In a month or two it would be the beginning of mocks season for all MBA 15-16 aspirants. What you learn is what you will score but what you gain in terms of percentile to reach from a point A to a higher ground B would majorly depend on how you analyze mocks and work to improve through it. Hence today I write or rather illustrate how to go about analyzing your mocks..
Principle of Mocks
First come first, you need to understand the principle of mocks. Mocks are there to provide you a wide array of expected pattern and variety in terms of content and structure. The sole purpose is to ready you for anything that might be thrown at you on D-day. So, don't let any extremes in terms of scores affect you. Maintaining consistency and/or improving should be your sole purpose of taking mocks.
Which mocks to take?
It is advisable you opt for two different test series but if you do not wish to for some reason you should opt for one that you follow religiously and get previous years from your friends or form a sharing mechanism within your peer groups. MBA is going to be most of all about peer learning and developing networks,so you might as well step up on that from now only.
Now that you understand the prerequisites of the mock season ahead of you, let's try and understand how you go about taking them and analyzing them for improvement.
Taking the mocks powerplay at the right time
It is very important to pace your development during this journey to cracking the MBA exams(Maybe you can get some tips from MS Dhoni for that). There is a time to consolidate,a time to powerplay, and there is a time to peak and finish it off in style.
You should ideally make a schedule or work intuitively but nevertheless plan to conclude your major learning of concepts by June/July. You will never feel ready enough until you start taking mocks. Understand that your syllabus is not over until you take mocks and take a few more learnings out of it.
Analyzing and improvement strategy
If you have read other articles for it online, you might have heard that there is no one common strategy. Well, I will just say there is one common goal and that is improving our percentiles. I have developed a simple template for you all which you can simply download and print multiple copies for each mock and then combine results at some stages.
What will be these stages?
Stage 1 : In any of the mock test series, initially mocks are spaced out and happen at longer intervals. You take a period of about 1.5-2 months from start,at the end of which you combine your results. You will be in August mid to end by this time. You need to put in 2 weeks at this moment to sort out any major issues for you conceptually or strategically.
Stage 2 : Mocks will start to occur frequently and you need to start using your powerplay during this period. With your set strategy and concepts plus continuous analysis improve and consolidate your position in this phase. Don't let the low scores/fall of wickets stop you, keep building partnerships/analysis and you will reach a good score eventually.
Stage 3 : Close to the exams, mocks shall still continue happening ever more frequently now. It's my personal view that 15-20 days before exam you need to pick your mocks at the right intervals for you. Take out your consolidated notes at this time,analysis of mocks and just fine tune the little things. Whenever you try focusing on bigger unknown domains, you end up faltering on the little things done easily. So revise the basics, take a small topic test for some topic you do not feel comfortable with. It will pop up some small areas you don't remember, just revisit them briefly and get it done with.
Being consistent with your scores/percentiles at this stage would be a positive influence, but it is no sure indicator for anyone having or not having them. So just stick to your plan and be confident in your preparation.
Maybe bookmark this post's link to revisit when you are losing focus or confidence and don't worry as sometimes the pitches are dicey and you will need to persevere with your preparation but you will succeed one way or the other.
Download the template from the following link and take out copies later whenever you need them :
Click this link to download the Mock analysis sheet
or you could use the details presented by institutes and analyze them on the parameters presented in the mock analysis sheet in the link.
Cheers!
AS
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