An Outline and Section-wise cut-off.

The exam is for 3 hours (180 minutes) and has two parts.

Part I ; Objective type multiple choice questions. It's for 2.5 hours. (150 minutes, 150 questions, 150 marks)
IT'S PURELY COMPUTER BASED. ( so do tons and tons of Online mocks.)

Part II : Essay writing for 30 minutes. This one's NOT on the computer. An answer sheet will be given to you. I'll explain this part at the end.

Oh, and important tip, There is NO negative marking. (Guess away!)

The paper is fully and solely in English. The mark cut-off is as shown below :

And the Essay. AS for the essay, this is all the brochure says, "Topics for the essay writing in Part-2 will be based on current affairs and general knowledge." As for marks, go file an RTI.

Next up, we'll give you a small heads-up on each subject. Detailed posts detailing each subject will be out soon :

English : 

This is where you need to play safe, it will appear easy if you are good at English in school, but without practice it will drain you of all your time. It will have Reading Comprehensions, Vocab and Grammar. We'll deal with question trends and prep and exam taking strategy in a later post.

Analytical Ability / Logical Reasoning : 

Anyone who has written NTSE or those Olympiads from school would know what this is. If you don't; check out some past papers (link at the bottom). It looks like quite a challenge. But trust me, with some practice and a lot of Mocks, even delusional hamsters can master it.

Quantitative Ability / Math :

Two myths :
a) Science students need not be Zen masters at this. (trust me, I was ISC bio-math. Lol). But there is no saying they can't. Practice.
b) Yes, all you need is 10th standard Maths, as in all you do is basically, add,divide, multiply and subtract, but you need to be smart, and the questions will be trickier than Wile E. Coyote.

Again, check out past papers and do mocks unto infinity and beyond. And wait up for the post.

General Studies :

Don't freak out. Yes, I know it's an even fifty, and if you haven't done Economics and/or Ecology, still chill, so didn't I, and most of us. In fact we have an introductory course to Economics in our second semester. Relax. Just brush through the essentials, and a detailed 4 posts dedicated to each section is coming up soon. Also, Current Affairs is not clearly mentioned, but make no mistake, IT IS YOUR ABSOLUTE LIFE-SAVER. Master your Current Affairs. Trust me.

Essay :

Many ask me how important this is, and many others spend wayyy too much time of their prep on this section. So, once again, myth-busting time :

a) You don't have to be Shakespeare or Blyton or Nietzshe or Gokul (lol) for this; as in, no flowery language is expected. Yes, the paper has a vocab section doesn't mean you need to spew all of your new found vocabulary here. But if that's your style, by all means, do it.

b) Also this is not such a big deal. It becomes decisive only if you tied with someone. Then, the person who got more marks for the essay makes the cut.

More tips on the same will follow. Stay tuned.


Footnote :

DO MOCKS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOTHING helps more than mocks do. And don't get the idea that you haven't learned enough for mocks. You can never learn everything and get back to mocks, simply cuz you can't learn everything, no one can. Make mocks part of your study. It'll help.

Click here for previous papers : http://hsee.iitm.ac.in/past_qp.html
For the syllabus : http://hsee.iitm.ac.in/syllabus.html