ITT JEE Aorund the corner

Rethinking about the past can be instructive at times and it pays to relive the moments of IIT-JEE 2006. All the aspirants who showed up on April 9 last year at the venues of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) had come mentally and physically prepared for a long innings. Or, should we say, borrowing the terminology from the flavour of the season - for a three-day match equivalent of an examination.

All the players got into the field as early as 8 a.m. and the first innings lasted two hours. Then there was a drinks break for two hours. This was repeated two more times. The order of play was physics, mathematics and chemistry.

Third umpire

This author was physically present at one of the venues of the examination and this narration is as direct as from the desk of the "Third Umpire." And as this Third Umpire interacted with the players as they came out of the field (read examination hall), one thing was becoming more and more clear. Those who played with their fundamentals got it right. The exams were more of a test of the depth of understanding of the fundamentals than a test of problem solving.

Life does offer you a second chance and may be the third chance. But JEE draws the line after the second. We are referring to the cap on the number of attempts in the JEE. Of course, you do not even want to think of the second chance now. You need to get it right the very first time. And as you gear up for your first and hopefully the last shot at the JEE on April 8, we will walk you through the lessons of your seniors as they took the test exactly one year ago. And as the saying goes - hindsight is also welcome if it instils foresight. We shall try to instil some foresight in you through the experiences of JEE 2006.

Just like your seniors, you will also face six hours of examination. The only difference is that you do this in two blocks of three hours each - with each block of three hours testing you on physics, chemistry and mathematics. And because of this, you would start one hour later - at 9 a.m. and end one hour earlier - at 5 p.m. - compared to your seniors last year. Physics, chemistry and mathematics will have equal weightage is all that the prospectus for 2007 will tell the candidates.

Will the number of question be equal in the three subjects? That is anybody's guess. Why? Remember AIEEE 2006. All three subjects had equal weightage, but mathematics, with fewer questions at 40 compared to 55 each of physics and chemistry matched up by providing a category with highest marks per question.

We are presenting this at this juncture so that you can also anticipate some new variants. That way you would not be surprised with what hits you on exam day. On AIEEE day in 2006, this author interviewed several students - many of them had spent too much time in understanding why some questions had more marks in mathematics.

In IIT-JEE, the primary challenge for the student would be to fix the perspective of a problem. As we indicated, when the emphasis on solving lengthy problems gives way to placing the problems for what they are, the initial minute / minutes spent on sizing up the problem will be all too critical. We will illustrate this with an example - There were two sections in JEE 2006 that did not carry negative marks. Three sections - on the other hand - attracted penalties for wrong answers. What was the logic behind this apparent anomaly?

The astute test-taker understood the method behind this apparent madness. Those questions that could be guessed attracted penalties. Those that extracted the real answer out of the student with no element of luck in answering did not. Simple logic - isn't it? Yes when you understand the fundamental logic, everything is simple. Even an intelligent guess would not conquer the questions that did not attract the negatives. The student had to be spot on.

We will examine those two varieties of questions - with the objective of providing you the preparedness if you have a chance encounter with these in the JEE 2007.

Accurate answer

In the first variety of those cluster questions, students had to work out the accurate answer - an accurate answer to a numerical problem and mark that numerical answer in the specially provided grid in the OMR sheet. For example, if the answer to the numerical question is 368, the candidate would have to darken the ovals 0, 3, 6 and 8 in a four-column OMR sheet that ran numbers from 0 to 9. This was an example on how the question could be objective without providing multiple-choice answers.

In the next variety, the students had to match the four quantities on the left column with four quantities in the right column. Pretty simple and providing room for some intelligent fixing of answers after you have placed two of them? Not quite - see through this... If the options provided in the left column were m, n, o, p and the options in the right column were p, q, r, s, the matching was not a simple one on one. m for example could pair with p, r and s. For example, if m were paramagnetic, students would have to choose the options in the column that were said to exhibit paramagnetic properties. They would get the marks if and only if each and every option was fully represented. Leaves very little room for guessing, you would agree.

If a student is able to get out of the compartment mode of thinking and look for applicability of concepts across subject areas, he/she will do well. Well, that is what the JEE intends to seek in young aspirants. Can you "size up the situation?" Can you "see beyond the obvious matches?" Can you "think of all possible solutions?"