5 Strategies I used to crack Competitive Exams | Cracked IIT JEE, CAT, XAT, SSC CGL, RBI GradeB, CDS

The speaker begins by establishing his credibility through multiple competitive exam victories and states that these five strategies would enable him to crack any competitive exam again. The first and most critical strategy is solving previous year papers from at least the last 10 years. The speaker uses a war analogy to explain why understanding the exam pattern (the 'opponent') is essential before beginning comprehensive studying. He warns against waiting to complete the entire syllabus before attempting previous year questions, as this creates a bottleneck near the exam date. The second strategy involves identifying personal strengths and weaknesses through solving previous year papers and taking mock tests. The speaker shares a personal example of his struggle with permutation and combinations, explaining how he chose to skip this weak area entirely and instead doubled down on his strengths like algebra and geometry. He applied this approach successfully across multiple exams without any negative impact on his scores. The third strategy addresses time management, particularly the importance of setting mental sectional timings even when exams don't have formal sectional divisions. The speaker emphasizes that spending more than 5 minutes on a single question is counterproductive, as it causes students to miss easier questions later. He recommends using the 'Save and Review' feature to mark difficult questions and revisit them with a fresh perspective after attempting other questions. The fourth strategy is maintaining confidence—not overconfidence that leads to underestimation and lack of preparation, but genuine self-belief in one's capability to pass the exam. The fifth and final strategy is maintaining perspective that one exam cannot define your entire life. Using a path analogy, the speaker explains that while some routes are more direct and time-efficient, alternative paths still lead to the same destination, just with slightly more time and effort required.