This blog post will take you through my personal journey of cracking IIT JAM exam!
Before sharing the entire journey of my IIT JAM, I would like to make this clear that this was my 2nd attempt at IIT JAM. In the 1st attempt, I got an AIR 70.So the preparation actually happened in 2020-21. The next year I started to prepare for ISS exam of 2022. You can read about that in my ISS preparation blog.
A huge thanks to Sudhir Sir from whose coaching and guidance this was ever possible for me to clear this exam.
1. Why did I take coaching? I joined Deep Institute in January 2020 for their IIT JAM Statistics coaching. To say the least, I was literally one of the students of my batch who had no idea about Statistics even though it was close to 2 years of doing my Bachelors in Statistics. I understood nothing in our classes of college and this had already shattered my confidence in Statistics, so that's why I opted for coaching. And the way Sudhir Sir teaches is amazing. You know he is a great teacher because everything from basics to advanced seems extremely easy after being taught by him. So, if you are like me who has no idea what they are doing, join his coaching. I can gurantee that you won't be disappointed!
2. How I started to cover the topics? The first topic that I covered was Probability. It was one of the most challenging part to figure out that how I should go about preparing it because I was really weak in it since my 12th standard. So what I did was I started to cover each and every chapter of Probability from NCERT Maths Class 12th. Even though, some questions are veryyy easy but I still did those. And once I had reached the Miscalleneous exercise , I realized that I had literally become super confident in Probability.After that, I solved FMS questions and then the previous year papers and I had literally mastered probability by then.
So this was my approach for every topic after that - to start from the very basics and then keep on moving forward till you master that particular topic!
How I managed my time?
3. Classes or Exam preparation - For me, the choice was simple and it was my IIT JAM preparation.Basically, I didnot attend a lot of my classes. I am sure a lot of people would disagree with me on this, but for me college was not doing much. Even though, I was studying in one of the best colleges of DU, it wasnot benifiting me in any way. So, I consciously made a choice to attend as less classes as possible and devote 90% of my time to my IIT JAM prep.
But, I understand that it might not be possible for you to do the same so just try to make most of the time that you are left with and just keep this is in mind that which one of these is going to benifit you?
Self-doubt?
4. How I dealt with self-doubt? I knew a lot of my classmates including the toppers were preparing for this exam. It would make me feel that how can I even have a chance of clearing this exam when a lot more people like them are preparing? So this thought invoked a lot of negativity inside of me, but what kept me going was when I was able to solve even one question in the previous year exams without any external help. And this was being possible because I was very consisitent and determined with my preparation.
Time for preparation
5. How much time do you need to study for IIT JAM exam? Initially, I would study for about 5-6 hours, then after 2-3 months it was 8 hours and during the last month it went upto 10-12 hours. But, I don't think time is the factor that matters, it is the consisitency that matters.
You need to be very consistent with your prep. Take a lot of breaks, like for me I would feel overwhelmed after studying for 4-5 days, then I would take the next day off. This helped me a lot mentally in order to not quit the preparation.
Practice
How many times do you need to practice - I practiced a lot, like seriously. I practiced FMS, previous years and Mathematics about 50-60 times throughout this one year. I know , it sounds a lot and impractical but as my basics were too weak so this was the only way that I could feel confident about the exam in any way. This helped me tremendously in familiarizing with the type of questions that were asked in the final exam.
There is a different way in which I practiced the previous years, if you want you can check that out too "Correct strategy to practice the Previous Year papers for IIT JAM exam"
In the end:
I would like to say that, I wasnot able to get any seat in IIT during my first attempt and it might make you think that what was the point of doing so much then? Let me just tell you that the next year I just prepared for ISS throughout the entire year, I just filled the examination form of IIT JAM just for the sake of it. Didn't prepare for more than 15 days this time, and still got IIT!
This proves that "Hardwork alwasy pays".I didn't need to prepare even for a month this time, because the year 2020 was dedicated to this exam's prep only. And the moment I opened the notebooks this year, each and everything came back to my mind just like it was in 2020.
If you have read this blog this far, thank you so much and incase of any doubts feel free to contact me!