ICSE – Its easy to score. Review on Successful Preparation for Std X

ICSE ? Its easy to score

It was the year of 2001 when I attempted the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) examination and came out with a 93.4% marks, with a lowest marks in any subject being 90. Hence I feel that I can push in an advice or two on how to score well in this examination. To tell you the truth, I started serious preparation for this examination just 2 months before the examination. Hence this report will help people who had not been studying hard for this exam.

Strategy building.................

The first thing you require for preparation is the Syllabus book which is issued by the council (CISCE). It is priced about forty rupees, and so it wont be a burden for you to buy one. Once you get that book, go through the rules and regulations of the board carefully. This is called strategy building and has always helped me and it will no doubt help you also.

You must keep in mind that the Question papers of ICSE will never contain any thing that is out of the syllabus prescribed for it. So stick to the syllabus. Donot over study and do not try to show your extra knowledge in the papers because examiners do not like it. ICSE examination is a objective-pattern paper and hence you must write to the point answers. The answers should be short and not Mahabharata type. Take care on this matter.

Take a sneak peek at the marking paper of ICSE. Go to your school library and ask them to help you. The council publishes books which shows statistics and and solutions to the past year's Question papers. Checking out those solutions will give you a fair idea about what council wants.

The Key to success...............

The first important thing that you must know is that the marking of ICSE depends on certain important words or phrases, which I will refer to as Keywords here. You must put these words and phrases or its synonyms in the answer if you want to get marks. This is valid not only for the humanities subjects but also for the science subjects. Hence, go through the texts of the standard text books that are available in the market and while reading mark the words that you feel important and try to remember them. While writing the answers, place these keywords in appropriate positions in the answers.

The council has a particular trend of making questions. You will generally not find questions that came in the previous year to be repeated. So you can take the last year's portions a bit lightly. However, this is not always the case, so be careful.

Test yourself...................

A lot of test taking is what makes a difference between you and other students. For ICSE, there are a lot of Test papers available in the market. Search for a test paper which has all the papers (or most of them) solved, however, the solutions are not printed together and not along with the questions. This helps you take the test by keeping time and later on check the solutions.

I dont think you need to be scared of ICSE. Its easy yaar. If you study strategically and seriously, and use your brains, then no one can stop you to get a coveted 90%.

I couldnot comment on individual subjects as the patterns must have been changed by the council by now.