Appearing for an olympiad is a thrilling experience, it is the best way to test your academic knowledge. Olympiads give you the chance to put your critical thinking skills and your reasoning abilities to the test.
These days, olympiads have become extremely popular. Everyone participates in them, which means that the olympiads have also become more competitive. You must wonder how can one perform well when the competition is high?
Well, it is not as difficult as it may seem. Scoring well in an olympiad is quite easy if you work hard for it. You must be focused on preparing and performing well. If you do so, you will surely be one of the top performers in the olympiads.
Here are some steps which you can take to perform well in your next maths olympiad:
- Practice well
Before you appear for the olympiad, you must prepare yourself for it. The best way to prepare is to practice questions. Maths is a practical subject, you cannot be good at maths if you do not practice questions. So, after you have understood the theories and learned the formulae, you must start practising.
You do not need a lot of different books to practice for the olympiad, your school book will prove to be enough. Since most olympiads have the same syllabus as your school curriculum, your school book will have all the practice material that you need.
To prepare well, you should practice a set number of questions regularly. You should start your preparation a few weeks before the exam and work on a fixed scchdeule, this will help you stay focused and organised.
- Learn time management
To perform well in the exam, you will need to stay within the time limit. Running out of time is a common problem that can cause problems. When you run out of time, you feel stressed and you end up making calculation mistakes or you mark the answers by ‘guesswork’. This can lead you to lose marks.
You must practice time management skills to eliminate these potential problems. As you will practice questions, your speed will build up on its own. Other than that, you can find other time-saving tricks and tips and utilize them to save your time during the olympiad exam.
When you appear for the exam, you must keep an eye on the clock. You must divide your time among the questions in a way that you can give enough time to each question. The greatest benefit of finishing your exam before time would be that you will get the time to recheck your calculations and revise your answers, this will help you in avoiding any silly mistakes that could have led to a loss of marks.
- Practice using sample papers
When you are done preparing the different topics of the exam, you must practice on a few sample papers to understand the pattern of the exam. Sample papers help you practice every topic of the olympiad. Other than that, they also help you with your time management skills.
When you practice on sample papers, you can understand what the commonly asked questions are and which questions are asked the least. This can help you in getting an idea and then preparing accordingly.
Sample papers will help you test your skills as well, after you are done solving a paper, you can check the answers. You will be able to understand the areas that you are good in and the areas that you need to practice more in. as you will practice more paper, your mistakes in each topic will keep on decreasing and soon you will be able to perform well in the exam.
Sample papers are available in books, local book shops, libraries, and the internet. You can download sample papers as well as their answer keys online. You can find the Class 5 IMO Question Paper 2011 and practice on it.
- Having discussions
A fun way to practice would be to discuss with people. You can have a discussion with your friends and ask them about their methods of preparation, in return, you can share your tips and learn from each other. Other than that, you can help them in clearing their doubts as this will help you in your revision as well. If you have any doubts, you can ask them as well.
Other than friends, you can discuss your preparation with your seniors. They must have appeared for the olympiad before you and they could give their insights on the olympiad and your ways of preparation. Discussing with them will give you an idea of the mistakes that they made which could be avoided by you.
You can also discuss with your teachers, teachers would be able to share a lot of resources for preparation. Teachers have a lot of tips on solving questions quickly and that could prove helpful to you.
So have discussions with those around you to improve your quality of preparation.
Other than these steps, you should remember to clear your doubts as soon as they arise. Do not ignore any doubt thinking that it’s irrelevant or that it won’t make a difference. Multiple small doubts can add up to huge problems when you attempt your olympiad paper.
A few days before the olympiad, try to find out sample OMR sheets and attempt to fill them. It will help you during the olympiad where you will need to fill the OMR very neatly and properly.
When you start attempting the olympiad, pay attention to the rules. Especially the marking scheme, try to know if there is any negative marking for wrong answers. Also, try to go through all the questions when the question paper is first handed to you, this will help in eliminating any confusion that could arise if you read the questions only once.
During the paper, be very focused on your work and solve the questions very carefully, silly mistakes in calculations can lead to a loss of marks.
Stay relaxed during the Maths Olympiad and you will surely perform well.
