JEE Main 2014: Student reactions

Madiha Jawed & Aneeket Barua | shiksha.com

The JEE Main 2014 for B.Tech admissions, has begun on April 6, 2014 with the offline version of the exam. The exam, divided over three sections (Physics, Chemistry and Math), concluded around 12:30 pm today. Around 13, 56,805 appeared for the offline exam, conducted across 150 cities in India and also held abroad.

The JEE Main online exam will be conducted across a span of four days on April 9, 11, 12 and 19, 2014.

Shiksha.com caught up with few students who took the exam to get first hand information about the exam paper this year, student expectations and more.

Most of the students that we spoke to said that the paper this year was extremely tough, way more than last year's JEE Main.

Difficulty level - Overall

Praful Gupta, who came all the way from Aligarh said, “The paper was very tough. In fact, it was tougher than the JEE Advanced 2013 paper. I cracked JEE Mains and missed JEE Advanced by a few marks, last year. But looking at the difficulty level this year, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Can you get the papers cancelled this year by any chance?!".

Giving a second attempt at the exam, Shivam Negi, a resident of Ghaziabad, said, “There is a striking difference between last year’s and this year’s paper, if the difficulty level is to be compared. I missed JEE advanced by 40 marks last year and I am really tensed this year too after attempting the exam.”

He further added, “I could solve 50-60 questions and I am sure about these. I preferred solving Maths first, followed by Chemistry and Physics.”

Contrary to these students, Harsh Barua who took the exam last year as well said, “The paper was easy, like I expected. I had solved a lot of mock and sample papers and it helped me a lot. May be, this is the reason, I found the paper to be easy. “

Difficulty level – Section-wise

On asking about the difficulty level of each of the sections in the exam, Shivam added, “Every question and every section had its own parameters. So, I can’t say much on this. But, I would definitely say that level of the exam was that of the IIT JEE level”.

Another student, Shivi Vats said, “The chemistry section was the easiest, while Mathematics was the toughest. Physics was moderate except one or two questions”.

However, Yash Mitra who started preparing for the exam only a fortnight ago said, “I found Chemistry the easiest and Physics, the toughest. I am sure of cracking JEE Mains this year.”

According to Praful, the topic permutations and combinations weren’t given any weightage. He said, “ No weightage was given to Permutations and Combinations and Calculus was given low weightage than Exponential. In Physics, I think equal weightage was given to all the chapters and topics while in Chemistry, the Organic part had low weightage than expected”.

Majority of the students that shiksha.com spoke to, informed that if all the three sections are to be compared; Mathematics topped the list in terms of difficulty level.

Any surprises?

Talking about surprises in the paper, Swati from Swami Vivekanand School said, “No such surprises in the paper but there were tricky questions in Chemistry”.

While another student, Shivi said, “There were a lot of surprises in the paper. But what I liked the most was that questions in Chemistry were easier than expected”.

 Shubham, who is confident of clearing JEE Mains this year informed, “Surprisingly, there were no questions from NCERT this year except one each in Maths and Physics. Last year, a lot of questions in each section were from NCERT. But this year, it was just the opposite.”

Expressing his views on the same, Yash said cheekily, “The whole paper was a surprise. What more can I say."

 Any glitches?

A couple of students informed that one of the questions in the Mathematics section was incorrect. Verifying the same, Shubham said, “One of the questions from Quadratic equations was wrong. I solved it a lot of times, but couldn’t get the correct answer.”

Parents’ view on JEE, normalization and reservation

Though the new JEE made its debut last year, the exam is still a hot topic amongst parents and students. More than students, their parents looked apprehensive about the whole system.

A teacher at DPS RK Puram and a mother of an aspirant said, “I like the whole system. I think through JEE, students will at least get a National/All India Rank. Morever, 50% of the seats are for the reserved category, then why shouldn’t I, being a mother of an only girl child, use this to my benefit because there is a reservation for a single girl child in JEE”.

However, a lot of parents felt that the introduction of JEE has made the process a bit more confusing and complicated.

One of the parents shared, “It is demoralizing for students who do not get selected for JEE Advanced because only 1.5 lakh are eligible to appear for that exam. So, does that mean, if my ward is not amongst the top 1.5 lakh students, he is not capable enough or does not deserve to get into IITs?”

Other issues that parents complained about was the lack of time to prepare for the exam. In fact, a lot of these aspirants didn’t even get a proper week for preparations, they said.

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