The UGC NET or simply the National Eligibility Test (NET) is conducted by the National Testing Agency every year. The national level exam is conducted for the determination of the eligibility of a candidate for Assistant Professorship or Junior Research Fellowship & Assistant Professorship in Indian Universities and Colleges. While it may sound pessimistic, the success rate of UGC NET applicants is only about 6%. However, every year lakhs of aspirants apply and appear for the UGC NET so as to qualify for Assistant Professorship and Junior Research Fellowship. NTA already concluded the online registration and application process of UGC NET 2020 on June 30, 2020. The Computer-Based Test was scheduled to be conducted from June 15 to 20, 2020. However, the NTA was pushed to postpone it due to the ongoing pandemic. It is expected that NTA is going to announce the new exam dates of UGC NET 2020 soon.
The UGC NET exam consist of two papers carrying a total of 150 MCQ type questions and 300 marks. The paper must be completed within a duration of 03 hours. Paper 1 is based on General Teaching Research & Aptitude while Paper-2 is subject specific. However, the exam being conducted in different shifts and on different days, the NTA adopts normalisation of the marks to draw the merit lists. As such, scoring well above the cut-offs is key to succeed in cracking the UGC NET 2020 exam. This demands certain unconventional approaches to prepare for the exam, among which, we has focused on studying from the previous year question papers of UGC NET.
There are multiple advantages of studying from previous year papers. For one, it helps the candidates get acquainted with the pattern of the question paper, marks distribution and types of questions that has been prevalent during the previous iterations of the exam. It is extremely important that students can identify the sections (topics/sub-topics) that carry higher marks weightage and align their study strategies accordingly. An awareness of the way the questions and marks are distributed across sections can also help a candidates devise a strategy for answering the questions in a time-effective manner and consequently increase the number of good attempts.
One of the most obvious reasons that candidates often refer to previous year question papers as an important learning and preparation resources is due to the fact that questions are often repeated from the previous years. A little acquaintance with a particular (or particular type of) question can help candidates to focus on such questions and if repeated from previous years, answer them accurately.
We have another important suggestion to use the UGC NET 2020 previous year question papers to one’s advantage. Use the previous year papers to improve your time management and therefore, the number of good attempts. Set a timer to the duration of the exam and attempt to solve a previous year paper before the time runs out. Consider it as a mock test and figure out your very own strategy to answer maximum number of questions accurately in 03 hours.
