JEE Main Exam Day Strategy

Tips and advice for the JEE Main exam day :

Have a light breakfast in the morning (For afternoon shift, don’t take heavy lunch).
Chillax. Focus on your breath. If you feel nervous, just keep telling yourself, “You will do well no matter how hard the paper is”. Dude! JEE Main paper is Easy.
Calm your mind and you will find a way. Be at your Fastest CPU speed. I say this because what you think, you become.
Take the necessary stuff. Like Admit Card, ID Card etc. Reach the exam center well before exam time that is mentioned in the instructions.
No last minute preparation. Be calm and bring all your focus to the present moment. (Before this you can have a talk with your parents. It may relax you).

Now comes the JEE Main paper strategy. You might have practiced how are you gonna attempt the paper, but let me put forth the 3 phase attempt method here.

Thumb rule : Skip the question as soon as possible when you find yourself nowhere close. Do not let any question eat up your time.

Attempting JEE Main Paper in 3 Phases

Attempt the JEE Main paper in three phases :

In the First Phase, do the easy questions. Those questions which you are confident of and sure that it will not take more than 1.5 min strictly. Skip the Hard & time consuming questions.
- At the end of the first phase, If you had a decent preparation then the number of questions you have answered gives you the average score. Remember those were the easy ones and most of the candidates can answer them.
In the Second Phase, take up those questions which you could not answer in the first phase. The questions might be time consuming (3 min). Might be a tricky word problem which you could not crack in the first phase. For all such questions you have the second phase. (Intermediate Questions)
- Your performance in this phase will help improve your rank. So focus and Concentrate. Try to resort to methods like Elimination of Options by methods like substitution. Do not always go first for conventional solving methods there is always an easy way.
In the Third Phase, take up very difficult and time consuming questions. Answering them correctly will improve your rank drastically. Questions for which you have no clue since you have either forgotten the formulas or do not know the concept should be dealt in this phase.
- Risk Factor comes into picture here. Make a smart guess of the option if you feel it is necessary otherwise there is no harm leaving them and start checking the previously answered questions.

Summarizing Phases & the Ideal Scenario :

- First Phase : 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes (Attempted all easy ones of 3 subjects)
- Second Phase : 30 min to 45 min (Answered Intermediate ones as well)
- Third Phase : up to 30 min (Cracking Hard ones – Boost your rank)

In the end I would like to say, Do your best so that you have no regrets.

Anmol Thakkar
IIT Kharagpur

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