Feels good to be back writing again... Greetings folks!
Well, your boards have begun already! I hope you have been preparing sincerely. You definitely don't wanna be rejected after clearing JEE Advanced simply because you could not clear the top 20-percentile mark. Make sure you properly explain and justify each of your points when writing answers in boards and try avoiding silly mistakes; they hurt!
Once the boards are over, you might take an evening to rest and refresh your mind but more than that, you simply can't afford! Because the next challenge, the JEE Main would be staring at your face then, mere 10 days away! A lot of you have asked me about revision tips for those days... All you can do at this point of time is, take a quick glance at all the topics, preferably your own notes, all the concepts, solve a problem or two if needed. Make sure, you do not miss out on revising any of them, afterall each and every question counts!
In any case, JEE Main should not be so much of a challenge to you, if you have been preparing for JEE Advance all along. So let's come down to the time that matters, the gap between JEE Main and Advance. I would recommend joining a crash course for those who haven't joined a coaching till now. It would help you adhere to a proper timetable. In case, you feel you can manage it on your own, you are free to do so. Just make sure, you stay focused at your goal and cover it all.
Here are a few quick points which you should definitely keep in mind :
My boards themselves were good (could have scored more, but didn't bother!). I had been enrolled in a dummy school and had to return home for the formalities and the preparation. Once the boards were over, in the coming days before JEE Main, I quickly glanced through all my two years of hardwork... Each topic, the notes, a couple of questions here and there to brush up my skills and ideas, you might have noticed as well that the board-prep tends to blunt your skills. All this helped me get back to the state my mind was, before I had begun preparation for Boards. The key is to not lose patience here, you must actively revise it up for the first obstacle in your way. Also do not neglect any topic at all, you do not know which one might be targeted by these question-setters this time. Once that was dealt with, I went back to Kota two days later itself, after convincing my parents that the sooner I went back, the better it would be!
Once I reached back, JEE Main was only history. We were given a schedule to properly revise all the topics, with review tests every alternate Sunday of the covered topics. I didn't enroll in any AITS, even though I should have, but that doesn't really matter now. Apart from the tests conducted in Bansal, I also tried the papers of a couple of other coachings. With the passage of time, I gained confidence (so would you!). And that desire to get JEE over with, for once and for all! It was a pretty strange feeling, even though I wanted it to be over as soon as possible, I knew I was gonna miss this later... The way you study for JEE, the mindset, the emotions, the life at Kota, I was gonna miss it all. But on the other hand, there was the long awaited anticipation of a reward after 2 years of consistent hardwork, the award in the form of result and the college life thereafter. In any case, days passed, the first test was VITEEE for admission to VIT, the test went pretty bad for me; I remember looking at my VITEEE result, which came before JEE result, and feeling doubtful of myself, I had an AIR of 105, while there were a few of my batch-mates in top 100. Thereafter came BITSAT-2013 at Jaipur, I remember going to Jaipur with couple of my friends for that. The scores came out instantly after that, and how happy I was! I had a score of 418/450 after all! And soon, all the revision at the coaching was formally over on 25th May. A week to go, and I am quite sure you can imagine the atmosphere all around. In those days, I finished off a mock-paper collection given to us by Sameer Bansal sir, and soon whatever little doubts I had had vanished into thin air. I vividly remember that day, 2nd June, waiting outside the exam centre, anxious to shed the load off my shoulders. But once I went in, all thoughts and emotions were forgotten! All world ceased to exist! And that, my friend, is exactly what should happen with you too! I would be putting up a post on exam temperament later. So I would be covering it up there. The paper on the whole was satisfactory for me, but I never in my dreams had expected an AIR as coveted as 5!
Remember, if I can achieve it, why can't you? If you've been consistently putting in your hard-efforts for the last 2 years, no force in this world can keep success away from you! There is absolutely no reason why you can't be in my shoes a few months down the lane. And keep in mind, these months are gonna be absolutely crucial in your final JEE result. You can make up for any and all mistakes and lags that might have occurred until now. So get up and running, because what you do in these months are gonna determine which direction your life takes... And mark my words, life in an IIT is more than worth all the pains you might endure (based on my experience so far... :P). I might cover that too in a later post.
On this note, I would like to conclude here. See you in a later post. Till then, keep working hard! Good luck...
PS: For the curious ones,
Well, your boards have begun already! I hope you have been preparing sincerely. You definitely don't wanna be rejected after clearing JEE Advanced simply because you could not clear the top 20-percentile mark. Make sure you properly explain and justify each of your points when writing answers in boards and try avoiding silly mistakes; they hurt!
Once the boards are over, you might take an evening to rest and refresh your mind but more than that, you simply can't afford! Because the next challenge, the JEE Main would be staring at your face then, mere 10 days away! A lot of you have asked me about revision tips for those days... All you can do at this point of time is, take a quick glance at all the topics, preferably your own notes, all the concepts, solve a problem or two if needed. Make sure, you do not miss out on revising any of them, afterall each and every question counts!
In any case, JEE Main should not be so much of a challenge to you, if you have been preparing for JEE Advance all along. So let's come down to the time that matters, the gap between JEE Main and Advance. I would recommend joining a crash course for those who haven't joined a coaching till now. It would help you adhere to a proper timetable. In case, you feel you can manage it on your own, you are free to do so. Just make sure, you stay focused at your goal and cover it all.
Here are a few quick points which you should definitely keep in mind :
- Make a rough list of all the topics you studied for the last 2 years. Mark each topic as 'Strong/Weak' and accordingly assign it the time you will require to revise it perfectly. In short, freeze your timetable for the next month or so.
- Revising a topic should involve going through the notes once, which shouldn't take up much time considering that you have just through JEE Main. Once that is done, solve questions pertaining to the topic; don't go for lengthy and 'tough' problems. You would be far more benefited if you solve smaller questions to make sure there are no doubts at all. At this point, you should also take a look at the questions which troubled you when you encountered them the first time.
- Try finishing this revision as soon as you can, because the sooner you are done with them, the sooner you can start taking up mock tests and practice papers, all JEE style.
- Do take tests, but make sure you do not overdo that, because that may lead to getting exhausted. Remember, that hunger to solve questions, that motivation should be there right till the end.
- Important for those enrolled in a coaching, this is the time when you should come out of the coaching level and practice test papers of other institutes. They not only give your mind a different flavor, but also expose you to all sorts of situations and twists and tricks.
- Get enrolled in some AITS (All India Test Series) or the other. It would help you analyse your mistakes as well as give you an idea of the level of competition you gonna face later. But make sure you finish off the topics for the test before taking it, else you might end up getting frustrated.
- I earnestly request you to not have active data plans for this period, because try as you might, it would only end up as a distraction. #first-hand-experience
- Pay no attention to any rumors that might fall upon your ears, because it is your sincere efforts that are gonna decide your fate, irrespective of the difficulty and format of the paper, that you might hear about. In this regard, trust only the official websites.
- Go through your past papers, analyse the mistakes you consistently repeated over the two year interval.
My boards themselves were good (could have scored more, but didn't bother!). I had been enrolled in a dummy school and had to return home for the formalities and the preparation. Once the boards were over, in the coming days before JEE Main, I quickly glanced through all my two years of hardwork... Each topic, the notes, a couple of questions here and there to brush up my skills and ideas, you might have noticed as well that the board-prep tends to blunt your skills. All this helped me get back to the state my mind was, before I had begun preparation for Boards. The key is to not lose patience here, you must actively revise it up for the first obstacle in your way. Also do not neglect any topic at all, you do not know which one might be targeted by these question-setters this time. Once that was dealt with, I went back to Kota two days later itself, after convincing my parents that the sooner I went back, the better it would be!
Once I reached back, JEE Main was only history. We were given a schedule to properly revise all the topics, with review tests every alternate Sunday of the covered topics. I didn't enroll in any AITS, even though I should have, but that doesn't really matter now. Apart from the tests conducted in Bansal, I also tried the papers of a couple of other coachings. With the passage of time, I gained confidence (so would you!). And that desire to get JEE over with, for once and for all! It was a pretty strange feeling, even though I wanted it to be over as soon as possible, I knew I was gonna miss this later... The way you study for JEE, the mindset, the emotions, the life at Kota, I was gonna miss it all. But on the other hand, there was the long awaited anticipation of a reward after 2 years of consistent hardwork, the award in the form of result and the college life thereafter. In any case, days passed, the first test was VITEEE for admission to VIT, the test went pretty bad for me; I remember looking at my VITEEE result, which came before JEE result, and feeling doubtful of myself, I had an AIR of 105, while there were a few of my batch-mates in top 100. Thereafter came BITSAT-2013 at Jaipur, I remember going to Jaipur with couple of my friends for that. The scores came out instantly after that, and how happy I was! I had a score of 418/450 after all! And soon, all the revision at the coaching was formally over on 25th May. A week to go, and I am quite sure you can imagine the atmosphere all around. In those days, I finished off a mock-paper collection given to us by Sameer Bansal sir, and soon whatever little doubts I had had vanished into thin air. I vividly remember that day, 2nd June, waiting outside the exam centre, anxious to shed the load off my shoulders. But once I went in, all thoughts and emotions were forgotten! All world ceased to exist! And that, my friend, is exactly what should happen with you too! I would be putting up a post on exam temperament later. So I would be covering it up there. The paper on the whole was satisfactory for me, but I never in my dreams had expected an AIR as coveted as 5!
Remember, if I can achieve it, why can't you? If you've been consistently putting in your hard-efforts for the last 2 years, no force in this world can keep success away from you! There is absolutely no reason why you can't be in my shoes a few months down the lane. And keep in mind, these months are gonna be absolutely crucial in your final JEE result. You can make up for any and all mistakes and lags that might have occurred until now. So get up and running, because what you do in these months are gonna determine which direction your life takes... And mark my words, life in an IIT is more than worth all the pains you might endure (based on my experience so far... :P). I might cover that too in a later post.
On this note, I would like to conclude here. See you in a later post. Till then, keep working hard! Good luck...
PS: For the curious ones,
- My CBSE Board score was 93.6%
- My JEE Main score was 320/360.
- My JEE Advance score was 321/360, with the breakup as 115, 106 and 100 in Phy, Chem and Maths respectively.
