JEE Main 2020: Last Minute Preparation Tips

After the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) exams end in a few days from now, budding engineers and architects from across the country will gear up for their biggest test - the all-newJoint Entrance Examination (JEE). Scheduled to be held on 6th April 2017, (offline), JEE is expected to be taken by about 18 lakh students in over 1500 centres in India and abroad.

About 1.5 lakh top candidates, based on their performance in the JEE (Main) 2017 (Paper 1) (including all categories) will be eligible to appear in JEE (Advanced) 2017.

The subjects and difficulty levels

Some don’ts for the papers

“Avoid looking at the questions asked in past IIT exams. Some students try to solve these questions to get an edge but this is not required if you have solved AIEEE papers and revised Class 12 syllabus well. Avoid writing lengthy solutions for problems — particularly while doing your preparations. Do not worry if the first two hours of the paper prove to be average for you. Make sure that you do well in the third hour. Your target should be to solve one-third of the paper to be able to make it to the top 1.5 candidates,” Kumar adds.

 Here is expert analysis from two leading test prep academies following the first day of JEE Mains 2016 Paper (Offline mode). 

JEE Mains Paper Analysis by Career Launcher
Paper Pattern: 30 questions for each subject (Physics, Chemistry, Maths) were asked in the paper.
Marking pattern: For every correct answer: 4 marks awarded and for every incorrect answer: ¼ marks deducted.

PHYSICS paper Analysis
18 questions out of 30 were easy, requiring very less calculation and of the JEE Advanced syllabus. About 4 -5 questions were a bit lengthy due to calculations but could be done by students who are preparing for the Advanced version. Remaining questions were from the topics exclusive to the Mains exam like EM waves, semiconductors etc. A student who had prepared well for the board exams would have found these questions easy to do.

8-10 questions could be attempted correct by an average student. A score of 45-50 can be considered as good score.

CHEMISTRY paper Analysis
10 questions out of 30 were very easy, can be answered by just reading the question. 5 questions were easy but required a bit of calculation for solving, 3 questions were factual in nature. 10-12 questions required a bit of concept application in which students are prone to commit mistakes. In one question, no option seems to be correct, and in another, options were not consistent with the statement of the question.

A score of 60-67 can be considered as a good score.

MATHS paper Analysis
Out of the 30 questions,12 questions to be easy, 7 questions are lengthy, 6 questions are conceptual, 5 are tough questions.
There were 7 questions from Calculus out of which 4 were easy, 7 questions were from Algebra out of which 4 were easy, 5 questions from Co-ordinate Geometry out of which 4 were easy. There are only two questions from Trigonometry out of which one was easy.
Surprisingly there are nine questions from Vectors, 3-D Geometry, Matrices, Determinants, Statistics, Logic and LPP out of which four are easy.
A score of 50-55 can be considered as a good score.

An overall score of 115-120 can be considered as a cut-off score for qualifying for JEE Advanced, i.e., being in the top 1.5 lakh candidates.

JEE Main Paper Analysis

The overall paper is well balanced and checks a student for his knowledge as well as problem solving ability of the student. As was expected the severity level of the paper seemed slightly lesser than last year’s AIEEE exam. Furhtermore, as per the guidelines, the paper was primarily based on NCERT. If we look at the paper composition in detail, as far as Physics is concerned, the questions were distributed over the entire syllabus barring apart a few topics like laws of motion where not even a single question was asked. Out of 30 questions, 14 questions were of easy level, 10 questions were medium and 6 questions were hard. So, the expected cut off for physics is about 50 out of 120, for a student to able to qualify into top 1.5 lacs students. Any student who has practiced entire NCERT will must be able to score good. The hard questions were of very good quality and would have confused some students.

With regards to the chemistry portion of JEE (Main) 2016 (Code-H) has 12 easy, 10 moderate and 8 difficult questions. The average and below average students should be able to solve all the easy questions. The cut off should be around 48 marks out of 120 marks (40%). Above average students will be able to solve most of the moderate questions. Most of the questions are based on the theory given in NCERT text book. However, in Code-P, the Question nos. 38, 44, 48 and 59 do not have the required theory in NCERT text book. Question No. 32 has two correct options as given in NCERT. Question no. 38 has wrongly written mean square speed instead of root mean square speed. The question in its present form cannot be solved. Question no. 44 has apparently all the four options correct. It does not have any correct answer. Question no. 59 is based on Bhopal gas tragedy for which nothing is given in NCERT.

Paper of Mathematics was also well balanced in terms of difficulty level and topical distribution. Ten, eight and five questions were asked from algebra (10), calculus (8) and co-ordinate geometry (5), respectively. Two questions were same as given in NCERT text book while few others were similar. With nearly 60% questions under the category of easy, this paper was on the lines of last year’s AIEEE paper. The assertion-reasoning questions were good enough to confuse any student and will definitely play major role in deciding rank.

The JEE (Main) (Offline mode) was conducted on 7^th April, 2013. About 14 lakh students are estimated to have appeared in the offline test. Last year 11.5 lakh candidates had taken the  AIEEE test. Out of these, top 1.5 lakh students will be eligible for JEE Advanced exam which is the gateway to IITs, IIT-BHU and ISM Dhanbad.

Last-minute tips for JEE (Main)

Try conventional methods first, say experts. If they don’t work out, try to understand the problem again and find clues that can lead you to the solution. “Go through the concepts related to the problem once again and see how they can be applied to the problem at hand. Try to relate the problem to real-life situations. It will help you to analyse it better. Refer to the solution, only when you have exhausted your limits. See what you had missed earlier. Practice similar problems. Doing 100 quality and concepts-based questions is more important than doing 1000 questions, which have not been selected carefully. Devise your own shortcuts and ways to tackle particular kind of problems,” says Batlish.

Paper 2 will test a student for visualising three dimensional objects from two dimensional drawings, visualising different sides of three dimensional objects and also analytical reasoning and mental ability.

“The aptitude test is designed to check a candidate’s imagination, creativity, observation, architectural awareness and perception. The drawing section has two to three questions involving sketching of scenes and activities from memory of urban-scape (public space, market, festivals, street scenes, monuments, recreational spaces etc.), landscape (river fronts, jungles, gardens, trees, plants etc.) and rural life,” says Batlish.

Structure of the exam

Paper 1

This is a three-hour paper comprising three sections: part 1 - physics, part 2 - chemistry and part 3 - mathematics. There are 30 questions in each of three subjects; which are of objective type-multiple choice with single correct answer. In each section there are 30 questions of four marks each. One should be very careful as there is one-fourth negative marking for every question

Paper 2

This three-hour paper consists of part 1 - mathematics, part 2 - aptitude and part 3 - drawing. The mathematics section has 30 objective-type multiple choice questions with single correct option and one-fourth negative marking. In this part, the syllabus for mathematics includes common topics from Class 11 and 12 CBSE or state Boards. The aptitude section has 50 objective, multiple choice questions with four options and one-fourth negative marking.