Students’ Speak: JEE Mains preparation tips you must not miss

By: Shikhar Gupta

JEE is one the most sought-after competitive exam among students, clearing it opens new paths and a chance to get into prestigious institutes including IITs (after Advance) and NITs (in Mains).

I was one of the good students of my class but never the one people expected to crack any exam, but eventually, I did, so today I will try to share the tricks and methods I developed in my journey so that you can implement that and ace this exam.

First, important thing is to understand that JEE is not a 100m sprint, but rather a marathon, your success depends more on your consistency and stamina than sheer skills. That is to say, those who may not be the best in their class like me too can clear it with hard and smart work. So, let us see, some things that will definitely help all of you.

Keep calm: I see a lot of my friends burning out in anxiety, where they will spend day and night in front of a book, not understanding a concept just cursing themselves, don’t be that guy. The important thing is to “Know the topic” does not matter how much time it takes you. Further, have some hobbies intact (Like I used to play one-hour badminton every day), do meditation and eat healthy food.

Habitat: Don’t sit on your bed to study, I see a lot of people who study while eating or while watching TV!  Do not do that, when you sit down to study, just study, (some soft music is still okay though). I took it even further and in the last few months, I always studied at the time when I will be giving the exam so that my mind works efficiently at that time.

Class 12: A lot of my friends were really good with studies but they got too involved with boards and screwed their JEE, understand that Boards are useful only to an extent, and that too can be achieved with smart work. If you use some tricks you can prepare both boards and JEE together, believe me I managed to get 95 % which is good enough.

• Do past years’ papers: This cannot be stressed enough, I will recommend doing at least last 10 years, you will see how many questions are almost related and score marks, below I am still attaching preparation strategy for individual subjects.
• English: Just type every chapter name on google and you will be able to find its summary, read them thoroughly for both poems and prose. After you are done with that, just go ahead and try to download some sample notice, email, poster and other Section B topics, just try to grasp the basic format and practice one or 2 of solved ones. Again, does not matter if you know about a question or not, write something, write anything even remotely related to that, you would get some marks.
• Chemistry: The syllabus is very similar to JEE, just focus on the elaborate concepts, like equation balance steps, and organic reactions with their steps as these are regularly asked, also do a few questions for physical chemistry from standard books, because they are very scoring.
• Physics: Start with diagrams, go through every diagram in NCERT or your standard books, practice them, because they are a super marks booster, make a diagram, explain it and you get full marks, try again doing theoretical questions, as to why this and that, for rest you will be sufficient with your JEE prep.
• Maths: This will be comparatively easier for you than JEE, but again remember, don’t skip steps, practising for JEE we start solving things in our head and just want to get to answer, here the case is different, even if your answer is wrong, you get marks for every step of the way that you do correctly, so use that to your advantage.

Revision: I too initially made this mistake, where I will read something do questions and just never see it again, don’t do that, always keep revising things, because first priority is to solve those that you have read before others. Don’t try to focus on an entirely new chapter in the last week, as you may neither become an expert in that and may lose on already completed chapters too. Finally, make-handwritten notes, always, various studies have shown that the mind retains what it writes if you just print something or type it on PC; you won’t remember it in the exam. You can do a similar thing for boards too, practice diagrams, flowcharts and mnemonics to boost your efficiency.

Time Management: One of my best friends prepared all through the year, taking coaching from best institutes but in the exam he panicked and failed. How you manage your mind and time is ultimately all that matter between you and your rank. Doing over dozens of practice papers I developed a way to manage time. This may work for you with few modifications that suit you. 

Therefore, I started with Chemistry, because in all case there will be few theoretical questions that I can answer without calculations, then I used to go to physics, and do its theoretical question in the beginning (Like direct formulae questions from Quantum Mechanics). This will give you great confidence for the rest of exam. Second, I used to scan the question before solving that is read the question and the options too, as many questions can be solved just by options.  I had a standard rule, which I will recommend to you too, if a question takes more than 2 minutes, just mark and leave it, don’t invest too much time on any question don’t let it get to your ego or pride. Much more is at stake than that one question.

Finally, if I ever started panicking or getting too nervous, I closed my eyes and breathe for 20 seconds, it made me relaxed than chaotic for the rest of the paper.

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.