Students’ Speak: 5 things to do in last 10 days to JEE Main

By: Abhishek Desai

With less than 10 days remaining to JEE Main, there is certainly a need to be aware of a clear study and revision plan. This plan will help clear all doubts and rectify commonly made mistakes in JEE Main.

• Avoid silly mistakes: Despite having incredible conceptual clarity, many students have struggled in this exam due to silly mistakes. However, these mistakes don’t happen just because of some weird accident. Obviously, there is no way to completely avoid such mistakes. Hence, even toppers usually don't get full marks in the exam. But you can easily avoid such mistakes to a great amount.

In one word, the solution is practice. Actually solving sample papers of similar difficulty to an average JEE Mains paper in three hours. The level doesn't even have to be too tough. You just need to keep solving around three easy-moderate level papers daily and check on how many silly mistakes you made. You can then keep an elementary shadow of the mistake in your mind so that in the actual paper, you get an idea of such a possible silly mistake, which you will be careful to avoid. It's important that you do this mostly in the last month, as long as you have no back-logs because your possible mistakes are the most important things you can have in your running memory during the exam. You can get such papers from the All India Test Series of almost any class all over India, like Allen.

• Conceptual clarity: There are two key factors that can judge a student's potential: speed and accuracy. Although speed comes with consistent practice and rigour, accuracy has two requirements: reducing silly mistakes and having a strong grip on the concepts. Now that your syllabus is over, it is assumed that you might’ve gained plenty of conceptual understanding. Here are some tips for last week preparation, for each subject:

1. Physics: Closely examine the prescribed syllabus for any concepts you might’ve missed out. Sometimes, they add in some concept in Physics, especially from Modern Physics, requiring some memorisation, which you must do from NCERT. Other than that, practicing timed sample papers thoroughly, and if you have any backlogs that might be bringing down your score a bit too much in your practice tests, study that concept/chapter thoroughly, using HC Verma, by reading that concept, and solving HCV's MCQ problems pertaining to that concept (don't try anything more, due to lack of time).
2. Chemistry: Most people divide Chemistry into Inorganic, Organic and Physical. But, I personally like putting it into chapters like Solutions, Surface Chemistry, Chemistry in Everyday Life, and some parts of Polymers and Biomolecules into Inorganic Chemistry, so that we can bundle up all the memory-oriented chapters into one set, and study them vigorously. This set obviously requires thorough memorisation. But never ever memorise this section a day or two before the exam. This section is like a song. You can only remember a song's lyrics if you hear the song continuously over long periods of time. Similarly, you'll have to read this section in short time periods, say two hours a day, but for a longer period of time, like a few months or so. And remember to remember your information in Chemistry only from NCERT.
3. Math: Practice, practice, practice!

• JEE Main time management: One of the biggest problems faced during the exam is time management. This is because JEE Main is more of a strategy-oriented exam. And like most competitive exams, it demands quick answering skills. These skills can be attained but they might come at a sacrifice of accuracy. So, how to improve your speed?

Well, unfortunately, there isn't much that can be done in the last week or month before the exam. This is because, time management requires you to be able to remember the sums you've solved in such a way, that as you see a question of a similar type in the paper, the complete method of solving strikes you right away. That's the only way of solving so as to highly accurately complete the paper with around 10-20 minutes remaining for checking.

Instead of starting your paper from a particular section from PCM, glance through the entire paper for the first five minutes, and also mark the questions whose methods you have an expertise in and start with them. That reduces a huge load off your shoulders to solve 75 whole questions, and instead, you'll have quickly as well as accurately solved a huge chunk of the paper in a short amount of time. This would boost your confidence levels, and help you overcome that stress which leads to silly mistakes.

• Class 12th v/s JEE Main: Most parents seem concerned about how lack of study for the board exams, and complete focus on JEE can reduce their ward's board’s marks below 75%, and hence don’t allow them to go to IITs and NITs. But, my simple answer to that would be, NO!

A board exam isn’t as hard as JEE, and if you study for JEE Mains, you have completed your basic conceptual studying for the Boards. The only thing to worry about is how infuriatingly the board-correctors deduct marks for not writing your answer properly.

To prevent this dilemma, grab your Boards book for the first time, 2-3 weeks before your Boards; and just start hogging over the book. Just completely rote learns a book in that fortnight. You might feel quite stressed about it, but trust me, that’s the way to go. It will turn out a decent board’s score, which will just help you qualify the eligibility criteria, which is all you need.

• JEE Main tricks: Honestly, you can use little tricks like making a formula sheet for Maths and Physics, a reaction sheet for Organic and Inorganic Chemistry, or solve questions by putting values in the question, or simply by elimination. But JEE Mains is quite thinking-oriented, so you shouldn't just memorise the formulas; rather understand all the important concepts.

About the Author:

Abhishek Desai is currently pursuing Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) in e-Business from Welingkar Institute of Management. He has done his Summer Internship in the field of Market Research with 'TimesofMoney'. He's also served as 'Secretary of the Green Committee' at Welingkar.