Hello Aspirants,

In my opinion, one of the biggest challenges that one faces during the preparation of any entrance examination is to decide whether to focus more on speed or accuracy and how to achieve an optimal balance of both.

Due to this many students are not able to perform to their caliber in the exam, so the question becomes how to get around this problem.

In Earlier GATE exams the balance was tilted more in the favor of speed but now due to the inclusion of Numerical Type Questions the balance is tilted back in the favor of accuracy. Let me explain how.

Mostly, Numerical Type Questions are not straightforward question, you have to do a lot of computation to get around those, so if your accuracy is good you need not look at that question twice but if not you may be worried and may have to check that question twice or thrice due to which you may lose time and end up attempting less than expected number of problems and results may be worse than expected.

So what should a student do during the preparation to avoid getting into this kind of situation is that during the initial stages of preparation you must focus more on Accuracy and less on speed, even if you attempt 10 to 15 questions in an hour but with good accuracy, that is more than enough. Speed is something that will build up gradually as you will come across the similar type of questions so you will get used to club 2-3 steps in a single step to save time.

So my advice to all GATE aspirants will be not to get over-stressed if you are attempting less number of questions in a given time at present as you will gain speed eventually but accuracy is not something that you can attain eventually so focus more on accuracy as that will also boost your self-confidence.

Happy Preparations!