I used these tips to clear the exam in my first attempt with 99 percentile rank.
- Understand the structure of the exam and the division of topics and marks.
- Write mock exams, analyse your topic/domain-wise score and find out which paper and which topics are your strengths and which are your weaknesses. Do this analysis preferably using Excel, so that you can repeat this for multiple attempts. Use formulas to do this.
- Link for mock exams: https://nta.ac.in/Quiz
- Once you find your strengths, focus most of your energy and time on those topics and paper. Do not spend a lot of time on the topics you are weak in. That is inefficient.
- As you try multiple mock exams, track your topic-wise scores.
- Research about the cut-off percentiles and marks for your caste and reservation.
- Topics that you can consider working on and those which will allow you to get good scores: mathematical aptitude, logical reasoning, teaching aptitude and basic topics of psychology like memory and intelligence.
- Difficult topics that require lot of effort for scoring: Research aptitude, statistics.
- Apart from mock exams, go through previous year papers and understand the pattern of questions. For example, in around 2021, the questions related to Indian psychology were more than expected. Be aware of such changes.
- The most important things mentioned above are these: Write mock exams, calculate your domain-wise scores, find your strengths, focus exclusively on those topics and reach your target cut-off marks.