What's your forte?

Tough nut

No competitive exam is complete without a slot that tests and teases one’s aptitude which is just as important as the other sections of the paper.

This has compelled most of the students to hone their aptitude skills and they don’t mind spending that extra time and money in acquiring these skills.

Aptitude tests help measure one’s intelligence, in addition to one’s ability to reason and solve complicated problems in any situation.

It literally nags one’s logical thinking. The aptitude test is put together rather scientifically. Every question is worked out after much thought and reason.  

Metrolife spoke to a few students and asked them how they go about preparing for the aptitude test.  Sona Indurkar, a final year student of Commerce at PES College says that those who have not studied maths in PUC find aptitude tests, especially problems related to maths, difficult to solve.

“Commerce students usually take bank exams, MBA entrance, MAT, CA, CS, CWA exam... all of which have questions related to aptitude. We work on the many practice books available in the market. This helps improve our skills. But to solve quantitative aptitude tests like permutations and combinations, ratio, probability, proportions, matrix, one needs guidance from experts.

There are many private institutions which train students in this regard. I had written CPT (Common Proficiency Test) and could easily get through the interviews during campus recruitment. But a couple of my friends, could not sail through because they found the aptitude slot tough,” says Sona.

Karthik Bhat, a professional observes, “Before preparing for any exam or interview, one should be clear about the pattern of the questions that is likely to appear. When it comes to interviews, each company has its own style. So Internet forums, dedicated to aptitude, may not come handy. I must add that the Internet has helped me improve my skills.”

Girish Bhat, an employee with Indian Railways points out that those with good aptitude can easily climb up the ladder.

“In big organisations when you conduct an exam for promotion, a large number of employees appear for it. It is very difficult to set a common syllabus for them because different people come from different disciplines. Hence, it is important to brush up your aptitude skills.”

Dr M N Chandrashekaraiah, placement director at BNMIT says, “Today, industries are concerned about aptitude and attitude rather than the skill of the prospective employee.

In almost all exams, most of the questions are based on aptitude and most of the students find it hard to crack them because the educational institutions don’t train the students in aptitude right from the beginning but the private training centres have managed to make some fast money.”