How important is it to solve the entire question paper in an exam? Unlike board exams, the JEE is not an exam where students should aim to complete the paper in time. ‘Solve little, but only your best’, is what some JEE professors advise their students. PaGaLGuY spoke to Ajay Nagar, Assitant Vice President of Resonance Coaching Institute on how to attempt the JEE Main paper. This is what he has to say,
“An average student may only be able to solve 35-40% of the paper. In a bid to attempt the entire paper, students may hurry through solving questions and in turn, make several silly mistakes. Hence, it is important to attempt only those questions that you are confident about and give full concentration to solving them correctly.
A student getting as low as 140-150 out of 360 in the JEE Mains, may also qualify to give the Advanced. However, in order to get admission in one of the top IITs like IIT Bombay or IIT Delhi, a student needs to score 300-320 in the Mains. To secure such high scores, students tend to rush through the paper. My suggestion is to not focus on speed solving, but rather on accuracy. It is not advisable to solve questions that the student isn’t sure of. But at the same time, if the number of questions that you are able to solve will fetch you marks only less than 100, then it is advisable to solve more questions that you are unsure of. This is because, with such a low score, you may not even get admission in any of the main IIITs or NITs. So the idea is to calculate your estimated marks while solving the paper so you can gauge how much more is needed to be solved.
Ideally, one should be taking mocks about 5 days before the exam. Last minute solving may reveal weak points on which the student doesn’t have enough time to improve. Students need to have confidence in their ability. What you haven’t mastered in the past 2 years of coaching, you can’t learn it in the last 2 days.
Thus, only solve what is required, because in a relative marking scheme, you don’t need to score full marks, but only score better than most other students.