JEE ADVANCED 2018: Do’s and Don’ts

Hi readers, Kshitij here.

This post is primarily meant for those who are appearing for JEE Advanced 2018 to be held in the CBT Mode on 20^th May, however, should serve the purpose for all future aspirants for their coming AITS and ultimately JEE. I won’t waste much time of the readers and as there’s already a “What to do in the last 20 days before Advanced” already on the blog, I won’t repeat those points all over again. This article is a general guideline on how to approach the paper, what to do while solving the paper and what not. 

Basically, it is the collection of mistakes I made in JEE Advanced 2017 and ended with such a disastrous AIR. So let’s get back to some historical aspects of what I expected after the paper and what happened.

Paper I: Did quite well. Was sure of not have made many mistakes, although never anticipated my score but ended with 137/183 just 3 marks less than what I attempted for.

Paper II: Now this is where I screwed it up. Maths here was a child’s play and I got 2 wrong in it, resulting in a big -4 where I could have got +12. Physics, it was arguably one of the easiest papers in the history of JEE Advanced and I managed just a 30/61 in it. Let's not discuss how it got screwed :(. Chemistry, well this was the final nail in the coffin which pulled my rank surely by a minimum of 500 or so as I ended with just 27/ 61. Total 102/183, “40” marks less than what I calculated later I could have got had I kept myself cool during then. 40 marks are good enough to drag me from top 500 to 2.3k. 

So let’s see what to do this time and whatnot:

       1.  Stay cool and confident during the paper. The paper need not be tough always. Yeah, I wasted a significant amount of time thinking how come Advanced be so easy, there must be some catch, but no, there are times when the paper setters don’t test your knowledge of PCM but test your anxiety and pressure handling capabilities. Don’t believe my point that paper can be easy then check this

 This question featured in the Paper 2 of JEE Advanced 2017. Now don’t you see such questions in school papers but this is where keeping your head cool comes into the picture. The early you realise that JEE Advanced these days is not a test of your knowledge of PCM, but of your “Problem selection ability, Temperament and Calmness”, the better you are.

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      2.  Be prepared for any and every type of question. Never skip a topic thinking it may not come in the exam. Say for instance

(JEE ADVANCED 2017 PAPER 1)

Now who reads IUPAC Nomenclature, it’s hardly asked, lets read other stuff but the ones who did the former well took away a handsome 4 marks while others (including me) kept wondering what the hell made the paper setters give this question.

  

     3.  Read the question and options very-very carefully. I lost around 20 marks here itself due to carelessness in reading the questions and options properly.

(JEE ADVANCED 2017 PAPER 2)

Is this question difficult? In no way isn’t it but I very confidently got this wrong, reason I didn’t read the molecular formula of the reactants and 3 options satisfied the reactions but only 2 did it along with the molecular formula, resulted in a crying me with a big -2 out of nowhere.

(JEE ADVANCED 2017 PAPER 2)

Now, who solves the question right in the paper but “ticks the wring options” in it and bubbles the same. I did just to kill myself with another -2.

So the conclusion is, keep cool, don’t be excited to see an easy paper. If there’s no trick in the questions there must surely be something and here is where your “reading” comes into play.

     

      4.  Don’t do any OMR Mistakes, be it filling your information or bubbling answers. Although I didn’t lose any marks in this category it’s really heart-breaking to see a question you solved correctly after so much struggle go wrong due to a minor shift of the bubbles in OMR.

      5.   Finally a word of advice for the online paper. Although I am not used to them it's sure that solving the paper won't be that easy as it used to be in the offline paper, not for one or two but for everyone, so no need to panic over the changed exam mode.

      

       I came to know that there is a question panel displayed on the top showing all questions at a go but without options. Make sure to have a look at the questions before jumping to problems solving.

       Also no need to be surprised to see a very hilarious marking scheme like +5/-3 or something like +3/-2 or multiple answer integer or 4 digit integers or anything out of the box. JEE is full of surprises and “you must be surprised only if there is no surprise”. Well, that’s never going to happen. The paper setters are well versed how to make you sweat in the exam hall with all level of papers ranging from an utterly easy to a very tough one.

Chill out, try to enjoy those 6 hours of paper as a regular problem-solving session, keeping out all worries of results and you will surely ace the paper.

      

All the Best!