We have all seen the famous quiz show – ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ – also referred to as the KBC. The show is a wonderful show of how people behave in competitive entrance exams that have a multiple-choice question (MCQ) format. When people are stuck on a question, they may:
choose not to answer the question and opt out,
make a wild guess,
use what they know about the given options to check if they go with the question or not, or
employ a lifeline (which include audience poll, 50:50, and flip-a-question).
Let’s see how these options work out for BITSAT:
Leave the question unanswered: There is negative marking in BITSAT entrance exam 2018. You get 3 marks for a correct answer and ‘-1’ for an incorrect answer. If you don’t know the answer at all, it might be sensible to leave it un-attempted. At least, it will not be able to hurt you already-standing score.
Make a wild guess: Most dangerous of all exam strategies or non-strategies, this is a perfectly ‘no-no’ for any engineering entrance exam in India. As mentioned above, BITSAT has negative marking. Wild guesses may just bring down your score.
Matching given options with questions: You may not know a correct answer to the question but you may know something about the options. You just have to understand what the question is asking for and whether the given option may be the correct answer.
In each case, you will find that at least one or two options are absolutely silly. You can eliminate them. That brings us to our last choice:
Employing a lifeline: You, of course, are not allowed ‘Audience Poll’ in a competitive exam. Consulting other people may result in you being thrown out of the examination hall. You cannot ‘Flip-the-question’ too. You have to answer the questions printed on your question paper – whether you like them or not. But you can certainly create 50:50 lifeline for each question in the paper – by using ‘elimination strategy’. Just eliminate two choices and your probability of picking up the correct answer instantly goes up from 25% to 50%!
Elimination strategy means cancelling out choices that do not ‘fit’ with the question. Matching given options with questions (as mentioned in the third point above) is an elimination strategy too.
Elimination strategy in BITSAT not only helps you arrive at correct answers for questions you are not sure about but also helps you in saving time for difficult questions that may take a lot of time to solve.
In Mathematics and Physics numericals, speed matters. Elimination method is the best tool to reduce time you take to solve a tricky question.
askIITians experts offer you a few smart elimination strategies for BITSAT:
First look at the Units: Read the question carefully to find the entity that has been asked about. If you are calculating ‘force’, the correct option has to carry unit of the force like ‘N’ for Newton or ‘kgm/s2’. Eliminate the options with incorrect units. If all the options carry correct units, then there are high chances that unit mentioned in two or three options is the correct one. It will help you eliminate at least one option quickly. For example, in a question where you have to calculate temperature, there is one option with the unit oF and three with unit oC, then, there are high chances that the correct option will have oC as unit.
Do Dimensional Analyses: In problems with weird orientation, you can often arrive at the correct answer quickly just by doing dimensional analysis. It works especially well for Mechanics and Electromagnetics in Physics.
Back to the Basics: Once you have tried all the advanced formulae you remember, turn back to your fundamentals for the clues. This is especially useful in Chemistry. Ponder about the properties of the element, the nature of electrons and the basics you remember and see if your options fit within the parameters of the question.
Employ these strategies in past year BITSAT question papers and see how many scores you have netted just because of them. It will boost your confidence and help you root out strategies that don’t work for you.