TIPS to beat EXAM Stress

Sleep well. A good sleep of six to seven hours will consolidate memory and will enhance it automatically

Proper diet and workout on a daily basis can work wonders. A balanced diet is essential

Get rid of anxiety and frustration

Meditation is a sure-shot way to improve concentration levels and thus memory

Get outdoors. Students must have at least 15 minutes of outdoor activity even during exams. It helps relax

If stress really gets to you, talk to your parents or teachers.

Never forget that there is life after exams.

Exam blues are here

It's that time of the year when stress levels are heightened in families with school-going kids. Stress during exams is common. But the key is to see that it does not spiral out of control. Students preparing for SSLC and PU exams have started consulting psychiatrists and counsellors unable to cope with the stress. Sleeplessness, headaches, anxiety and poor memory are some of the symptoms associated with exam stress students as final examinations near. To beat the stress, many students in this education hub in the state, have started approaching psychiatrists here. The practice of students consulting psychiatrists on the eve of examinations has increased over the years in this region.

Increasing pressure to score good marks in exams, parental and peer pressure to excel has increased stress levels among students, says Anil Kakunje, associate professor in psychiatry, Yenepoya Medical College. Anil, also the secretary of Mangalore Psychiatrists Society, says five years ago on an average around two students would approach him between January and March, the exam time. "But for the past few years, I have been counselling at least six students every day, during January-March," he adds. Most students today, he explains, are unable to concentrate on studies due to mobiles, computers and their obsession with social networking sites,

There are nearly around 30 psychiatrists in the city. PUC and SSLC students are so much involved in preparing for exams and many a times they are not seen out on play grounds, like undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Children today don't have time for extracurricular activities which decreases stress levels tremendously, said Dr Safeek AT, professor in psychiatrics of Father Muller Medical College.

On Monday, Dr KS Madhava Rao, a psychiatrist, got a call informing him of a II PU science student attempting suicide unable to cope with exam pressure. Madhava, also the president of Karnataka State Psychiatrists Association, said that the student had consumed tablets in a bid to end her life.

He says most PU students who approach him are from science stream. "Parents fail to gauge the aptitude of their children. The pressure to perform well weighs heavily on them. During counselling many science students who are depressed tell me that they will not take the exams. The next year, they will shift to arts or commerce," he adds.

During exam period, Rao has at least three students who consult him every week. The rest of the year, he sees just about two students a month.

Psychiatrists have another piece of advice for troubled students. Consult them at the earliest. Don't leave it for the nth hour. "Many students approach us just a few days prior to the exams," says Dr Satheesh Rao, Department of Psychiatry, KS Hegde Medical Academy. "We provide medication to them as they come very late. It's not easy to cure their disorders within a short period of time. If students come earlier, instead of medication, we can do psychotherapy and counselling," he explains.

Shrinivasa Bhat, another psychiatrist, says his clients approach him to enhance their memory and concentration. "Most students, who consult me are academically good. They want to improve their memory. But most students suffer from insomnia and headaches during exam," he adds.

Bharathidasan University goofs up question paper, exam cancelled

The mycology and virology exam scheduled for second year microbiology students in Bharathidasan University (BDU) had to be cancelled in several affiliated colleges as the question papers were wrongly set.

The controller of examinations of BDU, A Selvam, told TOI that about 800 students in over 25 colleges were affected and could not sit for their exam. "Though the subject code and the title of the subject remained the same, the questions were totally irrelevant to the subject. Even the chairman of the examinations endorsed the question papers," he said. In fact, two sets of question papers are prepared for each subject, and should there be aberrations in one set, the second would be opened. To make matters worse, the second set of question papers too was out of the syllabus.

Since the regular exam schedule of the third semester runs up to December 21, Tuesday's exam is now scheduled for December 22, Selvam said. "It is a serious blunder on the part of the setter and endorsing the same by the chairman of exams is even more serious. Appropriate disciplinary action would be taken against them," he said.

Half-hour more for science papers in ICSE

Those set to appear for ICSE examinations in 2014 have a reason to cheer. They will get more time for science papers than their peers did.

The Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), on Tuesday, announced the decision to increase the durations of Physics, Chemistry and Biology papers from one-and-a-half hours to two hours.

The duration of Mathematics paper will, however, remain unchanged at two-and-a-half hours.

"We have revised the time schedule for science papers following students' demand. We expect it to reduce stress among the examinees," said Gerry Arathoon, chief executive and secretary of the council.

It has also been decided that the environment science paper of the ICSE exams, that was scheduled on February 15, will be shifted to a new date as Saraswati Puja falls on that day.

In place of manual registration, the council has also proposed to start e-registration and e-affiliation from next year. Students of classes IX and XI can individually e-register with council for taking the examination through schools. Similarly, schools can seek affiliation online. "This will make the system more efficient," said another council official.

The council has also decided to upgrade some ICSE schools to ISC and award them provisional affiliation even if they have still not received the permanent no-objection-certificates (NOC) from the state government. "Till now, only those schools that could produce a permanent NOC from the state government were upgraded. Now, they will be upgraded to plus two (ISC) with only a provisional one. They have to procure a permanent NOC in due course and submit the same to the council. Then we shall grant permanent affiliation to the school for ISC," Arathoon added.

"The council has decided that the land required should not be binding for permanent affiliation and introduction of ISC XII. Schools, who were granted provisional affiliation prior to the implementation of the guidelines of affiliations in May 2006, can be inspected when they apply for permanent affiliation or introduction of ISC class XII," said Arathoon.

English syllabus will undergo a sea change from 2015 onwards, "We have decided to reduce the syllabus. The number of prose has been cut short from 15 to 10 and poems too have been reduced from 15 to 10. The same is with the ISC syllabus in English. The syllabus of other subjects has been revised in keeping with the modern day demand."

The city is set to host the annual conference of the Association of Schools for the Indian School Certificate, 2012, in the Science City from November 21 to 23.

10 points about new IIT exam pattern that will solve all your doubts

The Indian Institutes of Technology ( IIT) Council on Wednesday struck a compromise with the human resource development ministry on the new pattern of entrance examinations.

Here are its salient features:

1. There will be two exams, the joint entrance examination (JEE) "main" followed by the JEE "advanced".
2. These combine the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) and the IIT-JEE, with the "main" exam being equivalent to AIEEE, and "advanced" being equivalent to the IIT-JEE.
3. There will be a "suitable" time gap between the two exams, though it was not clarified how much.
4. Only top 150,000 candidates (including all categories) from the JEE "main" will be qualified to appear in the JEE "advanced" examination.
5. Admission to IITs will be based on the rank in the "advanced" exam.
6. However, only students who come in among the top 20 percent scorers in their respective board will be considered eligible for the IITs.
7. The "advanced" exam will be held by the IITs, just like the IIT- JEE. It will be conducted by a Joint Admission Board (JAB) and Joint Implementation Committee of the IITs, the same which so far conducted the JEE.
8. The JEE "main" will be conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education ( CBSE), and it will coordinate with the IITs. It will be implemented from 2013.
9. Admission to the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) will be based on the "main" exam score. A final decision on methodology of admission is pending. A meeting of representatives from the NITs is scheduled for July 4.
10. Admission to several deemed universities will also be on the basis of scores in the "main" exam, which earlier took students on basis of AIEEE scores. A minimum percentage criteria will be fixed for these too.

Matric exam concludes, over 10,000 held for cheating in Odisha

It seems the efforts of the Board of Secondary Education to check malpractices in the matriculation exam have yielded results, with 10,015 students booked for cheating this year. This is the highest number of examinees ever caught for using unfair means in the matriculation examinations. The examinations got over on Thursday.

Last year, 7,000 students were booked for malpractices, while in 2010, the figure was 2,046. This year, around 6,372 examinees were booked for malpractice in regular stream and the rest were ex-regular examinees. Board officials said the maximum number of cheating cases was reported from Sambalpur central zone. Board officials have expressed concern over the rising number of malpractice cases.

"This year a record number of students have been booked. The figures themselves speak about the gravity of the problem, malpractice in matriculation exam has become a deep rooted problem," said Satyakam Mishra, president of the board. The students booked for malpractice will be debarred from appearing in matriculation exam for three years.

Apart from the students, the board has also decided to take stringent action against 14 invigilators and six centre superintendents who were found guilty of abetting malpractice.

"We have written to the state government to take stringent action against the invigilators and centre superintendents who were found abetting malpractice," said Nihar Mohapatra, board secretary.

Evaluation of answer sheets will begin from May 1 and will continue till May 15. Answer scripts will be corrected at 71 centres across the state and more than 21,000 teachers will be involved in the process.

The board has decided to transport the answer sheets directly to the evaluation centres from the examination centres to avoid wastage of time.

"Earlier answer sheets were collected at a receiving centre and from there they were sent to evaluation centres. In the process, seven days were lost, so this time we have decided to transport the answer sheets directly from the exam centre to evaluation point," said Mishra.

Board officials have informed that the results would be out by first week of July. This year atleast 5.11 lakh students appeared for the matriculation examination at 2,261 centres across the state. Over 122 flying squads were formed to keep vigil on these centres.

The matriculation examination had started on March 19, but on March 21, question papers of seven subjects were stolen from an exam centre, Bhagabati Vidyapitha, in Puri district following which the exam was stalled . The exam resumed on April 17 and concluded on Thursday.

Gujarat University exams rescheduled to May 7, 8

Gujarat University (GU) exams which were slated to start from May 3 have been rescheduled due to administrative reasons and will now begin from May 7 and May 8 respectively.

GU officials said that as per the revised schedule, exams of BA first semester (regular, repeater and external), BCom first semester (regular, repeater and external), BSc first semester (regular and repeater), BBA first semester (regular, repeater and external), BCA first semester (regular, repeater and external) and BSc first year (regular) will begin from May 7.

The number of ATKT students is huge and the sitting arrangements caused some problems. This resulted in the exams being pushed back by four days. "Owing to space crunch and lack of adequate staff - since summer vacations are on - we've decided to take the exam in two parts," said a GU official.

From May 8, MA first semester (regular, repeater and external), MCom first semester (regular, repeater and external), MA semester three (regular and repeater), MCom (regular and repeater) and MSC semester five (regular and repeater) exams will begin. tnn

In the exams beginning from May 7, no less than 60,000 students are expected to appear and another 45,000 students will appear for the exams from May 8.

However, some students were less than pleased by this development. "The GU authorities should take proper care before announcing the exam dates. As per the earlier schedule, the exams would have ended by May 10 and many of us would have drawn up vacation plans and others who are employed would also have applied for leave. Now, all these have to be reorganized in a hurry," said an MCom student.

Second semester exam of XI (science) begins in Gujarat

Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) is conducting the second semester examination of Class XI (science) from Monday. Nearly 1.18 lakh students are appearing for the examination.

The board had introduced the semester system in Class XI (science) and this will be extended to Class XII (science) from this year. The students will have to appear for four semester examinations in Class XI and XII, with each examination carrying a weightage of 25 per cent.

On Monday, the students appeared for Mathematics paper, which they claimed was not very difficult but was lengthy and that the questions had been asked from the text book. However, one case of copying was registered in Anand. tnn

"It was an extremely lengthy question paper. I did not even get a single minute to revise. I completed it dot on time. Some of the questions were twisted and I was not able to solve them. I expect to get 70 marks", said Ajay Rawat , a Class XI student.

"I would say it was nice but a lengthy paper. I was not able to attend around 10 mark question. Even some of the MCQs were twisted and called for a lot of thinking", Rohan Sharma, another Class XI student, said.

BCom-II exam cancelled after paper leaks

BCom second-year exam of Panjab University was cancelled after the question paper was leaked. The exam for Corporate Accounts which was scheduled to be held on Tuesday at 2pm, will now be held on May 3.

A resident of Kitchlu Nagar, Swati Bhandari said, ''I worked very hard to prepare for the exam. I even got up at 4am on exam day to revise but when I reached the examination centre I got to know that it had been cancelled. Now I will have to keep revising till the next date for exam.''

Resident of Rishi Nagar, Mahima Arora said, ''University should take the matter seriously and full-proof security system should be put in place so that such incidents can be avoided in future.''

Resident of Clock Tower, Vasudha Garg said, ''The guilty should be brought to book and punished severely. Thousands of students have been inconvenienced because of a few miscreants.''

Students can get Photocopy of answer sheets after results

Following a Supreme Court order in August 2011, CBSE students can now on apply to get a photocopy of their answer scripts, once the board results (classes X and XII) are out. According to the order, students appearing in an examination have a right to view their answer sheets if they want to.

According to Vineet Joshi, chairman, CBSE, students will receive photocopies of their answer sheets as per the request within 15 days of submitting their application forms. However, students can continue to avail of the marks verification facility.

In order to get a photocopy of the answer scripts, students will have to pay Rs 500 per subject. They can avail of their answer scripts by applying online and making an online payment. Students who don't want to make an online payment can send a draft at the regional office of CBSE along with the online photocopy of the application form. However, for verification, students can continue to pay Rs 100 per answer script.

Joshi further adds, "Students wanting to avail of this facility will have to apply to the board within 21 days, once the results are out."

Apart from CBSE boards, students appearing for All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) and All India Pre-Medical /Pre-Dental Test (AIPMT) can also avail of this facility.