Most Common Mistakes to Avoid While Preparing for IPMAT 2024

All three IPMAT exams – IPMAT Indore, IPMAT Rohtak, and JIPMAT – are slated to be held in May 2024, leaving you just a few months to complete your preparation. There is a palpable sense of urgency amongst IPMAT aspirants looking to land one of the very few coveted seats in leading IPM programs offered by IIM Indore, IIM Rohtak, IIM Ranchi, IIM Bodhgaya, IIM Jammu, and IIFT, Kakinada. This very sense of urgency and panic can compel you to derail your IPMAT 2024 preparation. To ensure your prep remains on track without affecting your board exam studies, you must be aware of the most common mistakes to avoid while preparing for IPMAT 2024.

Here’s how you can streamline your IPMAT 2024 preparation without falling for the most common pitfalls that keep you from landing that elusive seat in IIM Indore.

What are the most common mistakes to avoid while preparing for IPMAT 2024?

Not going through previous years’ papers

For much of the time that IPMAT has been conducted, the exam papers weren’t released publicly. This compelled aspirants to work with mock tests for practice. But ever since 2019, IPMAT Indore has started releasing question papers to the public. IPMAT Rohtak and JIPMAT have also followed suit in the last couple of years. This presents students with a golden opportunity to work with exact IPMAT-level questions for practice. Not solving these previous years’ question papers despite their availability is a big mistake.

Stopping your IPMAT prep to prepare for board exams

With the boards right around the corner, most students are glued to their school textbooks with an unequivocal focus on their boards’ preparation. While the boards are critical, students should not entirely stop their IPMAT prep lest they lose touch with the topics and questions. In fact, most students stop going to school in December itself in anticipation of their boards. This leaves them with a lot of time to remain abreast with their IPMAT prep. It is recommended that they spend at least 2-3 hours every day focused on IPMAT and the rest preparing for their boards.

Haven’t yet started taking IPMAT mocks yet

All three IPMAT exams are slated for May, leaving less than four months for students to buckle up and finish their prep. What most students forget is that apart from completing the syllabus, they also need to take IPMAT mock tests regularly. Even if your syllabus is pending, it is good practice to give the mocks just to acquaint yourself with the test environment and pressure. Moreover, the mocks can be used to gauge your preparedness for the topics you’ve studied. After all, knowing a topic isn’t enough; you also have to be proficient at recalling it under duress.

Failing to analyse the mocks or maintain an error log

While taking mock tests is critical, as mentioned above, analysing the result and documenting your errors is even more important. Just giving the mocks might acquaint you with the paper pattern, but your score won’t budge. You need to sit down and analyse your mistakes, the reason behind the mistakes, and the right solution to the problems to keep yourself from repeating the same mistakes again. An error log is a great way to keep track of your errors and progress.

Not taking your high school academics and current affairs seriously

On one hand, there are students who entirely drop IPMAT prep before their boards. On the other, some students refuse to take their high school books seriously. You must not forget that your academics are equally important – not just for the boards but also for your personal interview rounds. Interviewers at IIM Indore, IIM Ranchi, and IIM Rohtak are known to grill students on their academic subjects. Another factor to remember is that you should also continue to read newspapers, periodicals, and magazines to remain updated with the latest happenings around the world. A bad interview can keep you from landing a seat despite clearing the cutoffs with good marks.

Trying to finish new material before you’re well-versed with the old material

This is a very underrated tip. Most students tend to measure their competence based on the number of questions they have solved from a variety of sources. But this strategy might not be the best one. Our mentors suggest sticking to one source of information and resolving questions from it over and over again. You can choose to do this from Arun Sharma or RS Aggarwal textbooks or material sourced from a coaching institute such as IMS. The IMS IPMAT classroom program provides you with comprehensive courseware, a 5000+ question bank, 600+ hours of live learning, 300+ mock and sectional tests, and 80+ hours of video content. Completing this material is more than enough for your IPMAT prep. 

Believing that IPMAT Verbal is the same as CBSE English

This rookie mistake is what dooms quite a few IPMAT aspirants every year. The overconfidence that they will easily manage to ace the verbal section of IPMAT because they’ve been doing well in their high school English is what keeps them from actually studying for IPMAT Verbal. The difficulty level and the types of questions asked in IPMAT Verbal are very different from the theoretical questions in English boards. Both require different preparation plans and strategies. By just putting in real effort to study for IPMAT Verbal, they can differentiate themselves from their peers and boost their scores.

With just a few hundred IPM seats in the top colleges, even one mistake can turn out to be costly. It’s up to you to build the right strategy, eliminate errors, and remain on the right track to crack the IPMAT Indore, IPMAT Rohtak, or JIPMAT exams.