JEE Preparation Mistake 2 - Lack of Competitive Exposure during Schooling: Remedy.

Students, and especially parents, are after 90% and above marks in board exams. Now 90% is not enough. They are after 95% and above, or CGPA 10/10. Toppers are scoring 99%. Now, interesting point is parents understand that it is not their old percentage system that will get students in top engineering colleges, and students have to appear for competitive examinations after XII. But they are hesitant to start their wards' practice from competitive point of view right from school.

Parents are tuned with percentage system as competitive entrance examination system doesn't exist in their school time. They fail to understand that it is the competitive examination practice during schooling that is required to prepare their ward for competitive examinations. Owing to their exposure, they are not mentally ready to change and are pursuing their ward for higher percentage in Board. As a result, very few students are preparing themselves for competitive examinations right from schools only.

Result - Students are scoring 90% and above in schools, but they are performing badly in entrance exam of coaching classes. Majority of students are scoring in range of 5 to 25% in entrance exams. Most even score less than 0%.

On the other hand, Students who concentrate on foundation or competitive examinations right from school, score more than 50% (even 80%) in entrance and do have high chances to clear future competitive examinations with good ranks.

Many good schools try to give exposure to their students at school level. That's the very good move from them. If this effort is coupled with changes in training in competitive direction, the school and students will highly be benefited.

Some parents may argue that competitive exam preparation may bring students' school performance down. However, it is not so. Students prepared in dealing with competitive exam easily get 95% and above in school exams. For Example, 2018 top JEE ranker Sameer Pande (AIR 104) got 99% in X board. However, you will not see top students preparing exclusively for Board exams topping JEE(Advanced).

Now, how will such students, who don't have any competitive exposure, cope up with entrance exam preparation in XI and XII? Their brain is tuned with board descriptive preparation. They need to be ready to change their study habits. It is not easy though. They should adopt new system fast, and learn the respective techniques (preparation techniques, revision techniques, backlog, Solving techniques, exam techniques, etc) to crack competitive examination as soon as possible. The institute with proper culture to tune their students for competitive exams will be of great help in this regard.

Team ICAD