Issue 01 · 2026
The Karma Yogi Journal. Field notes for the long grind.
- Essays
- 78
- Exam tracks
- 5
- Topics
- 52
The Lead
The essay we keep coming back to.
The Archive
Everything else worth reading, ordered by date.
Page 1 / 8 · 77 entries
CAT Mock Analysis Excel Template: What It Can and Cannot Do
A spreadsheet can log a CAT mock score in ten seconds. It cannot, without real maintenance, tell you which mock is due for its next revision pass, flag a section that has silently plateaued, or keep a session linked to the specific mock it was about. Here is the column schema to use if you build one anyway, and the three specific jobs where it breaks.
Best Study Tracker Apps for Competitive Exams, Compared
There is no single best study tracker - there are three genuinely different categories, and each one can represent some data and structurally cannot represent the rest. A fair comparison of generic habit trackers, spreadsheets, and exam-specific tools, by what each can and cannot store, not by marketing claims.
Study Progress Tracker: Google Sheets Template vs App
Three real Google Sheets formulas people actually use to track study time - SUMIFS for weekly totals, conditional formatting for a manual heatmap, a pivot table for subject breakdown - and the specific point at which each one needs upkeep a dedicated app does not.
How to Focus While Studying: What the Research Says
Interrupting a long study session with short, frequent self-tests cuts reported mind-wandering roughly in half and improves recall, in a controlled study of 80 students learning from video lectures. What that finding actually supports for exam prep, and what it does not.
Best Time to Take a Mock Test: Match Your Exam Slot
This is not "when is the best time to study" - it is a narrower, testable claim: schedule your mocks at the same clock hour as your actual exam slot. The direct experiment that would prove this has never been run. Here is the real evidence that exists next to it, and why the recommendation still holds up anyway.
UPSC Prelims Mock-Test Strategy: Two Papers, Two Games
GS Paper I and CSAT sit in the same Prelims sitting and reward completely different behaviour - one where every mark counts toward your rank, one where you only need 33% and then the rest is wasted effort. Mock volume matters less here than in a drillable-skill exam, and the honest number is lower than a CAT aspirant would expect.
Tracking UPSC Mains Prep When There Is No Score Yet
UPSC Mains is nine subjective, hand-evaluated papers worth 2,025 marks including the interview - and nothing you do alone at home produces a real score for any of them. Here is what can honestly be tracked (word-count discipline, topic coverage, self-review) and why forcing a fake numeric framework onto it would be dishonest.
GATE Mock Strategy: Budget Your 180 Minutes by Marks
GATE gives you one 180-minute clock and no rule for how to spend it - unlike CAT, there is no mandated per-section time lock. That freedom is the whole problem: without a budget, time drifts toward whichever question is on screen, not toward where the marks actually are.
GATE Negative Marking: The Expected-Value Guessing Rules
GATE runs three different marking regimes in one paper - MCQs punish a wrong guess, MSQ and NAT do not - and the guessing math is not the same question asked three times. Here is the expected-value arithmetic behind each one, worked from GATE's own published marking scheme.
Overlearning in CAT Prep: When More Practice Stops Working
A 218-student trial found that drilling material you have already mastered boosts recall for about a week, then the advantage collapses - and in the second experiment, studying more material to a lesser degree actually beat overlearning less material, at every retest. CAT prep runs for months, not a week.
Colophon
Written between mocks. Edited between sits.
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