though, should be:
- Learn from fundamentals.
- Practice a lot.
- Get test-ready.
Stay safe and best wishes for your preparation!
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Written by Giridharan Raghuraman
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