Question

What can be the strategy to reduce negative marks in GATE?

Answer 1

To say the truth I shouldn't answer this. Because my statistic in my first GATE are as follows:

62 questions attempted. 53.6 marks. 

That's a high percentage of negatives. But had I attempted only those which I knew well, my score would have been around 40. So no regrets. 

Why I attempted 62/65? Because I was a final year student and not serious of GATE. I just solved them like doing technical round for placements and just left the questions which I did not even understand. 

In case of questions I did not know? If I understood the question then I took the best option even if I did not solve completely. This was risky as shown by my negatives. 

This was just for a practical scenario. Now the important question. "How to reduce negatives?"

1. Read the question fully. Human eye tend to skip some words and you should ensure no word is missed. 
2. Special care must be given for words like "NOT", "FALSE" etc which have negative meaning. Because human mind always think positively. 
3. See all options in choices even if you have got one option by solving. 
4. Do not blindly use any formula unless you are 100% sure of what you are doing. 
5. An almost same question might not have almost same answer but can easily give you negative and so MUST be avoided. 
6. An unknown question giving negative mark gives say -0.66. But a known question giving negative is -2.66. So, carelessness must be avoided. Use mock tests to ensure this applying the above techniques. 
7. Also while practicing use virtual calculator to ensure no mistakes are happening. 
8. Keep calm during exam. Even if you are doing slowly so be it. If the questions are tough you need to do less. Should never rush though questions. My friend had left more than 15 questions due to lack of time and still got rank 200. 
9. Practically speaking I have seen about 5 questions every GATE which must be avoided attempting. They are just waste of time as either require lot of time to solve or are ambiguous. Try them at end or just leave them or if you are ready to die, take a blind guess. 
10. For system subjects like CO, OS, CN even if you do not know the exact answer you can apply some knowledge, try out options etc. and might be able to get answer with some level of guessing. This is fine. But in subjects like Algorithm, TOC, Mathematics, Verbal Ability most expected answers are always wrong. Well, again if you are ready to die, you can avoid the most expected answer and take a blind guess from remaining.
11. A blind guess from me: This year the number of numerical questions will be more. So, negative marks will have less issue.

Comments

sir which questions do yo think we shouldn't attempt? which questions from past.......

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Those are marked as "difficult" tag here. If you are confident in the subject or have seen such a question before you can try them in first attempt. Otherwise it is better to leave them for end or even not attempt them. Also, some GATE questions are pretty long- but they may be very easy. Still to answer them we have to read the question carefully with clear mind and understand what exactly they mean- it might be tiring to do this for 3 hours.

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@aspl-dont attmp those que which u are not able to solve ....

Answer 2

To reduce negative marks:
1) Do them correctly and get positive marks.
2) Do them incorrectly but don't mark the answer!
3) Do focus on numerical answer type questions.
(but if you can't do objective questions, how do you expect to do these right?)

And practically speaking:  It is not, NOT AT ALL possible to not attempt a question while knowing something about it.
It's the inherent human greed and hope that will make you do that. Even the toppers do that. It's like Kiran bedi contesting the election even against Arvind Kejriwal. It's like any normal indian trying to stop oneself from speaking on a topic he/she doesn't know perfectly about. just like i am writing this answer! ;)
So, you will definitely do negative. Know the subjects well. to do them correctly. rather than the other way round.
:)

Comments

That greed can be used positively. Say if you know that a question is tough, you can avoid doing it and wasting time :P Or if you know that there is something wrong, you can mark the most appropriate answer assuming the most common scenario- mark will be given to all if the question is completely wrong, but sometimes some small errors might be ignored and marks not given to all (this is highly unlikely for 2016 as it has answer debate).

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how do you manage to give the best answer to every question. I thought i could win a 10 here atleast!
:D
 but found out this BIG one in the morning.

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Negatives are eating me these days,Thank you Sir for this

Answer 3

Follow everything , that is written by arjun sir..

but having SELF CONFIDENCE is one main key to reduce mistakes

read the concept-practice mock-gain confidence-high score in gate