With Joint Entrance Examination Main round the corner, students are gearing up for one of the prestigious assessments held in the country for entry to India’s premier and finest engineering colleges, the IITs.

As the time is inching closer, students are going through turmoil as tension and anxiety has already started building up when all they need to do is be calm and patient. If you too are caught up in a similar predicament, it is essential that you avoid the last minute stress and anxiety and take appropriate measures.

To help you crack one of the most challenging examinations, here are a few tips, which will help you keep pace and prepare best for the same.

Follow a proper routine: Plan a good and proper routine for the last one month and follow it diligently. Make sure that you sleep and wake up at a fixed time and have a good eight hours sleep.

You must also develop a habit of studying for four to six hours continuously with short breaks of five minutes after every 40 minutes. This will help you focus better and learn effectively.

Also thoroughly go through NCERT textbooks and solve the back exercises rigorously. In addition, pay attention to the second half of the syllabus in Class XI for JEE Main exams.

Don’t miss out important topics: True, the entire syllabus is important but there are some topics whose concepts are omnipresent in the rest of the syllabus. It is essential to understand and practice these topics, as it will make it easier to understand other chapters as well.

Practice mock papers: One of the major strategies is to strengthen your base and have your fundamentals clear. For this you need to thoroughly practice and solve both theory and practical problems. It is not possible to find a text which is sufficient enough that you just read it and start solving all your questions in your textbooks.

Once you are done with your board exams, start focussing on Multiple Choice Questions and practice as much as possible. This in turn will help you to manage time and will also strengthen your subject knowledge besides helping you analyse your weak areas. One needs to also practice at least one good question bank designed for JEE.

Taking up both online and offline mock tests before the final exams can be helpful for students as they can become well acquainted with the online system and also learn how to manage time. Moreover, solving mock tests helps understand the structure of the exam thoroughly and how to best go about it.

Mock tests expose you to the real exam scenario and help getting used to it and combat nervousness. A good practice of mock tests not only gives an insight into your preparation level but also helps to focus on the key strategic points.

Refer to the expert tips and videos: You can get tips and tricks to clear from online experts. Don’t forget to watch the videos uploaded on YouTube by experts which can be downloaded free and can help clear your doubts and further strengthen your concepts.

Pay extra attention to the following topics: Every portion of the syllabus is imperative, but there are certain topics which require special attention in every subject that form the basis of the entire subject and can help you score well.

These topics can be applied in all other chapters and therefore, having a thorough understanding of them is important.

Physics: You should have a fair understanding of kinematics and dynamics which will help you improve your solving ability and skills.

Also, the theory of fields is really important. Pay special attention to the optics and modern physics which is usually neglected by the students.

Chemistry: Physical chemistry is quite scoring, numerical problems can come from this chapter, that can fetch you really good scores and hence all the units must be done carefully. Students tend to neglect inorganic chemistry but just a proper understanding of it can prove beneficial. Basic concepts of organic chemistry and basic concepts of inorganic chemistry must be thoroughly prepared. Make a schedule of revision plan for inorganic chemistry so that you are able to go through it at least for five times.

Mathematics: Calculus forms a base for almost every part of mathematics. Other important and scoring topics are determinants, sequences, permutation and combination limits, continuity and differentiability, matrices and determinants, coordinates and straight lines, pair of straight lines, sequence and series, conic section, vectors, probability, statistics, complex numbers, differential equations, trigonometric ratios and identities, height and distance, properties of triangles, inverse trigonometry and integration, etc.

In addition to this, students must also have an in-depth understanding of topics like co-ordinate geometry, vectors and trigonometry. Three-dimensional geometry should be practiced to get that additional or compensating score.

The writer is director, Aakash Institute