ICT MCQ strategy: negative marking, time and accuracyআইসিটি এমসিকিউ কৌশল: নেগেটিভ মার্কিং, সময় ও নির্ভুলতা

What a wrong answer costs

Most government IT MCQ papers deduct marks for a wrong answer:

Exam	Per correct	Per wrong
Bankers' Selection Committee (Officer / Senior Officer IT)	1	−0.25
Bankers' Selection Committee (AP / AME, 80 questions)	1.25	−0.25
BPSC non-cadre	1	−0.50

With four options and a 0.25 penalty, a completely blind guess gains only about 0.06 marks on average (1 in 4 right, minus 3 in 4 × 0.25). Rule out one option and the expected gain rises to about 0.17. With a 0.50 penalty a blind guess loses about 0.13 marks on average and ruling out one option only breaks even, so on BPSC papers leave a question unless you can narrow it to two options.

Pace the paper in two passes

1. First pass: answer everything you know at once. Do not stop on any question for more than about 40 seconds.
2. Second pass: come back to the ones you skipped and decide, option by option, whether you can rule anything out.

This way the questions you know are never lost to running out of time.

Read the stem twice

Many wrong answers come from misreading, not from not knowing. Watch for "NOT", "EXCEPT", "always" and "only", and for questions that ask for the output of code rather than what the code is meant to do.

Practise for accuracy, not volume

• After each practice set, write down why each wrong answer was wrong. The same mistakes repeat.
• Practise code-output questions by tracing by hand, line by line, with a small table of variable values.
• For number-system and subnetting questions, practise the method until it is fast, rather than memorising answers.
• Take full timed papers in the last weeks, with the real negative marking, so the pacing feels normal on the day.