5 HACKS to ACE MATH no matter what | Cracked IIT-JEE, CAT, XAT, SSC CGL, RBI GRADE B, UPSC CDS
A speaker who has cleared multiple competitive exams shares five essential strategies for excelling in mathematics: mastering fundamentals over shortcuts, consistent practice with NCERT and previous year papers, visualizing problems through diagrams, selective question-solving in exams, and having the courage to skip difficult questions rather than waste time.
Summary
The speaker opens by establishing credibility, having scored over 90% in the quantitative aptitude/mathematics section across multiple exams including IIT-JEE, CAT, SSC CGL, RBI Grade B, and UPSC CDS. The speaker emphasizes that mathematics has become integral to clearing competitive exams and presents five strategies for success.
The first strategy is clearing basics and fundamentals. The speaker argues that despite the prevalence of shortcuts and formula sheets in coaching classes, modern examiners have become sophisticated and create questions by combining multiple concepts. Without clear fundamentals, students apply wrong formulas and fall into examiner-designed traps. The example of a profit-loss problem demonstrates that understanding the core concept of profit and loss is more valuable than memorizing multiple formulas for different scenarios.
The second strategy is practice, which addresses the common concern about time management in exams. The speaker recommends solving NCERT textbooks from classes 8th, 9th, and 10th completely at least twice to build strong fundamentals. After this foundation, students should solve previous year question papers to understand the actual difficulty level and exam-specific patterns.
The third strategy is visualization—drawing diagrams and graphs to understand mathematical concepts. Using a trigonometry example about calculating tree height from a distance and angle, the speaker illustrates how visualizing the problem as a triangle makes it solvable even with varying parameters, whereas without visualization, students apply random formulas and complicate the problem.
The fourth strategy is selective question selection during exams. The speaker emphasizes that students need not solve all questions but should identify which questions they can solve confidently. This requires reading the entire question first, recalling similar problems from previous practice, and assessing capability before attempting. This approach saves time for other questions.
The fifth strategy is having the courage to quit—abandoning questions that consume excessive time (2-3 minutes) without yielding answers. The speaker acknowledges this is psychologically difficult but necessary. Students can mark and review such questions, but if they get stuck, abandoning them to preserve time is crucial. If time remains at the end, they can revisit with a fresh perspective.
The speaker concludes that following these five strategies—completing NCERT of classes 8-10, clearing fundamentals, practicing with previous year papers, selecting questions wisely, and having courage to skip—enables scoring over 90% in competitive exams. The speaker claims to have implemented these strategies personally with exponential results.
Key Insights
- Modern examiners deliberately combine multiple concepts in single questions and structure wrong-answer options to trap students who rely on formula memorization rather than fundamental understanding
- Solving NCERT textbooks of classes 8th, 9th, and 10th completely at least twice provides the practice foundation needed before attempting exam-specific previous year papers
- Visualization through drawing triangles and diagrams is so important that omitting it hampers students' problem-solving capabilities, especially in geometry and trigonometry
- In exam halls, students must avoid starting every question they encounter; instead they should assess if they've solved similar questions before and only attempt if confident of capability
- When a question consumes 2-3 minutes without yielding an answer, abandoning it preserves time for other questions, and revisiting with a fresh mind later is more effective than pushing through
Topics
Transcript
[0:00] Hello everyone. I have cleared many exams in my life. IIT JEE, CAT, JEE, SSC, CGL, RBI, Grade B, UPSC and one special thing in these has been that I have always scored more than 90% in the Mathematics i.e. Quantitative Aptitude section. This has helped me a lot in getting a good percentile and clearing these exams. Nowadays Mathematics has [0:30] become a very integral part of every exam. It is very important that you score well in Mathematics. Only then will you be able to clear today's cut off. I learned these five simple strategies that have always helped me perform better in mathematics. The first and most important is clear basics. No matter how many formulas…
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