IIFT 2014 Topper Tips: Start with strongest section and maximize your scores, IIFT topper Sunny Pandey

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MBAUniverse.com News Desk |
November 12, 2014
MBAUniverse.com brings an exclusive opportunity for the IIFT 2014 aspirants to get the preparation tips, examination hall strategy
IIFT test takers must start with their stronger section and should spend less time on that keeping an eye on time

IIFT 2014 one of the most sought after entrance tests for admission to MBA (IB) batch 2015-17 in Delhi and Kolkata campuses of Indian Institute of Foreign Trade is barely 12 days away. Before that candidates will have to go through the CAT 2014 entrance admission and immediately after it, IIFT 2014 will be held on Nov 23, 2014. IIFT entrance will be a paper pencil mode 2 hours duration MCQ test.

IIFT entrance exam is considered to be one of the best entrance exams for MBA admission in the country. As the name suggests, the institute’s flagship programme is full time MBA(International Business). Next 12 days of preparation journey for IIFT entrance is going to be crucial as the preparation for CAT 2014 is running parallel to IIFT preparation. IIFT is the only B school that attracts so many candidates to its entrance examination for so few seats. The institute is a deemed University and therefore provides MBA instead of PGDM.

Admission in IIFT assures you a good career with a high placement in domestic as well as foreign companies. Candidates who secure admission in IIFT have to prepare a few different topics like General Knowledge, basics in English language, entire different section on logical Ability appears in IIFT entrance test, Reading comprehension despite based on small passages have more reasoning type of questions.

MBAUniverse.com brings an exclusive opportunity for the IIFT 2014 aspirants to get the preparation tips, examination hall strategy, key points to solve the questions and guidelines to ace the IIFT 2014 exam from Sunny Pandey, an IIFT 2013 topper. Sunny shares his experience and tips to the prospective IIFT entrance test takers on various facets of the exam like time management in examination hall, importance of sections, how to improve speed to solve more questions in less time and many more. All this will help the candidates to improve their score in getting shortlisted and getting through the final admission round.

Expected type of questions in IIFT 2014

Sunny, IIFT topper shares that the questions asked in IIFT entrance are pretty basic. On General Knowledge front you can buy a year-book published by Manorama and go through it. This should suffice. He also advises to keep an eye on current affairs especially from July to October 2014.

Importance of Work Ex

Answering to the query regarding the importance of work experience and academic back ground in final selection process at IIFT, Sunny categorically responds that these factors didn’t matter much for him. According to Sunny “I have an average academic profile and if you can handle the questions well during the PI round and tell them reasons for your under-performance, it will be fine and shouldn’t be a hindrance in your final selection.”

Besides, almost 25% of total seats go to freshers. So there is no such thing as ‘Freshers don’t stand a chance’

No pre-conceived notions

Sharing the strategy to ace the IIFT 2014 entrance test and how to answer maximum questions with accuracy, Sunny is of the view that the aspirant should not go with any pre-conceived notions. It will be better to refer to past papers. This will enable you to understand the test pattern and composition better and you will be able to answer maximum questions in the IIFT 2014 entrance test.

Exam room strategy

Sharing his testing room strategy Sunny tells his experience that first he attempted the sections which were his strongest suits. He went ahead with English, General Knowledge, Logical reasoning. Once he was done with them he tackled Quant and Data Interpretation.  

Each section in IIFT entrance exam is important hence weightage to all of them is to be given. There is cut-off for every section. So every section is to be attempted. The important thing however, is to focus more on your stronger sections and maximize your score. For example Quant carries 25 marks out of 100; hence one should score more in this section and devote more time.

Since it is not possible to attempt every question in the given time frame, the test taker should choose such questions which are easier and not time consuming. It’s no good comparing IIFT and CAT exams as both are different exams that need different skill set.

It is also not possible to decide how many attempts you would make in the exam room without looking at the test paper. In his view one should try to solve as many questions as possible with accuracy. Sectional cut-offs also exist in IIFT entrance test. It is imperative to focus on all the sections to score high percentile.

Managing the time in IIFT entrance

Since there is very less time for the exam, Sunny recommends that IIFT test takers must start with their stronger section and should spend less time on that keeping an eye on time. You should keep in mind to score high in every section to clear the sectional cut-off.

Sharing the guidelines and tips Sunny emphasizes that the test takers should be able to complete VA, LR, GK in 25-30 minutes each. This will save your time for lengthier sections like Quant and DI. Besides questions in Quant and DI carry 1 mark per question  so this factor is also to be considered.

In order to enhance speed in the testing room, the prospective IIFT test takers should take timed tests and practice calculation intensive sections like Data Interpretation and Quants more and more. To enrich the stock of vocabulary the advice is to go for Word Power made easy by Norman Lewis.

10 days preparation strategy

Last 10 days of preparation for IIFT entrance exam will no longer need any coaching or prep centre. Instead take 3-4 mocks before the actual IIFT exam. Practice speed tests. Focus where you get stuck and spend your time judiciously.

Reading comprehension is another crucial area. To improve and score more in this part read 2-3 editorials from good news papers daily. This will keep you synchronized with the kind of passages you get in the final exam. Try to identify the theme, main idea, title of the passage.

Sunny also suggests the IIFT aspirants to consider GK as very important along with other sections. His suggestion is not to look beyond the IIFT written test now and focus more on all its components. The components of final admission round can be taken care of after the written test.

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Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more tips on IIFT 2014