Aptitude is one of the foundations of most modern competitive examinations. Once you cross the boundary of college, every competitive examination has an aptitude section. Be they examinations for admission to colleges, for government jobs or even for jobs in the private sector, there’s got to be a section of questions on aptitude.
GATE is no exception. Every year, the GATE features a section on aptitude. Questions in the aptitude section can be broke down into a few sub-sections which helps further strategize and come up with a way to deal with particular types of questions. These subsections include quantitative, logical, verbal and data interpretation. Landing a proper method to solve particular problems helps you solve even the toughest problems that the examiners can dream of. Finding ways to swiftly work out lofty calculations works for quantitative, whereas proper observation and quick thinking help get through the questions on data interpretation.
The practice is the key to success. Without practice, you’d feel stranded alone on an island without any way of communicating for help. That’s definitely not a nice feeling, especially when it leads to the pressure to perform. Without practice, you would find yourself having difficulty in dealing with problems where you otherwise shouldn’t any problem. Setting up a proper routine and practicing is the target, though working smart is almost always better than working hard. Practice as many problems as you can, and more importantly, cover as many types of problems as possible. Divide the routine between studying the technical and aptitude sections such that nothing gets left out.
While most examinations are a race against time, more often than not the time provided in the GATE examination is more than enough to cover almost all questions. You are not limited by time, so arriving at answers for questions on aptitude, even if they involve lengthy calculations, is definitely possible. However, it’s always wise to learn shortcuts for calculations – as many as possible. Time saved on aptitude is the time you can spend thinking on the technical section. Moreover, if you know the right shortcuts, you have a lesser chance to ponder over your answer than when you have manually calculated it.
Despite being common to so many examinations, it’s an area where students don’t pay much attention – often getting punished for their negligence. While the technical section deserves much more attention, being much more hectic and time-consuming to solve by nature, negligence can come down hard, often marking the difference when the rankings come out. The aptitude section for GATE is considerably easier as compared to other examinations, so acing it is considerably easier. Marks scored in aptitude often make up for marks lost in the technical section – so that’s definitely some motivation if you want to get a decent rank in GATE.
