In our exclusive interview series for IIFT preparation strategies, we have R Manish, who has a fairly high score, and focused on giving it his best shot through self-discipline while working alongside, leading to a good attempt at the exam. A snapshot of his profile and scores: Educational Background: B.Sc. Advanced Zoology and Biotechnology || Work Experience: 3 years at Amazon as a Data Associate || IIFT: Overall- 99.65%ile || IIFT Score - 128. To know more about his journey, keep reading!
The UPL’IIFT’ Series- by the Media Committee, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, in collaboration with InsideIIM is an initiative to help aspirants understand and prepare for the IIFT Entrance Exam with strategies adopted by some of the top performers from the college.
When did you start your preparation for the IIFT exam and can you walk us through your preparation strategy?
I started my preparation alongside working. While this was my first attempt at the IIFT exam, I had been preparing for MBA entrance exams for 4 years.
I had tried self-coaching, but that was ultimately unfruitful. Coaching, especially during the phase of giving mock exams, helped me understand the approach needed to crack the exam, which is the most difficult and the most crucial part of preparation according to me.
Outside of coaching, I maintained self-discipline and continued to work diligently on the areas I felt I was weakest at, rather than focusing on scoring high on mocks. I knew that if I put the work in it would pay off during the actual exam, and it did.
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What were the resources that you went through while preparing for your Interview?
I can break this down by section as I took the time to tailor my approach to what worked for each separate section. For VARC, I read articles from the Wall Street Journal, Aeon, The Guardian and The Hindu. I would say that this was my strongest section both before and after my preparation.
For LRDI, I began with solving the books by Arun Sharma but switched tracks when that didn’t work. I continued to try logical puzzles and so on, but eventually struck gold when I solved previous year’s questions. It was then that I understood the approach to problem-solving that was required to crack this section.
The quant section was the toughest for me, as it was one of my weakest areas. I studied all the topics involved, learned about the basics and regularly practiced easy questions to understand their pattern and the method of solving them.
Lastly, I used the mocks from several reputed institutions such as CrackU, IMS, and Career Launcher (CL).
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Elaborate on your approach while giving mocks. How do you think the mock tests helped you during your preparation?
Mocks serve several purposes, they are handled differently by different people. For me, it was more important to put in the work and see what I was able to solve rather than score well on the mocks. 15-20 premium mocks are plenty to prepare if you have covered everything else, but I ended up completing over 100 mocks because I felt that I was further behind.
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Do you have any final tips for aspirants?
At the end of the day, it is important to relax and understand that we have been preparing for these exams for a long time - taking the exam on exam day is not unlike any other attempt that we have made during the mocks or sectional mocks or just solving questions - all you have to do is to continue to trust yourself and keep powering through.
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