DSE - Few days before entrance exam - Tips!

By - Sneha
Sneha graduated from SRCC - Batch of 2013. She got Rank - 1 in DSE entrance last year.

Dear friends,

I would like to share my experience of The Delhi School of Economics entrance exam preparation with you all. Hope this will help you to prepare more strategically for the exam given the fact that not much time is left now..

The first thing that I did once my college exams got over was to start with the DSE past year papers and I did almost all the MCQ questions of the past years irrespective of how old they were and whatever pattern the old papers had.  The key to learning at this point was to do the papers in a time frame of 3 hours, verify the answers and discuss the doubts with friends. A lot of you might find it exhaustive to do all the papers in a go, as even I did. But then some of my friend would call me with a doubt say in ques 6,10,23 of some past year paper and I'll think.. Why not do the entire paper and discuss my doubts with her.

This way I ended up doing almost all the papers by the exam day. This is also where a common concern of most students 'what is the syllabus?' gets answered. You also know by the end of it that what are the topics you are weak at and need to revise, or what are the important topics to redo from your undergraduate syllabus.
For those super fast students who have already done the past years (and I was surely not one of them) very good! .Now help your friends do theirs by solving their doubts. This will help you revise as practicing questions till the final day is very very important to keep you fast and accurate.

While doing this practice and more importantly when giving the final exam, one thing that happens with EVERYONE is that you get stuck on a series of questions. That is you are either not sure with the answers or just not able to do a lot of questions one after the other. This is where lies the real test that you don't panic and move on calmly. Even I got stuck on some questions in the exam. My strategy was to open some other page and do a fresh set of questions. Gradually I gained momentum and confidence, and lo! even the questions I was stuck on seemed easy now. So it's a test of how you stay calm when the clock is ticking and making you nervous. I always tried to tell myself that this is another practice test that I have to do well.

Another important tip is to keep marking the answers on the OMR sheet either after each question or after a set of 5-10 questions. This is one mistake I observed that many people did and lost marks later. They left the final marking for the end and then never got the time to mark all the answers even though they had attempted a lot of questions correctly.

Please be confident in whatever you mark and by the time you sit for the exam, you'll have a fair idea of your own accuracy level. So attempt accordingly. Try multiple ways to answer the same question if possible, this will ensure that the answers are correct. What matters in the end is the  number of CORRECTLY answered questions, not the number of attempted questions.

One last thing that I am sure a lot of people want to know.. That what is the cutoff! To all those, even though it's natural to have such questions but to be honest this question has no answer.. Your aim should be to give your best irrespective of what the cutoff is. The entire procedure is relative and selective studying is not what I would suggest. For those who have dearth of time,focus on your strengths and improve upon your weaknesses to the most. You never know how well your peers performs.

Hope I have answered most of your questions!
All the very best. Do well and do sleep well on the night just before the exam. Your presence of mind and mental peace is very important in those three hours. Be very confident and tell yourself that I know it all ! I will do it best.


With best wishes,
Sneha.