Compilation of Exam related Articles IPCC Final CPT

Exam Tips for Quick Memorising - CA IPCC, CA Final

Author: Vaibhav

Exams are nearing day by day & tension is rising eventually causing bad memory & loss of concentration. Here goes quick Tips for memorizing the material as quickly as possible. (Please note if you are appearing in Nov13 exams & if this method causing extra time please do not try to change your existing method.)

1 – Make yourself free from all Obstacles

Swami Vivekananda has said you need to be stress free so that you can memorize a new concepts. You first need to eliminate the obstacles that might hinder your learning and memorizing. This is one of the most important things that you must keep in mind while studying for a fast approaching exam. It’s going to require you to shut down your social activities like going on Facebook and meeting friends until your exams have finished. This will help you in focusing on your studies and will enhance your memorization skills as well. Thus, if you want to do well in your exams and want to learn how to memorize quickly then this is a sacrifice you will have to make.

a. Drink lots of water this will keep you active.
b. Don’t drink coffee or tea much unless you are studying during night time.
c. First study the matter which is interested to you, this will boost your confidence level

2 – Pain & Reward

To learn stuff which is difficult according to you, you can use this technique. First  of all set a deadline for completing your reading. Don’t study for more than 30 – 45 mins. On completion of your task reward yourself  by doing things you like for 5 minutes to 10 minute max. After break revise things which you have learn in 5-10 mins. This quick revision will help you to retain things for another 3-4 days.

3 – Ladder method (step by step study concept)

a. Seat in a quiet room, shut the door, and eliminate all distractions.

b. Look at the first sentence in your notes and read it out loud. Then, close your eyes and say the sentence without looking at it.

c. Repeat the step above, this time with the first 2 sentences.

d. Next, try it with 3 sentences.

e. Repeat until you have memorized every sentence in your notes.

4 – Visualisation

Visualization is among the most effective techniques that can help you to learn how to memorize quickly. Making images of the things you are studying can help your mind in remembering them and then recalling them when you need them during the exam. People having a photographic memory and a strong imagination can use this technique to their advantage and therefore can learn easily about how to memorize things quickly.

5 –Mnemonics

A mnemonic is a simple word or phrase that helps you in memorizing a long list of facts or informational bits. Creating a mnemonic is a simple exercise. Here are the steps to create mnemonics:

a. Write the first alphabetic letters of the facts you want to remember on a piece of paper.

b. The starting letters should be lined up vertically and each new letter must come under the previous one.

c. Try coming up with a simple sentence or phrase from the letters that are lined up vertically on the paper. It should be something that you will find easy to remember.

d. The sentence must incorporate the letters in a linear manner just as they had been lined up.

Make notes in colour and decorate the page. It helps to visually recall the whole page and then you remember the notes themselves.

6 – Most important REVISION

According to the fading theory, the trace or mark a memory etches into your brain is like a path you make in the woods when you continually walk along the same route. If you don't take that same path, it eventually becomes overgrown until it disappears. In the same way, facts that you learn are forgotten when you don't review them.

A famous study on forgetting textbook materials compared the percentage of material remembered after different intervals of time. The results were as follows:

After 1 day	54% was remembered.
After 7 days	35% was remembered.
After 14 days	21% was remembered.
After 21 days	18% was remembered.
After 28 days	19% was remembered.
After 63 days	17% was remembered.

Remembering what you have heard in lectures is even more difficult to recall because you are not able to slow down, pause, reflect, or to reread unless you take excellent notes! In a study on recall after listening to a seminar, students forgot more than 90% of the points from the lecture after 14 days!

The conclusions to be made from these studies? 

a. Without review, most information will be lost from memory.
b. The best time to review materials is within a day or two after the material has been read or presented in lecture.

Repeat what you wish to learn until you overlearn it.

"We remember what we understand; we understand only what we pay attention to; we pay attention to what we want."

The Seven Laws of Clearing CA Exams

Author: Nitin Soni

Why do some of the brightest students fail in CA exams? This is the question that kept me hooked for a long time. Why do some students who remain academically brilliant throughout school and college, struggle in CA exams. Is it only because CA course is tougher than other courses? Really? Is that the only reason?

You know, I spent quite a good amount of time finding answers to these questions and finally I got the answer. And the answer lies in ‘The Law of Belief’.

Law of Belief says that whatever you believe… manifests itself. Belief is an idea or a statement accepted as true. When you hear something or see something and accept that consciously over and over again it becomes your belief. This is how all of your beliefs are formed.

Our beliefs reside in our subconscious mind. Whatever statement, suggestion or fact we accept over and over again, it slowly begins to get stored in our subconscious mind. Now, the subconscious mind is what defines our life. It is the control panel and controls everything that happens in and around our lives.

Your subconscious mind is the creator of your life. Your life is a mirror image of what happening in your subconscious mind. Whatever you are today is because of the self images you had stored in your subconscious mind in the past. Your subconscious mind is the store house of all what has happened to you in the past and on the basis of past beliefs and it also defines what will happen to you in future. The look, shape and feel of your future life is dependent upon the look, feel and shape of your present beliefs.

Coming back to the question, why do academically sound students fail in CA exams? Well, it has nothing to do with how they prepare for their exams. The result is the effects but the cause of that effect is what’s happening inside.

Our beliefs take shape in 3 different ways and I’ll touch upon all 3 one by one.

1. Other’s suggestions: The moment a student takes admission in CA course, he hears below statements repeatedly from his friends, relatives and other family members.

a. Are you doing CA? Do you know how tough this course is?

b. My so and so relative has not been able to clear CA after so many attempts.

c. Do you have an idea about the pass percentage in CA course? It is less than 5 percent!

d. Don’t do CA. you will regret your decision. It is very easy to enter in this course but very difficult to come out with a degree.

e. ETC, etc, etc.

Now what happens is, repeated exposure to such statements and thought patterns begins to take root and the student who was positive about CA course (that’s why he took admission) is now filled up with all sorts of negative beliefs about this course.

Such negative beliefs and negative images about the CA course get stored in the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind then begins to transmute such beliefs into reality.

2. Own acceptance: when a student hear suggestions like these very often, he makes the mistake of accepting them as true. This acceptance permanently fixes up the negative image about CA course in his own subconscious mind.

Moreover, such student repeats these statements to his friends and other fellow students. Such repeated affirmations further do all the damage as far as having beliefs about CA course is concerned.

3. Environmental images: Below environmental images also make a deep impact on a student’s subconscious mind and permanently strengthen negative beliefs about CA course.

a. Students sitting alongside in libraries and coaching classes are all giving attempts for the 2nd or the 3rd time.

b. Social media is filled with all sorts of negative influences about CA course.

c. News paper and other forms of media regularly publish reports that lesser and lesser number of students are clearing CA exams.

The above 3 factors combined, permanently places the belief firmly in the subconscious mind that CA exams are really really tough and one cannot clear the exam without first failing in it. No wonder, the question ‘Which attempt?’ has become a disease.

You know, it is a scientific fact that – Like attracts Like. Once your subconscious mind gets an image of something it immediately begins to transmute it into reality. Your subconscious mind then begins to lead your body actions in such a way that the beliefs in fact become the reality. Your subconscious mind then attracts events, conditions, environments that are in sync with those negative beliefs about CA course and eventually ensures that such belief in fact becomes a reality.

This is the reason why students so often fail in CA exams. It has nothing to do with this course being difficult or with students preparing now well enough. No. The reason is their impossible thinking. Their beliefs and their subconscious images.

Remember, your life is but an image of what happening inside. Whenever you don’t get the right results, understand that something somewhere is wrong in the subconscious mind because your outward life events are just the mirror images of what is happening is the inward subconscious mind.

You know, after failing in 2 attempts, you prepare well and think very positive consciously about the result but it doesn’t happen. You fail again. You see, beliefs aren’t formed overnight. It is the images that you’ve stored in the subconscious mind over a period of time that controls how your life would be in reality. Thinking positively in a day or two has absolute no effect on the subconscious beliefs.

Now the question is – What is the remedy to this? How to get the desired results? How to reprogram our beliefs and eventually the subconscious images?

The answer to this question is very simple. We must take the same road that took us here to get of here as well. If beliefs are formed by the above mentioned 3 ways then we must use the same 3 channels to get it right as well. How? Here is the answer how.

1. Other’s suggestion: Never, and I repeat never entertain or accept any thought pattern that suggests CA is difficult or that is a tough course. Never accept that. If someone tells you anything negative about this course don’t lend them your ears. Stop them right away and tell them that it is a very easy course. Every year hundreds and hundreds of average students become Chartered Accountants.

If they say result is low then tell them that it used to be but now Institute have declared results to the extent of 20 – 30 percent as well.

You must not let any negative suggestion from any other person enter your subconscious mind.

Another very useful suggestion is to create group of friends wherein everyone would talk positive about the CA course.

2. Own Acceptance: it is important not the let any negative suggestions enter your mind and it is very important not to talk bad or negative about this course to your fellow friends. How you do self dialogue is very important.

How do you talk to yourself about the course? At deepest level of consciousness how do you feel about your chances of becoming a CA? Are you yourself convinced about your abilities and preparations that you are putting in?

I would give a couple of very useful suggestions that can do wonder to your life.

1. Write a statement – I am a Chartered Accountant. Put it on your study table and see it daily and repeat the suggestion to yourself. Convince yourself that you are already a Chartered Accountant, only time stands between you and your degree.

2. Record your own voice in your mobile saying something like – I am a Chartered Accountant/I got a rank in CA Final/CA IPCC etc and listen to the recording over and over again in your free time. You can do it while you lie down to sleep. Remember that it is the repetition of affirmations that lead to belief and once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.

3. Environmental images: There is not much that you can do to change the environmental images that come your way but there is a landmark finding that can help you greatly. The finding is that your subconscious mind cannot differentiate between what is imaginary and what is real. It accepts imaginary images just as it would accept real life images. If you close your eyes and see with your mind’s eye i.e. imagine some positive images and do it regularly then slowly but surely it begins to get stored in the subconscious mind.

See the picture of yourself as taking the degree in the convocation ceremony. Imagine yourself writing on your Facebook wall that you are a CA now… see the numbers of friends liking your status update.

Such self images are immensely powerful and if you see the same image regularly it gets stored in the subconscious and once it reaches your subconscious it begins to manifest itself. Then nothing can stop the picture to become a reality of your life.

From today begin working on your thinking in general and belief in particular. Your beliefs control you. No matter how much hard work you do. No matter how hard you try. If your belief and eventually your images in the subconscious are negative and are not in sync with what you want. Results would be different.

Many a times, students ask me, “sir, how long should we follow these suggestions?” and I say, “Do it until you get favorable results!” However my past experience says that 5 weeks time is what it takes to influence your subconscious mind and get the self image corrected with above exercises.

I’d like to quote what Napolean Hill had once said, “Man may become the master of himself because he has the power to influence his own subconscious mind.” So, are you ready to become the master of your life or you would still prefer to remain a byproduct of your environment?

Friends with this I end this article but I hope that you would have got the insight that I wanted to give to you. If you like this article do let me know your thoughts by commenting below and then if you want I’ll discuss more about the remaining laws that together make up ‘The 7 Laws of Clearing CA Exams’.