Thursday 29 October 2015

Common mistakes CS Students do in preparation & presentation

Students tend to make certain specific mistakes in Professional exams; that is one of the reason why certain groups need to be taken again and again to clear..

What are the mistakes students commonly do & how to avoid them; Some young CS who has qualified recently share their views..

SAILESH



1) Preparing only with scanners and notes (here notes refer to the notes taken by the student/friends while attending the classes. These will be incomplete for preparation unless we study the subject fully and relate it to the notes) - Many people, including me at first, think that going by the scanner will be helpful in covering the important areas of the whole syllabus.

I strongly oppose this thought. This view of going by scanner gives a false impression that we are covering the major aspects.But it is not so. Yes, its agreed that some important areas, rather questions, are covered in scanner, but by going only by the scanner, we are missing out the basic area of covering the subject. We cover only the questions and not the subject, if we follow the scanner/solved papers. Covering the topic/subject is necessary for effectively facing exams. I tried to follow this in my last attempt and was able to clear. I had the satisfaction of answering the questions well than my earlier attempts. I shared this view with one of my friends, who echoed this view after completing the exam. Thought of putting forth this here.

2) Continuously studying the same subject and concentrating on it and giving lesser importance to other subjects -

Students think that if they write a paper very well and score 70+ in it, they can compensate the marks with just 40+ marks in other 2 subjects in the module. this is wrong, because, being professional programme, no subject is going to be that easy to score 70+ or even 60+. You need to be studying all the subjects well or atleast give proper respect to the subject, to score well. The students need to concentrate on the subjects to score equally well in the subjects. To be practical, we can say that, we cannot score 70+ in all subjects, atleast we can study well to score 50+ in all the subjects. Any person who has come this far (let it be Executive or Professional) will be able to score 50+ in all subjects, if they put in equal efforts for the subjects, rather than concentrating on only few subjects. If in the single subject we are not able to perform well, it will totally destroy the confidence and we will not be able to do the other subjects even upto the limited extent we have prepared.

3) With regard to the presentation, its general tendancy to write the answer, which we know very well, for pages and pages and not properly writing other answers. This will surely send the signal to the valuer that we are not in a position to write the full paper well. As a result the other answers will be scrutinized highly. The anwers need to be upto the limit of marks and we need to be able to put down the basic points. Not everyone can write the answers exactly upto the point. atleast we can try to be precise and not exaggerate.

Exaggeration of the answers is one of the most common mistakes done during the presentation in exams.

4) Many people, including some of my school seniors, say that, we need to attend the answers which we know well first and then attend the other answers. But i beg to differ.

Its better to answer the questions as per the numerical order. This is because, i'm of the view that, if we write the answers that way, we are presenting ourself as someone who is confident in answering the question as per the order and we are prepared enough not to attend only some questions. We need to write the answers as much as relevant to the question. The student would have put in hard work and prepared. they would have surely known the answer, its just that they don't understand that, they need to strat writing to get the flow of ideas. They get a mental block that they don't know the answer at all and blindly jump to the next question.

( I beg to differ Sailesh: It is better to write in same order only when we are 100 % confident in all questions; else, we can write in the order in which we are comfortable - Mohan kumar)

R.S.BHARATH KUMAR 

Mistakes in Preparation

·         Lack of proper planning and Time Management Skills

Not using Institute study materials and selecting some other books for reading; 

·         Confusion on how many groups to write. And  by this way students tend to ask opinion of others  and not believing themselves.
·         Reading only suggested answers and not going with the syllabus, thinking that only previous years questions will be repeated.

·         During your preparation try and study everything. Each and every topic. The basic idea behind this is that you must have something relevant to write about the given topic.

PRESENTATION

·         If in a passage there are various points try and write them separately in points and give them separate number.
·         In exam never use short forms like AGM, EGM, CG, CLB,etc.,
·         While writing be specific about your answer.
·         Attempt full paper of 100 marks.
·         If you are not sure of section, then please don write section number.
·         Don’t write stories. Answer should be specific.
·         Try and improve your recalling power.


Prasanna Varadan




Preparation

1) Initially I didn't refer and study the material supplied by the institute & fully depended on the scanners available in the market. I cleared (in fourth attempt) only when I thoroughly read the institute materials.


2) My request is to avoid discussion with friends before the day of examination and before the start of examination;  this lead to failure, I have personally experienced it.


3) Mostly we will concentrate on arithmetical related papers i.e. FM & ATLP and we won't concentrate on theoretical papers.My kind advice is to concentrate equally on all papers at regular intervals.

4) I compared the level of preparations with my co friends which lead to some demotivation, which can be avoided.

Presentation

My recommendations based on the mistakes:

1) Answer all the questions in a fresh page.

2) Try to Maintain same level of handwriting throughout the answer book.

3) If headings are underlined, please follow the same throughout the answer book.

4) Whenever we are writing working notes,  we need to intimate the Working Note nos in the main problems.

5) Final answer was calculated in the Working notes but we may fail to write below the actual problems, Kindly highlight the final answer.

6) Drawing proper lines and tables using rulers help to fetch good marks,though we do not get correct answer for the question. (Step marks)

7) Please avoid leaving any space in between the answer book for any question to answer the same during the later part of the examination because sometimes we may not be able complete the answers within time.

8) Descriptive questions can be presented point wise.

9) Questions having side headings can be presented in the flow chart format.

10) Question Numbers has to be written correctly.(PART,Q.nos.,Sub Q.Nos.)

11) Without fail, write the Additional sheet number and put the tick mark for the questions answered in the front page of the answer book.
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Next part : Common mistakes - Girls' perspective.. Will be shared tomorrow ...

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