Balancing between Class 12th boards and JEE Advanced preparations

Candidates have to understand that most part of the syllabus is same for both the examination. You just have to adjust the style of preparation accordingly. On one side, JEE Advanced requires intense practice and a firm understanding of critical concepts but on the other hand, board examination is more flexible in the concept vicinity. Unlike JEE advanced, the board examination tends to have a much clear pattern of question asked.

The syllabus for JEE is very vast especially if you consider the syllabus for JEE Advanced. So it is normal for students to focus all of their effort on JEE Advanced preparation. And due to this, their board preparation falls behind and remains incomplete.

Now someone may argue that trading-off of good marks in board exams with good rank in JEE Advanced is quite a profitable deal. But it’s not that simple. In this article, I will tell you how to distribute your preparation time between boards and JEE so that you can perform well in both of the exams.

First, you have to understand that most part of the syllabus is same for both the examination. You just have to adjust the style of preparation accordingly. On one side, JEE Advanced requires intense practice and a firm understanding of critical concepts but on the other hand, board examination is more flexible in the concept vicinity. Unlike JEE advanced, the board examination tends to have a much clear pattern of question asked.

PHYSICS

Let’s talk about board examination first. You have to make quite hard maneuvers in your preparation for this part of course. The questions asked in board examination are mostly theoretical and whatever numerical they have are usually follow up on some easy theoretical questions which are relatively easy to score. You might find some twisted questions but they are very less frequent and small in numbers. So the best way to prepare is to thoroughly study the NCERT and solved all the unsolved problems. Students are strongly recommended to solve the previous years’ papers to get the idea of the paper.

Now let’s talk about JEE Advanced. As most of you know it is the most uncharted territory for examination. The questions don’t have any general pattern according to topics, the questions are extremely well-framed to test candidate's grasp on concepts. The end results of general concepts must be always remembered and well understood.

For that candidate should solve as much as numerical they can get their hands on and analyze those question very carefully. Try to avoid solving the same type of questions too many times. Unlike in board exams, you don’t need to remember proof of every standard result step-by-step.

You are advised to solve your respective coaching materials if any, or any standard books like D.C Pandey or any one of the Arihant Publications regularly. Continuous revision of old concepts along with the practice of new ones is always helpful to keep you sharp. Solving of Previous years’ question papers are must.

The time distribution plays a crucial part in your preparation. The time should be divided smartly and most effectively between these two exams for effective results. You have to manage 3 to 4 strong hours weekly strictly dedicated to board preparation. In those hours there should be a rigorous exercise for answer writing and study of concepts which are exclusive or not too frequent in JEE Advanced.

MATHEMATICS

You don’t have to do many changes in your preparation for this part. The syllabus for both JEE and boards are almost the same.

The most important part of boards preparation is to practice writing the thorough solution. The thing is, in the board examination step marks have to be given, so you should be comfortable in writing every step of solution maintaining a good speed in the final exam.

As far as the study materials are considered, NCERT is more than enough. It contains a lot of examples and unsolved problems. Most of the question of the paper is from this book directly, so you are strongly recommended to solve every single problem of this book step by step. If you want your preparation to be even more strong than you should start solving NCERT Exemplar.

Now comes JEE Advanced. Mathematics of JEE Advanced requires a huge amount of practice. Its questions are a lot tougher and twisted than board questions. The only good thing about that is you are free to solve the questions in the as short way as you can. The only thing that matters is the final answers.

Solve your coaching DPPs(Daily Practice Problems) and any standard books for JEE Mathematics regularly. Previous years’ paper is again a good source of questions.

You should give about an hour or so for the board preparation daily. More than this will be the wastage of your time which you can’t afford. A month before the exam solve sample papers daily so that you get the idea that how much time on average it takes for you to solve the whole paper. You should try to solve it in less than 2 hours 30 minutes. You have to save the time so that during the review of answer sheet if you found any mistake you can correct it easily.

CHEMISTRY

The Chemistry paper in the board examination is extremely easy. You don’t have to do anything exclusively for it. Just solve all the numerical of NCERT and memorize all the theoretical answers and you will be fine. The paper is too short so you don’t have to worry about the time management. Also, try to write answers as beautifully as you can and since you will have a lot of time it won’t be a big deal.

JEE Advanced Chemistry, on the other hand, is very different. You need to have a very detailed and accurate knowledge of every topic if you want to solve the Multiple Correct Type problems. So my advice is don’t waste your time preparing for the board for this part. The focus of all your preparation should be on Advanced. Start your preparation for the board one month before the exam and that would be enough.

Language/Optional

The rest of the subjects have their importance regarding performing well in board examination. These subjects usually give high scores relatively for very fewer efforts. For English/Language preparation, attention in classrooms is sufficient to get a basic idea of a subject which can speed up the preparation during the examination in multiple folds. Optional are usually based on the interest of students so their preparation can be used as a break from the normal routine. Students are usually advised to give a glance to the previous year papers to get the idea of the question paper.

That’s all about the sustainable division of time and effort for board examination and JEE Advance preparations. In the end, I like to add that the board examinations have their own importance in the long haul of your career. From above you can see that by little smart preparation you can achieve a really good score in your board examination, and that will be your stapled to your resume for rest of your life creating an overall positive effect.

About the Author:

Aman Goel is co-founder at a Tech Start-up. He holds a BTech in Computer Science Engineering from IIT Bombay with a JEE Advanced AIR 33 (Year 2013).  During his free time, he enjoys writing articles/blogs. He is an Entrepreneur, Coder, Speed-cuber, gamer, and fan of Air crash investigation!

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