Odisha HRD

Some thoughts on previous year NEST questions for NISER and UM-DAE

May 9th, 2009

Following are from postings in the NISER orkut community about the NEST exam in the previous two years.

Aaram

The pattern of NEST is somewhat as follows : The paper consists of 5 parts –
1. General, 2. Physics, 3. Chemistry , 4. Biology, 5. Mathematics
The General section is mandatory for all. Amongst the other 4, you are supposed to attend ANY 3. All sections carry equal weightage. Regarding the query about scientists and contributions, such kind of questions needn’t be expected in the NEST exam. It basically checks your analytical skill, reasoning and application of concepts. Hence, direct formulae, simple numericals etc. are less probable in NEST.
There will be questions with only one correct answer as well as more than one right alternative. As with the case of SPECIAL textbooks for NEST, your thorough knowledge of basic concepts will be your best guide in the exam, as it evaluates your ability to reason properly, apply your knowledge and arrive at the answer.

!sh@n

abt question types ,

hi ,

The previous year’s paper are not released in public domain yet . however i can assure u it is not like any engineering or medical competitive exam papers. The questions require more analysis and are more thought-provoking. n about books , i think ncert books plus some books with sound theoretical concept would help .

!sh@n

>>henry

analytical questions like, u might be given some graphs or a trend of any sort n u l need to answer based on wht u deduce frm it ( eg bacterial population growth , nuclei decay kind of ). i do not trhink u l need to hurry as in other exams but time management of course helps .

Aaram

The question pattern ‘s a bit different from IIT-JEE, AIEEE or AIPMT. Here, you have a compulsory general section + 3/4 subjects(Phy,chem,bio,math) , & in each section you wil be having ten 3 mark questions n five (or was it six?) 5 mark questions, or atleast thats the way it used to be! The 3 mark qns wil hav only one right answer out of the given choices while the 5 mark ones wil hav more than one correct alternatives. Remember that the 3 mark qns wil fetch you a -1 if you get that wrong, but Heard that there wil b no -ve marking for the 5 mark ones. Heard that this time , the general section ‘s got as equal weightage as the other sections. And regarding some exact qns askd in previous xam, my poor memory doesnt help. Sid , Ishan – May be you can help ém out wid a qn or two.

Aaram

Well, I dont think it’d be necessary for you to be a master of ‘history of science’ to answer d qns in general section successfully. There wont be any qn demanding the answer for "In which year did Roentgen invent the X-ray?" or "Who was the only woman to win the Nobel prize twice?". But for the general section, you need to hav a good ability to ‘think out of the box’ as Sid has mentioned, to be logical, to reason well, n here too, to be clear with your basic concepts. ‘Cos, tho d qns wont be about d years or names, it ‘d definitely help you if you know what ‘s d idea/concept/principle behind different famous classical experiments in science(like Millikan’s oil drop expt, Luria-Delbrook’s expt etc.)

VED

nest 2007 questions.

i remember one or two questions.
1. given that hydrogen gas is at some volume V & pressure P. if the volume is tripled what would be its final pressure. the gas is kept in athermos flask.

2. place the order in which the following occured in time scale.

* darwin proposed his theory.
*kepler proposed his theory on planetary motion.
*there were two more, i dont remember.

3. there was also a question related to the topic critical temperature of real gases. how does the gas behave when it undergoes free expansion. helium gets heated up as its critical temperature for cooling is higher than the room temperature. a whole paragraph was given on this topic & 4 questions were asked in this in the general(compulsory ) section. this question was similar to unseen passage,.

Vaisakh

About General Section

I got some questions of the general section from some of the present 1st year students of NISER. Last year there where 3 or 4 questions from the History of Science part like the year in which Einstein gave the concept of stimulated emission of light, and what Fermat’s last theorem states and what is the main observation in proof for the expanding nature of light.

In last 2 years NEST papers there where questions asking you to arrange the given events in the chronological order. Also as Ved have already said, there were 3-4 question which you should answer based on the paragraphs given above. Last year the paragraphs were about Fresnel and Young’s wave theory of light. And in the year before the paragraphs were about the critical temperature of gases.

Altogether there were 10 questions in the General Section.

Vaisakh

@Şűќѓĩŧĩ

ya it was a mistake, i mean the expanding nature of Universe

Aaram

>>Swati

To know abt the no: n type of qns,pls refer to previous posts.

For Biology, the biology questions of NEST-2007 were more of ‘checking the concept type’ than ‘checking the information type’. For e.g., there was a question in which a diseased condition called anhydrotic dyplasia was described and questions were asked based on the info provided( like"what if it was like this?". However, this may not be the case always. You are supposed to know the classical experiments, the key concepts, and the basic information, if which ‘s included in your syllabus (ie, informative knowledge of things in syllabus is also important. For e.g., if somebody asks you "How can you possibly reduce the risk of cardiac diseases?" to answer,you must know WHAT all factors lead to cardiac diseases).
However, cramming up lots of data aint gonna help you either. The concepts behind the experiments and the data are more important. So, in the li’l time left now, try to brush up the different concepts in biology ( I mean, for e.g, try to understand what leads to evolution more thoroughly than what are the different kinds of evolutionary evidences, or When you rewind Lederberg’s replica plating expt., try to figure out what they meant to prove by the expt, what was the reasoning etc. When you say Dihybrid ratio ‘s 9:3:3:1, think what did Mendel infer frm that ratio. ) . Such a kind of thinking can really help solve the biology questions n all NEST qns in general.

 

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