Competitive Exams | MyFavTutor

The COVID-19 pandemic has majorly impacted how students educate themselves and keep up with their classes. India was not much acquainted with classrooms turning into laptop screens and finding an online tutor for exam preparations. However, with every change, we develop coping mechanisms and comply with what the need of the hour is. In this case, it is providing quality education for children while they are stuck at home and not attending school in person.

When does your child need a tutor?

There can be different reasons why a child needs tutoring. The primary reason is usually that every child cannot master each subject by themselves.

Moreover, since schools have turned online, there is a hindrance in the education format. Children were accustomed to in person learning, where they had better chances of grasping their classes.

Online tutoring, however, gives your child an opportunity to get individual attention from a tutor, unlike online schooling. Thus, the chances of interaction, doubt-clearing, and understanding become smoother.

Here are some reasons why parents must look for online tuition for children:

Your child needs to be re-taught subjects due to their lack of understanding when taught during online school classes
Your child has a learning disability and needs a tutor to teach at the pace the student can grasp
Not being able to understand a particular subject and requires constant supervision
Desire to master a subject by obtaining assistance from a qualified tutor
The student has social, medical, behavioural or emotional challenges
The student is subject to family problems that hinder the process of learning

An online tutor can give your child personalized attention and improve knowledge of a particular subject. It will make your child more confident and get better grades.

Factors to choose an excellent online tutor for your child

If you are a parent looking for a tutor for your child, there are some determinants you would consider. The following factors will give you an idea and help you find a tutor online:

Experience and Qualifications

One of the inevitable determinations is looking through an online tutor’s profile. The qualification and experience the tutor has will directly reflect on the child’s scope of learning.

Parents must check the background of the tutor in terms of education and career qualification. Find out which school and university they attended and what degree they possess to be a tutor.

Thoroughly look through the tutor’s profile to evaluate the expertise and understand the level of Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) they hold.

While qualification is not the only aspect, it is crucial to understand if the child will benefit as expected. Thus, along with qualification, other following elements must also be aligned.

Approachability

When looking for a tutor for exam preparations, you will primarily focus on subjects your child has difficulty with. So, the foremost thing to consider is understanding how approachable a tutor is.

Children are often fearful of the subject that they are not good at. So, if they learn from someone they cannot freely communicate with, there will be a mental block.

A tutor must be skilled, but the individual is expected to be interactive and approachable. If parents choose someone strict and rigid, it might be difficult for the child to learn well and master the subject.

A private tutor must ease the fear the child has and concentrate on growing the student’s interest. Such tutors make the process of learning smooth and add value to the child’s life.

Pre-assessment and post-assessment strategies

Every parent needs to know the format a tutor will follow to teach their child. So, it would help if you asked questions regarding the pre and post assessment strategies the teacher will take to ensure optimum learning.

To ensure your child succeeds during tutoring sessions, tutors must indulge in taking online mock tests, and parents must know how those help. Ask them how they will evaluate progress, which exhibits the child’s improvement and the tutor’s teaching progress.

Know when the tutor would take an assessment and how would the student be graded. Know what those grades will determine and how effective they will be for his main examinations.

Cancellation policies

Once you select a tutor, you must ask about events that could hinder the child’s learning sessions. For example, the tutor may fall sick or have an inevitable engagement on a particular day.

Ask about the cancellation policy of classes in advance to know what to expect from the tutor’s end. Will the tutor inform you at least 24 hours before cancellation or 48? How will the tutor make up for the class later? If not, then how will it affect the payment policy.

Note that there might be a cancellation on your end as well. Your child can also fall sick or have an important event to attend. In such cases, would the tutor reschedule without charging extra? Would the tutor reschedule at all, or does your child miss the class?

Being upfront about such questions can help you know how to chalk out your child’s schedule. Of course, emergencies like hospitalization can be treated differently and discussed later. But it is crucial to have clarity about such circumstances in advance.

Consider a tutoring agency

A tutoring agency will allow you to choose from a pool of skilled individuals who can teach your child. Such agencies work with plenty of expert tutors and ensure giving students premium quality service.

Tutoring agencies go through a detailed background check and eliminate your worries about doing the same. You will be sure that the profile presented by the agency is accurate, and you can rely on them.

Moreover, if there are any grievances, you can always take it up with the agency. In this case, both the tutor and the student’s family assure the quality of education provided and timely payments sent and received.

Since an online tutoring platform will have multiple options, you can find the perfect fit for your child. It offers assurance, reliability, quality, and consistency that might not work when choosing an individual tutor.

Search for online tutoring portals

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, plenty of organizations started creating online platforms for tutoring. To receive quality education verified by an expert agency, you can look for such portals and get a qualified tutor for your child.

MyFavTutor is one such platform that welcomes students to find the tutor who turns out to be their favourite! This is only possible because parents can filter out and shortlist the perfect online tutor that suits the child’s educational requirements.

Cracking a competitive exam is a rigorous process. It requires a lot of planning and strategizing. Every year, millions of students sit for a large number of entrance exams, but the success rate is somewhat around 1%. What do this 1 % of students do which the others fail to manage? This blog will give you some interesting tips on the ways you could crack a competitive exam.

Follow a Time-Table

Preparing for a competitive exam requires a planned approach. For that, you must develop a time table and follow it religiously.

Take your time and put in the effort, while preparing this routine because you will have to follow it for a long time. That’s because competitive exam preparation takes a minimum of 6 months to 2 years and often, longer.

You must be mentally prepared to study along with this time-table, changing it in between will hamper your preparation.

Your time-table should consist of a clear time allocation for controlled study, mock tests, doubt clearing sessions, priority chapters, and breaks in between as well.

Most students do make a routine but end up not following it. Haphazard ways of learning will not bring you success. To be in the top 1%, you have to go by this time-table.

Take Practice Tests Seriously

Practice tests are the most important thing before any exam. There are several apps and websites that conduct these tests. Practice tests consist of chapter-wise tests, weekly tests, objective and subjective question tests, and a full syllabus test.

Once you take these tests, you can instantly know your number, percentile, rank, strong and weak areas and your average performance as compared to others. These indicators will give you an idea as to where you stand in the competition.

Based on this feedback, you will have to act accordingly. Many students make the mistake of waiting for their syllabus to be over and then start practicing with a full mock test. Don’t fall into this trap.

Finish every chapter and sit for a test. Sit for weekly and monthly tests as well. This is because you should know your potential from day one. Take these practice tests seriously.

If you are ranking in the top 5-10%, know that cracking the competitive exam will not be a big deal.

Get An Idea from Past Question Papers

Past questions papers, as we all know, give us an idea of the question formats and crucial chapters to study. Today, getting hold of the last 3-4 years of question papers is easy. It is available on the internet. Just download the pdf files and study them carefully.

Solve it yourself and get it corrected by your tutor. See how much you can score. But don’t start celebrating if you are doing very well, because question formats often get changed some months before the exam. The markings vary and the time allocation also changes.

While going through the questions, find out the chapters that can get you easy marks. Also, don’t leave complex problems. Start solving them as well.

Slowly you will find that your grip on the subjects is increasing and you go into the examination hall, fully prepared to face the questions and solve it faster.

Know The Syllabus, Patterns, and Weightage

Competitive exams have become very tricky of late. The syllabus keeps on changing every year. As a student, you must be aware of every single minor change, that is being announced by the authorities.

Examination CAT and IIT-JEE keep on modifying their pattern, weightage and syllabus quite frequently. Students who are not in touch with the latest updates will be shocked during the examinations.

Arrange your routine and examination strategy based on these three parameters.

When you are creating your time-table, make a provision for a systematic revision every month. This is to make sure that if there is a change in pattern and syllabus, you have also included those into your routine.

Keep Yourself Updated on Current Events

Read newspapers daily. News apps, social media, websites all are fine, but make sure to take a reputed English newspaper and read it in your free time.

The reason why Newspapers are essential is that unlike social media, they have genuine, verified news. It will boost your current affairs.

News on business, sports, tech, politics, health, environment and politics are very important for your knowledge building. In a competitive examination, you will have questions on recent appointments, awards, acquisitions, defense deals, and many more.

Keep a notebook and write down ten important news of the day. Follow as many news channels you can, bookmark a reliable news outlet on your screen, and keep reading it every day.

Revise

Revisions are very important while preparing for competitive examinations. It needs to be done every 2-3 days. If you are studying a chapter on Monday, try answering some questions on Thursday, to test whether you can remember and apply the concepts correctly.

As you keep on completing more chapters, the time given for revision should proportionately increase. When you are done with half the syllabus, divide your time-table into a 50-50 format where you give half of the time to study and the other half in revisions.

Solve chapter wise questions, clarify your doubts and when you are done with all these, start practicing harder questions. It will tax your brain more, but preparing one level up is an advantage for you during the examination.

Sleep Well and Relax

Remember, nobody will kill you if you cannot crack a competitive exam. Nor will your family disown you. So, prepare hard to achieve your dreams, but give your body adequate rest.

Eat and sleep well, listen to music, go out with your friends, talk to your partner, plan a family outing, exercise and play..do whatever you like, and stay mentally fit.

Make sure to have at least 6 hours of sleep every day. Have a protein-rich diet, go to the gym if you want to; in short, if you don’t look after your health, then you will crumble after a point.

These examinations do open the doors of your dream institutions, but there are always thousands of other options waiting for you. Prepare, but don’t overstretch yourself.

If you are a student looking to get ready for competitive examinations shortly, then MyFavTutor can be of great help. The platform has a massive database of tutors who are trained to teach competitive exams. You can post your details on the portal and you can check, compare, and select your preferred tutor anytime.