MBA entrance tests

Traps at MBA entrance tests:

Learn how to dodge them

The last time, I focused on few of the commonly faced dilemmas at the various B-School entrance tests. A management entrance test is designed so as to bring out the ability of an aspirant to perform under immense pressure. To subject the students to a bit of stress so as to observe how good they are at handling it, is one of the main objectives of any entrance test. In order to ensure this, the test designers set a few traps in the papers which, an under-prepared aspirant (or sometimes even a well prepared aspirant) can fall into. I will elaborate on a few of those traps here:

Well begun is half done

Visualise this. You have started your test. The first question is a scorcher. You cannot do anything but just scribble the same bit of information which is given. After fighting it out for 2-3 minutes you finally give up. Question two, the same thing again. About 10 minutes into the test and you aren't going anywhere.

You might have been through this a number of times. One of the commonest traps set in any paper. The first DI set, the first RC passage, the first few Quant questions are sometimes, the most difficult compared to the rest of the paper. Reasons are two:

1. It makes you panic as it eats into your time and,
2. It somehow makes you believe that the paper is indeed difficult thus making you score a bit less than what you would.

The best thing would be to get rid of such questions as soon as possible and go to the next one. It is always a great feeling to nail that first question which helps soothing your nerves to a large extent.

The converse of this is also true many a time. The final few questions will be the easiest ones. It is just to make sure that a 'prepared' aspirant goes through all of them and scores to his best ability without getting stuck anywhere.

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Plenty of information. Pretty much useless. You read and read and read some more. End of the day, a simple question awaits. You rue wasting so much of your precious time. The motive is the same old time wasting tactic.

People who took the FMS test last year might recollect the huge RC that was offered. People who have the habit of reading the entire thing first and then answering the questions would have ended up wasting a lot of time. Few questions in DI, have much more info than what is required to solve the questions. An RC might seem to be highly philosophical but could have some sitters for questions. Just looking at the main question and leaving the sub-questions after being disappointed, is one of the frequently used traps.

To get through, one can take a look at the questions first so as to know which part of the information to focus on and then go about reading/skimming through the data and go slow at the relevant portions.

Not to call a spade a spade

Now this has a few variations. They will say that there is a rectangle or a rhombus or a parallelogram. Then there will be a generalised question with some options in variables. One can always assume it to be a square and do it quickly. Similarly with triangles. One can assume it to be an equilateral triangle and get over with it. Similarly with the questions where a series is given, if one cannot solve it completely, one can always put in a few values which satisfy the conditions and check with the options if there is some pattern.