Issue 01 · 2026
The Karma Yogi Journal. Field notes for the long grind.
- Essays
- 90
- Exam tracks
- 5
- Topics
- 59
The Lead
The essay we keep coming back to.
The Archive
Everything else worth reading, ordered by date.
Page 2 / 9 · 89 entries
GMAT Focus Edition vs Classic GMAT: What Actually Changed
The GMAT you can sit today is not the GMAT your seniors describe. Sentence Correction is gone, the essay is gone, Data Sufficiency moved sections, and the test is 52 minutes shorter. Here is exactly what changed and why prep advice written before 2024 is describing a retired exam.
Bank PO Sectional Time Limits: Why You Cannot Borrow Time
Bank PO Prelims gives you 60 minutes for 100 questions - but not as one flexible pool. Each of the three sections gets exactly 20 minutes, locked, with zero carryover. That single design choice changes how a mock should actually be practiced.
Worked Examples vs Solving Cold: What JEE Prep Gets Backwards
Cognitive load theory has a genuinely counterintuitive answer to "should I study the solved example or attempt the problem cold": it depends entirely on how new the topic is to you, and the right approach on day one is the wrong approach three weeks later. A 2019 review of 20 years of research explains why, and names the specific point where you should switch.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Growth Mindset and NEET Prep: What 365,915 Students Show
A meta-analysis of 273 studies and over 365,000 students found the relationship between growth mindset and academic achievement was weak overall. A second meta-analysis of 43 mindset interventions found the same. NEET prep culture treats "believe ability is not fixed" as a near-universal performance lever. The largest study on the question found something much smaller, concentrated in one specific group.
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.
Colophon
Written between mocks. Edited between sits.
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