(Photo credit: Stevie Gill, flickr.com)
A day to go for the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), (New Delhi and Kolkata) entrance test 2012. On Sunday, November 25, 2012, the exam will be held at 51 centres in nearly 20 cities.
Known as an unpredictable exam, the IIFT test typically contains four sections: quantitative ability, data interpretation, verbal ability and general knowledge. Over the past few years, the verbal ability section has been further divided into reading comprehension questions and English usage and vocabulary based questions.
Below is what some of IIFT top scorers of 2011 did right.
Nitish Gupta (Cumulative score: 60.67)
Last day should be spent on a quick revision of formulas or some topics that you are less confident in. The later part of the day should definitely be spent taking a break. The best preparation for the GK section is to read newspapers daily, a habit which would definitely help you for the interviews as well. As a last minute preparation, one can find sample questions and GK material on the internet or provided by your MBA coaching centres.
During the exam, retain your focus for the whole duration. Maintain a good speed and attempt questions in all sections. There are many easy questions. Be sure to crack all questions from your strength areas.
Shailesh Kumar Nirala (Cumulative score: 60)
Speed is the key. Target quant and LR section. One good set in DI along with few easy questions in DI would do. Do not spend too much time on RCs. GK would be something one cannot predict. If you know mark your answer, if you do not simply leave that question in 5 secs.
The day before the exam, solve the IIFT-mock paper if you have any, especially the one which was your best. This would act as a confidence booster.
Anuj Agrawal (Cumulative score: 57.33)
Rohan Raghavan (Cumulative score: 56)
IIFT doesn’t divulge information regarding sectional cut-offs before the exam and hence this is something the candidate must ascertain when he/she receives the question paper. If there are sectional cut-offs, ensure you attempt questions from each section with a reasonable level of accuracy. Some sections like GK will generally have a lower cut off score.
Exercise caution with quant and verbal as the cut-offs for these two would be slightly on the high side and you dont want an overall good score to go to waste because you didnt clear a particular section. If there are no sectionals, go after the sections you are strong in. Also, not all questions carry the same marks and this must also be taken into account. Answering many low weightage questions would not be as effective as answering a lesser number of higher weighted questions.
The day before the exam should be spent going over elementary formulae which you feel would help you solve questions faster. Dont attempt any mocks as the score you get in it might either damage your confidence or make you overconfident.
Manish Talwar (Cumulative score: 53.5)
If I look at seperate sections, Data Interpretation is usually calculation intensive. But there will always be 2-3 easier sets thrown in among some very tough (time consuming) ones.The trick is to identify and correctly attempt those questions. In Verbal Ability, dont think too much, go with your instincts.This section is way easier than the VA section of CAT. Logical Reasoning was the score maximising section of last year.It had basic arrangement problems which could be very easily attempted. RC are very factual. So, if you have a good reading speed, you should not miss out on this section.
Suhel Yadav (Cumulative score: 53)
IIFT in comparison to other papers like CAT, XAT is simpler in terms of difficulty. This paper checks out your ability to manage time, ability to take the right decisions (choose the easy questions) with insufficient information under a situation of constrains (insufficient time) with penalty for incorrect decisions and achieve the goals without being fully aware of the rules. So the strategy which I followed was, I skipped all the tough questions.
As IIFT does not prescribe any sectional time limit and expects the students to not only allocate appropriate time to each section but also ensure that this time allocation is implemented. I would advise students to first go through full paper in the starting in a minute or so and then go ahead accordingly, just skip hard questions, it would be simply waste of time attempting them.
The main IIFT entrance test thread: General discussion with current IIFT students about strategy, pattern of the paper and cracking the test.