In 2012, Ministry of HRD simplified the engineering admission process by introducing further changes:
There will be two exams, the JEE (Main) followed by the JEE (Advanced) in 2013
JEE (Main) will be equivalent to AIEEE (for admission in colleges other than IITs). It will be conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
JEE (Advanced) will be equivalent to the IITJEE (for admission in IITs). It will be held by the IITs.
Admission to IITs will be based on the rank in the JEE (Advanced) exam.
Only top 150,000 candidates (including all categories) from the JEE (Main) will be qualified to appear in the JEE (Advanced) examination. However, only students who are among the top 20 percent in their respective boards will be considered eligible.
Before 2006, the IITJEE 2nd stage examination (Mains) was of much higher difficulty level than Class XI/XII. Students had to prepare for IIT JEE with the help of coaching classes. Class XI/XII students could not cope up with the dual pressure of school and ‘IIT JEE coaching’. As a result, students started neglected their school studies in trying to keep up their preparation for IITJEE. This caused irreparable damage to their careers. In IITJEE 2006, JAB made the changes in the pattern to deal with these problems.
New IITJEE Pattern
Old IITJEE Pattern
1
Single Stage
Two Stages – Screening & Mains
2
Objective type only
1st Stage: Objective2nd Stage: Descriptive
3
2 tests of 3 hours each
1st Stage: Single test (3 hours)2nd Stage: 3 subject tests (2 hours each)
4
Only 2 attempts allowed
Multiple attempts allowed
5
Closer to Class XI and XII in difficulty
Much more difficult that XI and XII
These efforts were fairly successful.
Most students now prepare along with Class XI – XII. Students cant afford to neglect school studies or drop an year.
Now, almost 70% of the students who get through, are 1st timers.
However, a large number of students were still traveling to destinations like Kota, Delhi etc. to join coaching classes. School studies were still getting neglected as their was no direct linkage of school performance with admission to engineering colleges.
Attend all lectures, even if attendance is not mandatory. Using someone else’s notes can help, but it is no substitute for attending the lecture. When you hear the information, process it, and write it in your notes, you are already beginning to learn the information. Reinforcement of the information through revision of your notes completes the learning process.
A student spends about 25 hours per week, in coaching and school, attending classes of Physics, Chemistry and mathematics.
Taking Notes From Lectures
Taking notes during a lecture can be a frustrating, almost overwhelming, job.
What should your notebook look like after a lecture?
In general, it should look a little like an outline with clear main ideas and some sub-points with a moderate amount of details and examples. There should probably be some white space so that you add notes from your text or from the next day’s lecture.
Sit near the front and center of the class. You will have the most direct communication with your professor, and you will less likely be distracted.
Read the chapter from the textbook before the lecture. It makes a tremendous difference to the understanding of the lecture. This way, a student can focus on the difficult parts of the chapter and ask questions.
Learn to identify main points. Professors often give cues to what’s important by repeating information, changing their voices or rate of delivery, listing items in order of importance, and, of course, by writing on the chalkboard. What key point is the professor making?
Maintain eye contact with the instructor. Of course you will need to look at your notebook to write your notes, but eye contact keeps you focused on the job at hand and keeps you involved in the lecture.
Stay active by asking questions. Active listening keeps you on your toes. Whenever you have a doubt, immediately ask for clarification. Get very specific in the question that you ask.
Try to anticipate what the professor is going to say. It keeps the mind involved and active in the learning process. Your mind does have the capacity to listen, think, write and ponder at the same time, but it does take practice. You can think faster than the lecturer can talk.
If the classroom is too hot or too cold, wear appropriate clothes to deal with it.
An essential skill for good note taking is good listening.
Hearing vs. Listening
Is there a difference between hearing and listening?
Yes, there is! Hearing is simply the act of perceiving sound by the ear. If you are not hearing-impaired, hearing simply happens.
Listening, however, is something you consciously choose to do. Listening requires concentration so that your brain processes meaning from words and sentences. Listening leads to learning. Most people tend to be “hard of listening” rather than “hard of hearing.”
Receiving an online education could help you maintain the important material given by professors more organized than when you have to attend to class lectures. This is one of the reasons why students are considering online universities.
Time Management
Tick, tick, tick … time just keeps moving on.
You have so many competing demands on your time: School, coaching, homework, assignments, reading etc. There seems to be a perennial shortage of time. How can you come to grips with all of it?
Time really can’t be managed. You can’t slow it down or speed it up or manufacture it. It just is. Time management is MANAGING YOURSELF when following some basic time management principles
First thing is to determine how you are spending your time now. Capture the last entire week on a piece of paper and see the timetable you followed. Count the total number of hours spent in self study during the entire week.
Once you have completed such an analysis you can begin to change the way you manage yourself in relation to time.
Some time saving tips
1. Identify “Best Time” for Studying: Everyone has high and low periods of attention and concentration. Are you a “morning person” or a “night person”. Use your power times to study; use the down times for routines such as laundry and shopping.
2. Study difficult topics First: When you are fresh, you can process information more quickly and save time as a result.
3. Use Distributed Learning and Practice: Study in shorter time blocks with short breaks between. This keeps you from getting fatigued and “wasting time.” This type of studying is efficient because while you are taking a break, the brain is still processing the information.
4. Make Sure the Surroundings are Conducive to Studying: This will allow you to reduce distractions that can “waste time.” If there are times in your hostel or apartment when you know there will be noise and commotion, use that time for mindless tasks.
5. Combine Activities: Use the “Two for one” concept. While sitting in school, finish readings of the textbooks whenever you get time. If you are spending time at the barber’s shop, bring some numerical to solve. If you are traveling to or from the institute in a public transport, bring your notes to study and memorize.
Goal Setting
Ask any successful person, the secret behind his success, and very likely the answer will be “goals”. Goal Setting is extremely important to success.
The personal goal chart is a strategy for setting realistic goals for studying and carefully evaluating the ways by which those goals will be achieved. It takes into account one’s motivations for fulfilling particular goals. It is said that “desire to learn” gives “success” and “success” gives “desire to learn”… so it sounds circular!! But once you get into this circle nothing can stop you from achieving what you want. You might have heard that “nothing succeeds like success”. What that means that it is important for one to get some success to achieve more of it.
Long term plan (Annual) should be made with a view of exams, holidays and school. It creates a overall structure under which smaller milestones are set. In absence of a long term plan, you suddenly find shortage of time when your exams and tests are close by and you have no alternative.
Deciding on a short-term plan calls for daily and weekly planning. These plans are the most effective because they are more realizable as compared to long-term plans.
You can also make achievable short plans like:
“Completing 25 questions on determinants this Tuesday evening”,
Most people seem to be asking this question all the time.
* “Which is a better course material – FIITJEE, VMC, BT or Bansal Kota?”
* “How should I choose the best correspondence / postal course?”
It is not fair to endorse one brand over the other, particularly when I know that most of the above stated brands were rendered completely useless, less than 3 years ago, when the IIT JEE pattern was changed. The changes were made completely with the objective of reducing the impact of coaching.
The old IIT JEE coaching brands have no experience in Objective type problem solving techniques.
In this context one can understand that emerging brands in IIT JEE coaching, have better material than most old ones. In fact, buying course material from old brands is a recipe for disaster.
How does one choose the course material?
We have listed down some of the critical parameters that should be seen by the students and parents while choosing the course material
* Authors?
Ideally, it should be written by IIT graduates (who have successfully appeared in IITJEE), who are involved in IITJEE coaching. IITians understand the psychology behind successful preparation for IITJEE. By coaching students an IITian is likely to become aware of the problems faced by students.
* Based on the ‘New IITJEE Pattern’
Established teachers in old brands are well aware of the ‘Old IITJEE Pattern. They have no clue of the nuances of the new pattern. Just changing the problems from descriptive to objective type is not enough. A good course must be good on the following parameters:
* Is it time managed?
The biggest problem faced by students is managing time. The course should have a time plan to itself. Having a course material with a lot of problems is of no use unless we know the time to be spent on it. Some course materials try to give a lot of material making it impossible to complete. The total course material should be balanced in such a manner that a student can complete it within the time available.
* Strategies on solving objective type problems
Since, most of the traditional instructors did not face any objective type problems, they dont know the methods of attempting objective type problems. A lot of problems can be solved by elimination of wrong alternatives, intelligent guessing, modulating the speed, speed reading etc. The course should have special focus on the above.
* Synchronization with the school syllabus
Since most students now have to prepare along with Class XI – XII, the problem of managing IIT JEE preparation along with school studies has become more acute. The course should be such that it benefits students in synchronized study.
Other key parameters to assess the course material are: * Online testing
BITSAT has become online. CAT has become online. It is very likely that IIT JEE also become online by 2011. Online testing also gives a good comparative assessment immediately. Students dont need to join all India test series on paper.
* Preferably in workbook format
Students should get used to solving problems in lesser space. A course material in workbook format limits the space available, forcing students to get used to the format.
In my opinion, coaching has its own uses and disadvantages.
If we talk about the classes I to VIII, there really is not such a big need for a separate trainer to coach the student. We must understand that a coach or a trainer is required to prepare the student for some major examination. So when we talk about our school system, the major examinations begin only from class IX. Coaching institutes definitely do a great job at making the student run. They try to make sure the result shows up. Thats their only job.
The school studies are quite sufficient in terms of their content and number of periods allotted for preparation for the examination at hand. Most of the teachers in schools also have sufficient knowledge to train the student for the exams. So it is not really the lack in value addition from the school system that is to be blamed for growth in the number of coaching setups these days.
It is something else.
The student has been trained to go to school as part of a regular routine. He has to go to school whether he makes use of that time or not. And, as far as preparation for examination is concerned, there is coaching or tuition in the evening. So the student makes this a routine… to go to school unprepared, come back empty headed as if nothing really happened there with some homework to be done, and then tries to get real value from the coaching. Even the student is not to be blamed here.
In fact, there is no place where ‘what is the right way to prepare for your life and examinations?’ is taught. The school and coaching are only aids to prepare the child for the exam, and both do their duties quite satisfactorily, but thats not all. The student in the early years has to be taught HOW to study, WHEN to study, HOW MUCH to study, how to MANAGE TIME and WHY to study at all. What he should expect from the school and what from coaching. This training, everyone thinks is not useful and time wasting. But I surely feel that if I was given this training in my childhood, I would have saved a lot of my own time and would have been more happy and stress free.
As I said, school does bring in its own value. So the student must focus hard on whatever is being taught in school (for school studies), and then put all focus in the evening in coaching (for competitive examinations). Arts, science, commerce, it does not matter. There are competition exams in every stream now-a-days.
For choosing the right institute, one should only look at how near the coaching is to ones house and how much time is he going to spend there (because self study is the most important thing). Cost should never be the criteria. Time is everything, once lost, never comes back. Money lost, comes back.
While going to school, the student must prepare well for the class thats going to be held in school in advance. So much so, that the student must do a thorough reading of the chapter thats going to be taught in school and take his doubts (whatever was not clear) to the school to ask the teacher. If this is done by the student regularly, performance of the student will improve drastically.
RSS