VTU

The most important thing to know about VTU is that studying and learning are two
very different things here. I have seen my batch topper working for a Service based
company, earning up a meager pay and a friend who surely had at least 3 backs
every sem(yeah, I said at least :)), working for a much bigger company and earning
way more.
Lets accept the fact, great companies do ask for great aggregate but here is the
good news, scoring in VTU is not all that difficult. :) . A month of serious study
before the exam if presented in the right way can fetch you as high as 75% in a
Sem and yeah that's not too bad. :P.
Time to spill the beans, I will share with you a few ideas so as to score easily:

1. Remember Vidya Balan's famous dialogue in Dirty Picture, Film sirf ek chiz par
chalti hain "Entertainment, entertainment, entertainment". In not so different way,
the most important factor is Presentation, presentation, presentation. Very
surprisingly, this is what we ignore, assuming that engineering being a professional
course, would have professional teachers and a fair evaluation. But this is far from
reality. The teachers are highly professional but in all the wrong way and work only
to make quick buck. There have been many instances where many of us got to the
tune of 30-35 marks in revaluation. How sad!!!!
How do we make this presentation better?? Its no rocket science,
remember the rules taught to us for our 10th Standard exams, the same holds good
here as well. Ideally, the first 2 pages of your answer booklet will set the stage, so
be careful and avoid any scratches, stupid answers, self-assumed stories and
anything which is not present in the Text book.

2. The second most important thing is Underlining the important key words, I have
come across lot of instances where real bull crap was written but only a few
important keywords were underlined. Guess what?? Oh!! you got it right :) it fetched
a whopping 8 on 10 most of the time. :D:D From what I know, the evaluation is done
based on a schema, which emphasizes on a few mandatory keywords in an answer
and if by any means you get them, you have just made your tasks easier.

3. Write in points, many of the examiners still stick with the conventional mentality
of "the bigger, the better " so if you have got your initial 2 pages right, there is a
very high chance that they will just skim your paper and give you handful of marks.

4. Choose the Units carefully, it doesn't matter which one you choose, at the end all
of them fetches you the same marks, so choose them smartly. An ideal way is to
prepare 4 units perfectly and to read one 10 marks question from the 5th unit.
Writing for 90, you stand a very good chance of landing up 70-75.

This is all for now, hope you find it useful. I will come back with more ideas and
short cuts to assist you in practicals and internals. Watch out for more!!!