Students’ Speak: Things you should do in last 24 hours to SNAP exam

By: Rishabh Kalra

With SNAP less than 24 hours away, another opportunity is about to present itself for you to fulfill your MBA aspirations. It doesn’t matter the way you performed in CAT as SNAP offers you a fresh start. So, have a positive mindset before you start anything.

First, don't take too much stress. Just stay calm and composed and revisit the mocks you have done. Look at the questions you did not attempt or marked incorrectly. Analyse what went wrong and if you are familiar with your mistake, you would be extra careful during the exam to avoid that mistake. Do go through word roots once more. This would be helpful in vocabulary questions.

Second, everyone would give you different strategies for what you need to do during the exam. Follow the strategy which worked for you in mocks but do keep the following things in mind:

• Time constraint: Unlike CAT, SNAP doesn’t have a sectional time limit or a specific order for sections. So, it is really important to decide the attempt order in accordance with your strengths. What I did was that I started with Reading Comprehension and Verbal Ability section and then moved to Logical Reasoning section. In the end, I attempted Quantitative Aptitude section as that was my strength. We also had a section of General Knowledge but with recent modification in the paper pattern that isn’t relevant.
• Keep an eye on the watch: Make sure you have a defined time for every section and you don’t spend too much time on any of the sections. Now as far as individual sections are concerned, the approach is quite similar to CAT just the questions are a little bit easier but then they are more in number. Make sure you go through all the questions.
• Reading Comprehension section: The approach I used in this section was elimination. Always look to find a reason for rejecting an option. The one that remains is the correct answer. And first, skim through the passage roughly and then look at the question. Later I went back to the passage to study that paragraph more closely if required.
• Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning section: For this, make sure you give enough time to all the sets. Avoid attempting questions which are too calculation intensive and time-consuming. For the QA section, my approach was traversal. I would go to a question, attempt it if it was easy or leave it and go to next. Then after traversing through all questions, I would come back to unattended questions. Not only it made sure, I went through all questions, but also approaching the new question with a fresh state of mind always helps. And in many cases, formulas might make life difficult. So, always be open to hit and trial. During my exam, there was a question that became a very difficult quadratic equation using formula but hit and trial made me solve it in 40-50 seconds. 
• Stay calm: Last, but not the least don't get disheartened if you aren't able to solve the first few questions. Take the exam like a cricket match. Every question is a different ball. If one ball is a Yorker, next is a bouncer it is okay. You just need to wait for that half volley which you can hit out of the park. Stay calm and composed and don't lose focus. 

At the end of the day, just remember you will get the perfect college which will take your career on the right track. Good luck.

About the Author:

Rishabh Kalra has completed PGDM with marketing as major and analytics as a minor from Great Lakes Institute of Management. At present, he is working with HDFC Life in the field of Business Intelligence.