VoiceTAP BITSAT call; online test series for entrance exams

VoiceTAP (see review here for more details about the service) conducted a call for BITSAT tips on 3rd May 2009. From now onwards if you’re participating in the live call then you don’t need to dial out to VoiceTAP’s number. Instead, they will dial out to your registered number at the time of the call. Thus, you don’t have spend anything for getting information from experts; of course, this is valid only for the live call and not if you want to listen in to a recording of the sessions – you’ll have to dial in yourself for that. Details are available on VoiceTAP website in case you’re interested in listening in to the recorded conversation of the BITSAT call.

One query which cropped up multiple times during the call was whether an online resource is available for practicing BITSAT. The experts on call mentioned a few books – ones from Arihant and MTG Learning Media – but were not personally aware of online resources. Getting yourself acquainted with attempting a paper online is important because the experience is significantly different from giving an exam which is printed on paper. BITSAT is an exam where speed and accuracy counts, so it’s best not to lose precious time on the day of the exam making yourself comfortable. Here’s a listing of the e-learning resources you have at your disposal to prepare yourself for BITSAT. (Note: I personally tried out and / or used some of these mock BITSAT online tests last year.) Most of these resources are paid. If you want quality BITSAT papers, then you won’t find them for free.

• Official BITSAT Sample Paper: BITSAT itself releases a sample paper, but it’s small – contains just a handful of questions. This won’t give you much practice but it will give you an idea what the interface looks like. Made by Eduquity Technologies, the company which handles the BITSAT exam. (Noida centre of BITSAT exam is at Eduquity Technologies office.)
• MTG Learning Media / Arihant: BITSAT books from these two companies come bundled with ‘computer-based’ tests – normal question paper present in the book displayed on screen. These Flash-based versions will give you a feel of what the test interface is like but have one major drawback – they give you the score but do not display any kind of analysis. You need to manually check up solutions. In my opinion, when you’re paying for such a thing – that too computer based – then analysis is a must.
• Brilliant Tutorials: Made by Vriti Infocom, the company behind GoIIT. Brilliant tutorials provides the question bank, Vriti handles all the IT aspects. You can check out the online courses offered by Brilliant Tutorials for BITSAT here. Level questions closely mirrored the actual test. Occassionally, you might find errors in their system – not in the questions themselves, but in the form of incorrectly entered answer (same answer in some choice, etc); probably because of data entry errors at Vriti’s end. After a test you get detailed analysis of your performance too. In case you’re interested, Brilliant Tutorials also offers online test series for DCE. You don’t need to stay online the whole time – at the beginning of the test it downloads all the questions to your browser. When you’re done, you can reconnect and submit everything.
• Career Launcher: CL didn’t offer online tests when I studied there (we always got online reports for the exams we gave on paper though), but I’ve heard that now they do offer online BITSAT mock tests for their own students. Career Launcher has always been at the forefront of IT usage in education so I’d expect their testing system to be good. Their analysis reports for exams were very comprehensive in nature – a handy tool when you’re trying to eliminate weak points in the final days in run up to BITSAT. I suggest you get in touch with your nearest Career Launcher centre to find out more details.
• BITSAT Race: I’ve spoken (in not so flattering terms) about this service earlier. Questions in its database weren’t like the actual BITSAT. They might have improved over the last year though. You can check it out, but I advise against going for this one. English and logical reasoning section in its papers are especially bad.
• StudyPlaces.com: Never tried them. Free papers. I know the guys behind this venture from elsewhere – and their other offerings are pretty good – so you should give this a try.
• Time Institute: Famous for being the ones who are first to release solutions for any exam. Haven’t tried their course (it wasn’t around in my time).

That’s about it. Leave a comment below if you are aware of any other online testing services which have used and / or think is good. Use these mock BITSATs to acquaint yourself with the format and keep BITSAT cutoff scores in mind when analysing your performance reports in these tests.