How to keep oneself motivated

Ah! I remember the days of my preparation for JEE. Difficult days they are, aren't they? Parents have expectation from us, Teachers have expectation from us, We have expectation from ourselves. Some exam might not go well and all the hopes seem to get shattered. A big question mark seems to be put to our capability of achieving. De-motivation might kick-in in such a scenario.

• But you need to remind yourself what a fighter you are. There have been exams in the past where you have not performed upto expectation and there would be such in the future too. But that shouldn't make the smile on your face fade away. "In a fight he who has the greatest strength doesn't win, rather the one who fights the best wins". You will get through this. Don't waste your time in getting demotivated and prepare harder for the next fight. Analyse your shortcomings in the previous paper and try to not repeat them this time.
• Take out some time to listen to songs which you love. It would give you enough motivation for the whole day and increase your dopamine levels.
• Take out some time to jog or do any other physical activity in fresh air. It would rejuvenate your mind and help you follow the difficult routine you ought to follow.
• It is not a bad idea to go out to meet friends for a couple of hours once a week. It would keep you excited and going through the phase.
• If you haven't yet, try to develop interest in the subjects. I am going to tell you a great psychology hack, it is upto you to make use of it. The more you think and convince yourself that the subject is interesting, the more you will start feeling that the subject is actually interesting. It might sound silly but it is scientifically proven. Once you have developed interest in the subject you are already half-way through !
• Don't keep upto yourself during these days. Talk to your friends who are preparing for the same exam regarding their preparation and ask them how they feel. This would make you realise that you are not the only one who feels this way! Talk to your friends and parents if you feel low or under-confident. Don't just start under-estimating your capabilities. You have to and will emerge as a winner. This is life. There are no losers in this game.
• Listen to motivational speakers. My favorite is Sandeep Maheshwari. In one of his videos, he compares life to a cricket match where there are no fielders and no stumps. Life is the bowler and you are the batsman. There are plenty of opportunities(balls) life will throw at you, doesn't matter if you miss a few. There is no way you can get out unless you yourself leave the pitch. So, keep fighting.
• Do meditation. Meditating for just 10 minutes a day can give you so much energy that you cannot imagine now. It will also help to increase your concentration levels hence reduce silly mistakes.
• Lastly, BE HAPPY.  Whatever happens to you don't lose your happiness. That is something no one can snatch away from you unless you give it away yourself. No one can defeat you unless you yourself accept your defeat. Always remember that whatever you are doing is for your happiness, not at the cost of it. You are a human, not a machine.

Signing off
-Heisenberg

Revision Strategy

Revision is the most important part of journey for an IIT aspirant. I still remember my teachers telling me that "Whatever you study for 1.5 years contributes only 50% to your rank and How you revise in the last 5-6 months contributes the other 50%". It is only near this time that within such short period of time you will witness so much shuffling of ranks even within your institute that you can get an idea about what would be happening to the forecoming rank potentials at All India Level. Hence, this is the opportunity you have in your hand to blur all the mistakes you have made in the past and you must use it very wisely.

• Never revise in a haste. That is the worst thing you can do with your time. Don't revise just for the sake of some exam the next day. It is human nature to be worried about short-term targets but in that you must not forget your long-term target i.e. JEE Advanced. So just revising formulae one day before an exam is a very bad idea. Instead go on chapter-wise and strengthen your topics from the very core.
• Keep in touch with Inorganic Chemistry throughout your revision and keep on revising it. It is one branch which will only improve by constant revision since then you will start correlating different chapters. Also do Comprehension type questions of Inorganic Chemistry. They are often muti-concept based and will force you to think beyond the boundaries of chapters and hence reinforce learning.
• Never skip an exam just because you haven't prepared for it. You will always feel that your preparation is incomplete for the next exam or maybe you didn't revise that chapter and it is going to come the next day. "What if I don't score good in that test? What if I get demotivated after the result?" A plethora of thoughts generally follow :P Chill! Marks of internal tests are not going to affect you in any way ! The kind of revision provided by tests is the better than what you could do in 3 hours. That is because when you give a test you are forced to think which makes you realise what all you know and what you don't. I am not asking you to give all the test. But give atleast 2-3 series of tests which would give you a comprehensive revision.
• You should highlight whatever you feel is important but you had forgotten. This is useful for all topics except Inorganic Chemistry :P (You know why :)) ) This would allow you to do more number of and effective revisions by consuming less time.
• Organic Chemistry may also give you trouble as is the case with most of us. It is logical only if you thoroughly know the reactions properly. There is no way other than revising reactions from time to time and also if you can correlate them to each other it is better.
• Give a first revision to all chapters by January mid and start doing some questions from all chapters. If you are giving exams regularly then this would not be a difficult task. Also, take my word that however much you revise you would always feel that you need to revise more but after a certain amount of time you should start giving more focus to solving multi-chapter based questions or mixed questions from all chapters rather than revising chapter-wise theory again and again. You aim should be that you should not feel disconnected to any chapter in the latter parts of your revision. 
• In the last 50 days after JEE Mains, I would recommend to solve one 3 hour paper everyday and analyse your shortcomings in that paper. It would improve your paper-attempting strategies and give you the required last-minute revision. 

In the end, I would like to congratulate you for who you have made yourself into. You have the power to do more. Keep in touch with your friends and well-wishers for regular motivation and advice. I know this is a hard phase of your life. But you have to put in your maximum. Don't worry, it will pass. You will emerge from this with flying colors. Just imagine your happiness when you get admission in your dream college. If that doesn't keep you motivated, I doubt anything can.

Signing off 

-Heisenberg 

The Art Of Guessing

"Seriously? Is guessing really an art and can it be mastered by practice?"
Yes it can. And this exactly would be our topic of discussion in this post.
I would like to make it clear that it is not like the top-rankers solve all the questions properly. Rather they are smart enough to outwit the examiner. Think of it as a game. You get equal points even if you blindly start solving the question or you apply some trick by eliminating the options. So what is wrong in doing the latter ?
With the growing numbers of negative marking and advent of multi-correct questions in JEE pattern, guessing has been increasingly risky but if applied in the right manner it is fruitful. Only that you have to be cautious before applying it.

Situations where you can guess:-

• Dimensional Analysis can be of your help to guess. While it is use in physics is obvious where you can eliminate the options if they don't follow the dimensions of what is asked in the questions(which is rare btw :P) what I would like to focus on is its use in Maths. Suppose there is some condition given in terms of some variables which will also be fulfilled if you multiply each variable by 2 and in the question you have been asked the sum of these variables. Then you can definitely say that under the transformation x->2x the sum must not change hence it must be zero. 
• In those questions addressed to a general case you can solve them by taking a specific case iff it meets all the conditions given in the problem. Then you can be sure that the answer you get by solving this special case would be the same as the answer you ought to get after solving for the general case. E.g Square as a special case of parallelogram
• The Obvious One- When you can eliminate the options. But be careful here you must calculate the probability of your answer being correct depending on how many options you have eliminated. Get some probability into action and ensure that you get a net benefit despite negative marking in that question.

These are just some examples. Of course there are many more which I remembered in my JEE days but fail to recollect now. Of course there are many which I did not even think of but you can discover for your own good. So next time you are unable to solve a question think once to find guessing methods which can be applied to solve this problem. Note that it would only be 1 in 30 questions that you would be able to guess the answer because the problem-setters are also becoming increasingly smart but who knows that might turn out to give you an edge over the others. In exam if a guessing method naturally comes to your mind(which will after practice) then only you should go for it else don't waste much time on thinking about the methods to guess and move on to the next problem. This post is just to remind you to open your mind to accept all types of solutions and give equal respect to each. However useful this approach might be to score well in the exams, while learning you must also solve the questions properly because within that solution only will lie the beauty of the problem.

-Heisenberg

KVPY

Kishore Vaigyanik Proyotsan Yojana 

This is one of the major exams during your JEE Preparation. Though it might not be useful for most of you, clearing KVPY does give you confidence and boosts your morale in your Preparation.

 The exam doesn't have a fixed syllabus as such and there are few topics that are not in JEE syllabus but are asked here.I will further categories my posts according to the stages of the same common points.

In SA stream, for the first round, there are quite a few questions of class 12 in physics and Chemistry.Also in most coaching institutes, Organic Chemistry is not covered until November end.Therefore it might be a good Idea for you to study some of these topics in advance. Doing these topics will really provide you an edge and help you score a decent rank.Also If you have previous knowledge of Biology, it would really help you.Though if you have some time, go through important topics of NCERT Biology.

For SX stream there are a few questions here and there, mostly in physics, which might seem out of syllabus.Study Relativity ONLY if you have an interest or extra time xD.

Quite many questions of mathematics can be solved by substituting values and calculator does help you in that.In 2015 about 7-8 questions could be solved by just substituting values in the calculator. 

NOTE: Solving Previous years papers is a must.It will help you know which topics are really important and recent trends of the papers. 

Recommended Books 

• Solved Papers of the Respective Streams

      

                          
           KVPY Solved Papers        KVPY Solved Papers
               SA Stream                            SX Stream

Though you can get Papers on the official website, these books help since they are solved.

• NCERT Biology 

            
This is quite useful in SA Stream if you are a nonmedical student.But use this only for important topics and only in case you have free time.

SECOND STAGE FOR KVPY 

The second stage for KVPY is usually not as hard as it sounds.The Interviewer knows that you are a high school student, therefore knows what to test you on. You don't need extra practice for the same.Just read past interviews of the candidates.Some of the interviews are given below.

Also, I will be adding many more interviews of various candidates who are currently studying alongside me in IITB and cleared KVPY.

KVPY Interviews  might help you, read these At least once before your Interview.

For any queries, feel free to comment ...

About Us

Hi, I am Kushagra Juneja, currently pursuing Computer Science Engineering at IIT Bombay. I got AIR 11 in JEE Advanced 2017. I was also the World Topper and Gold Medalist at International Junior Science Olympiad 2014 in Mendoza, Argentina. I bagged Bronze medal in International Olympiad in Informatics 2015 at Almaty, Kazakhstan. I got AIR 3 in KVPY SA stream . I cleared various mathematical olympiads like RMO, INMO and also went to the Camp of IMO at HBCSE, Mumbai. I also cleared many astronomy olympiads like NSEA, INAO and also went to the Camp of IAO at HBCSE, Mumbai. I also cleared NSEP, NSEC, NSEB. I also got NTSE scholarship. My class XII board marks are 97.2% in aggregate and 99% in PCM.

I am Aditya Khanna ,currently pursuing Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay .I got AIR 426 in JEE Advance 2017. I got NTSE scholarship in class 10 ,cleared KVPY SA stream . I cleared NSEC and furthur cleared INChO and also went to camp for IChO at HBCSE Mumbai.I secured 97.2% aggregate and 97.66% in PCM.

Let us get started by clicking on any of the topics mentioned to the right.