Students’ Speak: Last-minute tips to crack JEE Main

By: Manish Motwani

In the last week, do not start something extra. Leave that and focus on what you studied and practised. 

Every year Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) witnesses the highest number of participation from students all across the nation. This year, nearly 14 lakh students applied for the exam. Hence, it is important to learn something useful about the tips and tricks which will help you get ahead of the competition.

First, talking about the last-week strategy. In the last week, one should start revising the syllabus and work mainly on the concepts of the problems solved earlier. Revision should be done in short notes and points. In the last week, do not start something extra. Leave that and focus on what you studied and practised. Most importantly as a matter of practice, start solving past years’ problems in a restricted environment. This will give an exam like feeling, help revise the syllabus and analyse the marks.

Time management: It is one of the most important deciding factors in an exam. Hence for this, it is highly recommended that one should read the paper in the first five minutes, find the easiest questions and then start doing them first. Never, attempt the tough questions first. They are time eaters and lowers one's moral if not get solved.  Also, try to solve oral questions of chemistry first, mostly from Organic Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry. Solve them first and this time can be utilised for the questions requiring long calculations in maths and physics.

Also, the most important thing, keep filling OMR along with the paper itself and never leave it for last.

Talking about scoring topics, Mechanics and Thermodynamics from Physics are important. From Maths, Conic Section and Calculus are important. Probability and Statistics also have good weightage. You can drop permutation and combination as these are very vast topics and only one or two questions is asked from that. Still remember all the formulas from that. Then comes chemistry. Organic chemistry is a whole important more with respect to JEE Advanced than mains. So, if you prepare from advance, mostly mains is covered. For inorganic, go with 11th and 12th NCERT. CBSE students should go through NCERT very thoroughly as it covers their board also and for competitive also. I would suggest 'Parikshabodh' book for practical based question and answers in Chemistry. Try to focus more on quality questions rather than doing more. After you had enough of your syllabus revised, try doing previous year questions of JEE (mainly last 10 years).

Talking about how to manage between board exams and JEE entrance, one should prepare for Mains as well boards hand in hand. For CBSE students, the paper of Mains and their board exams are almost the same. Although, for non-core subjects such as Language like Hindi, English, Physical Education etc. focus only in the last three weeks. Learn the chapters and question answers. Also, discuss the syllabus once with your school teacher as well. They will let you know the board pattern and scheme. For state board and ICSE students, try to take the syllabus of school and competitive hand-in-hand. Focus more on the syllabus that is common in both, this way you will cover most of your syllabus. Rest, try to cover in the last two months of exams. Avoid studying the full syllabus in one go and at last time, else, it may disturb your focus from competitive. 

About the Author:

Manish Motwani is a third-year Computer Science student from Lovely Professional University. He is passionate about writing content to help students in solving their career-related queries and providing guidance in their journey. He is also a tech enthusiast and travel freak.