Students’ Speak: JEE Main tips to score 300+ in 1 month

By: Shikhar Gupta

Believe in yourself, I know that you may doubt yourself at times, at times you may feel like you are lagging or not motivated enough, but just keep going, all the glory in the world awaits you. 

Although I did not score 300 + but one of my classmates did, and later on when he told me his tricks, I was shocked how such simple things made a difference. Here I will try to share his methods, and how you can use them to ace in your own life. Before I start, prologue - it is very difficult to get 300+, and if you have no base in the subject, it will be even complicated, but if you think, you can make your foundation strong, these tricks will definitely add a cherry on top of your cake.

JEE Main Sample Paper

Lot of us are afraid to do sample papers, thinking we will do it in the last week or something. Realize, you can know all the questions, and still be unable to solve them in the exam, if you do not practice, and mould yourself to the exam environment. The suggestion is to always do solved sample paper, no point in doing something if you cannot correct your mistakes or verify it. In addition, those who waste their time trying to find every answer online or in books are just wasting time, which we do not have. Next tip is to do only standard sample papers- Allen, Resonance or any known name, because unknown brands can have wrong answers, that will spoil your concept, and they could be very different to the real exam pattern.

JEE Main Topics

I use to think that toppers do everything, until I realized they don’t in that sense, what they do is they study the pattern and start excelling in those that carry heavy weightage and don’t invest too much time on other parts, which may take weeks to master but count 0-1 questions only. Let us look at some topics that you need to work on, and some, which you do only if you have free time.

• Physics- Focus on Rotational Motion, Fluid Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, and basic Mechanics questions. Secondary topics – Semiconductors, Basics of Physics for just a simple read.
• Math- Focus on Calculus, Trigonometry, Equations and questions that are solved with tricks. Secondary topics like – Mathematical modelling, Reasoning are for just a simple read.
• Chemistry- Focus more on Organic, Inorganic (exception cases), Short numerical of physical chemistry like calculation mole concepts or balancing of equations. No, need to go too deep into – environmental chemistry, chemistry in everyday life and very generic or questions that take too long to solve.

JEE Main Revision

Now all of us know we need to revise, how is that trick, it is on how to revise, to be on the top, you need smarter revision techniques.

• Reverse engineer – I used to take up a solved question paper, and try to do the questions, if I can’t solve a particular question, time to re-read that concept and do few questions of that topic from standard material. This way, you get into a productive loop of knowledge.
  • Notes – Make handwritten notes, do not print, because that will not be retained in your mind. Make notes for – Important chemical reactions, Physics and Math Formulae. Revise from them either early morning or late night, will do wonders for you.
  • Mnemonics – many things can be retained if you make mnemonics out of it, it takes a few hours to learn how to do it and are extensively used by toppers.

JEE Main Practice

Remember you have to pass the exam only once, you have to ace only once, does not matter if there are 10 lakh people applying, you need only 1 seat. This was the ideology that I tried to use, the more you will practice the closer you get to that seat. Every subject needs a different approach.

For chemistry, I tried to be thorough with every page of NCERT, with Physics I read and solved at least the examples and all relevant chapter of HC Verma. Math is a tricky part; I explored various practice papers and sources and would also recommend you to not stick with just one book. Now there is an ironical idea, but I see many students solving RD Sharma, with 20 questions that use the exact same pattern, same formulae, with just different values, that does not add to anything, if you know how to do the math, and remember the formulae, you can invest time on more important things.

In the end, I will just say that believe in yourself, I know that you may doubt yourself at times, at times you may feel like you are lagging or not motivated enough, but just keep going, all the glory in the world awaits you. All the best.

About the Author:

Shikhar Gupta is a third-year undergraduate student at NIT Silchar. He is currently the General Secretary for his branch society (ECS) and the Vocal Skills Club Head for Illuminits: Literary Publication and Fine Arts Society. He is an avid reader, writer and a block chain-enthusiast. He was recently the winner of the RBI Regional Policy Challenge on Non-Banking Framework.