Want to prepare for JEE Main from Class 11? These tips are for you

By Ajay Singh

Having proper guidance is a must for yielding better results. You must have a well-defined preparation strategy where you have to manage everything, from schools and board examinations to your final aim.

The initial step to begin your preparation is to have an explicit vision and determination towards your goal, i.e., to become an engineer. You must be mentally prepared for this two-year journey that will take you one step closer to your dream. JEE Main will be your first checkpoint from where only the best will go forward to JEE Advanced, which will fetch you admission in one of the premier engineering colleges of India. Here you will get to learn world-class skills and gain optimum knowledge.

Therefore, you must take your preparation seriously from the very beginning, i.e., Class 11.

Having proper guidance is a must for yielding better results. You must have a well-defined preparation strategy where you have to manage everything, from schools and board examinations to your final aim, JEE Main.

An important thing that must be considered is what is the best JEE Main preparation material. This should be your primary concern.

When you begin the preparation, you have three clear choices:

• You can get yourself enrolled in a regular two-year course of a renowned coaching institute
• You can opt for a distance learning programme where you can have access to all the resources without having to go to the institute
• You can prepare on your own

Let us discuss all of them in detail, along with their pros and cons.

• A two-year regular course: Most of the students, who are confident about their choice from the very beginning, choose this option. You can prefer any coaching institute you find appropriate. You can check the number of selections and interact with the students studying there to know about the pattern and quality of their teaching. This will facilitate you in choosing the best option among the myriad of those available.

The most significant advantage of opting for a regular course along with your school is that you will get all the teaching material handy in the form of study packages. You won't have to worry about collecting resources and finding the correct material. These study packages are designed by professionals in all three subjects, Physics, Chemistry, and Maths. If you stick to them diligently, you can expect to score reasonably good marks in the exam.

To crack any competitive exam, consistency is the key. And if you are consistent in your efforts, the result will undoubtedly be in your favour.

Coaching institutes also grill you regularly through the weekly test series with the JEE Main pattern questions. No just weekly, but monthly and All India test series where you get ranking among all the students of all the batches of that institute help you immensely towards the preparation.

A disadvantage for this option along with your schooling, would be that some of you may not be used to long hours of hard work just after you've passed out from Class 10. It is a major switch and may take some time to adapt. You may feel under pressure after attending school and then coaching. This can lead to increased stress and a decline in your performance, but you must stay positive.

• Distance learning programmes: This is also a two-year course, which begins from Class 11, but you do not attend the classes physically at the institute. You get access to all the study material at your home and also the video lectures of the classes. In such a situation, the issue of resources will stay sorted, just like in a regular course. Also, you can take doubts from the teachers.

This can save you time and help you to prepare with ease right from your home, but it requires a lot of will power and a strict schedule. This gives you the flexibility of having your own schedule, unlike regular courses where you have to follow the routine provided by the institute.

Additionally, you can also join any coaching institute or private tuition for any single subject that you may have a problem in. This way, you can focus more on your weak points and strengthen them in the time you have.

The only disadvantage of this can be that you may get distracted or may lose focus sometimes. Also, you don't get the opportunity to appear in regular tests and hence, may not be much used to the atmosphere of an exam. However, you can join special test series courses online, or offline, which can help you in getting comfortable with the exam atmosphere.

• Self-preparation: This category is actually a misnomer, everyone prepares by themselves, and the coaching institutes are just an aid to guide them in the proper direction. But preparing on your own without joining any coaching class is what is meant by self-preparation.

You require plenty of commitment and will power for making this option successful. The first thing that you have to do is to collect the best study material available. For the theory part, NCERT provides the standard books, and they must be read thoroughly, especially when you have board exams simultaneously.

Then you have to choose books for practicing multiple-choice and numerical questions.

Try to solve as many questions as you can because that will help you more than just reading the theory. You have to follow a time table and devise a strategy for these two years.

When you read the chapter, make notes of it, jotting down the important points so that they can help you in revising them multiple times because reading every time from the book might appear to be cumbersome. When you are revising, just go through the notes, and you can have a glimpse of all the essential points. These notes will be particularly helpful in the last few months of the exam. Keep solving previous year question papers simultaneously. Don't waste the last moment solving papers. If you do it regularly, you'll be able to study and grasp things from the examination point of view.

Just keep in mind that nothing is impossible. Hard work and consistent efforts will lead you towards your path of success.

About the Author:

Ajay Singh completed BTech in Information Technology from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi in 2010. He began his career by coaching Class 11-12 students for Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology. He later qualified GATE in 2011 and started a career in the field of Electronics and Communication. However, his passion towards the Software industry took him to service industry and now he works as a Software Application Support Engineer (L3) at IRCTC.