Where can you go wrong while preparing for the JEE Advanced?

Where can I go wrong?

In my opinion, the biggest mistake a JEE aspirant can make is approach JEE prep from the narrow prism of school/Board preps. Let me explain.

During their schooling years up to Class 10, the students have faced their school exams, respective Board Exams and, perhaps, a few optional competitive exams. So, over the years, their methods of preparation have evolved on the basis of these exams.

However, JEE is a different type of exam and such methods usually don’t work with JEE. As a result, initially, most aspirants don’t score well in the tests held by their coaching classes and it takes a while for the few fortunate ones to figure out the right prep and exam strategy for JEE. Those who don’t or can’t figure out the right strategy are unlikely to achieve their potential.

For instance, in the Boards, everything is declared beforehand, i.e., the weightage of the chapters, total marks, marking pattern, format of the questions and even the required depth of knowledge. The last is obvious from the fact that books are recommended by many, if not all, Boards. The implicit message here is that the depth of the syllabus is as per the relevant book. Perhaps, in the Board exams, there may be a slight twist to some of the questions given in the recommended book but not much; in many cases, the questions are verbatim from these book(s). This allows the students to prepare accordingly for the Boards.

In the case of, both, the JEE Main and Advanced, essentially, only the syllabii are declared beforehand. Therefore, the message that JEE conveys is that the given set of concepts would be tested; in contrast, as mentioned above, in the Boards, a given set of questions are tested. Thus, there is HUGE difference between the Boards and JEE! For instance, if you consider an extreme case, you can score well in the Boards even if you cram the answers without really understanding the concepts. But, that won’t work in the JEE!

Also, in the Boards, as mentioned above, the depth of the syllabus is known but it is an unknown factor in JEE. Therefore, in the latter, even the ‘simplest’ of concepts has the potential to humble you and no amount of practice is sufficient. Consequently, you can never be sure that you’d be able to answer any question based on that concept. That is a very unnerving prospect; thus, the confidence that students exhibit towards their school/Board exams is absent when they take the JEE. For more on this, please see Can I crack the JEE Advanced without completing the coaching material perfectly?

In addition, the JEE Main declares only the total marks and the format of the questions beforehand while in the case of the JEE Advanced the students come to know even the total marks, marking pattern and the format of the questions only when they open their exam booklets. That makes it even more difficult to prepare for the JEE.

Next, the JEE syllabus is vast and is covered at a rapid pace; this gives the students very little time to dwell on any topic thus allowing the concepts to sink in. Add to this, the complexities of the varying format, the variable marking pattern and a plethora of other unknown variables and you have one heck of a tough exam! No wonder the JEE Advanced is one of the toughest exams in the world! Please see Top 12 Toughest Exams in the World – Listovative.

Foxed!

Apart from this, there are many other factors and intangibles that make JEE very, very different from the Boards and the sooner an aspirant realizes this the better for him/her. Hence, prep methods, prep strategies and exam strategies for JEE become very important and, as mentioned above, are very different from school/Board exams.

Unfortunately, for most students, old habits die hard and they have to be weaned off their school/Board prep methods. And, in addition to prep and exam strategies, that is one of the reasons many students enlist the services of a mentor which is unheard of in school/Board preps. Thus, this is another mistake that students make when they rely only on coaching classes to see them through their JEE prep. For more on this, please check out Is a Mentor necessary in JEE prep?

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All the best!