Your best source of cooperation is your competition. Working with a competitive study group goes a very long way in the successful preparation of IITJEE. When you decide to study in groups, you recreate a cooperative environment to multiply your knowledge exponentially. Students can learn very quickly by sharing their knowledge, skills and resources.

Group formation guidelines

• Look for people who are experts in certain subjects and topics.
• Seek diversity in expertise. There should be at least one expert from each subject. Within a subject, look for experts in different areas like organic chemistry, physical chemistry, calculus, co-ordinate, electricity and magnetism, thermodynamics etc.
• This could lead to having a group that is very diverse. It is good because you may also have different learning styles represented in your group.
• It may not be possible to find all experts from the friend circle itself.  So, it is important to seek out experts from other areas.
• Make a study group of five to seven people (Larger groups get unwieldy. Groups with less than 5 are difficult to sustain)

How to study in groups?

• Ask your friends for clarifications of doubts.
• Quiz and challenge each other with questions from the IITJEE syllabus.
• Share useful concepts and questions
• Be very eager to help. Answer and teach whenever somebody has a problem.
• If you have to teach a concept, you have to have complete clarity and understanding of the concept. So you are not only helping the other group members, but also you are reinforcing your own knowledge.
• Someone should take the role of the session leader to keep the session productive.
• Take a few minutes at the end of the session to evaluate what you’ve done.
• Don’t meet more than once in two weeks
• Meet at least once a month
• Don’t meet without a clear agenda for the meeting

Related Topics:

1. Tips for IIT JEE Success #2 – Study Hard & Smart
2. Tips for IIT JEE Success #1 – Motivation
3. Tips for IIT JEE Success #3 – Develop a System- The Ultimate Weapon

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.

Related Topics:

1. Tips for IIT JEE Success #3 – Develop a System- The Ultimate Weapon
2. Tips for IIT JEE Success #2 – Study Hard & Smart
3. IIT JEE Coaching – Direct to School (DTS)