How Can I Crack IIT JEE? [Its not about doing something different, its about doing things differently]

[This is guest post by Vineet Kothari. Vineet cracked JEE in year 1998 from a very small village of Rajasthan. He studied at IITB and currently he works with an MNC in Semiconductor Industry. These are his personal opinions and may or may not be different from that of Eduflix] 

Every now and then students ask questions like -

How can I crack IIT JEE?

Or

What are the best books for preparing for IIT JEE?

These questions are not wrong questions as such. Almost all students who are preparing would have them. Also there would be hundreds of people advising on the right strategies, right books and so on. In fact this questions have been answered so many times  [just search it on google and you will understand what I mean] that we dont need yet another article to write just that.

The purpose of this article is something else. If you look for “the best books for IIT”, you will see the whole list of books – HC Verma, IE Irodov, Morrison Boyd, TMH etc [Check here for comprehensive list]. And most of the students study for one or the other books. But only few make it to IITs. Why is it that even when all the students read from the same books, only few are able to crack JEE?

Let us look at another story: This is story of Sachin Tendulkar. I dont need to write about the greatness of this indian batsman but do you know how he achieved all this? Luck and his abilities played role to some extend but do you think that out of so many people of his age who were playing cricket, all except him were unlucky or were not capable enough? No. There were thousands of aspirants who wanted to become star cricketers. They had bats, they had teams, they enjoyed cricket. They knew basic concepts of hitting the ball and techniques of scoring high. Some of them were also lucky to have good coaches.

So what do you think makes the difference?

Its called grit.

What is grit?

Grit is defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.”. Let me explain it graphically and with the context to JEE. In general, your JEE preparation graph will look as follows

The stages of emotions while preparing for JEE

The x-axis is the timeline and considering the competitiveness of JEE, it can be easily assumed that you will have to study for one to two years to prepare for it. During this timeframe, you will go through many stages – ups and downs. With every downslide, you might want to give up and with every up slide you will be on top of the world. Sometimes you will crawl like a snail and sometimes you will run like a cheetah towards your goal. But the key is to keep moving. And that is what we call grit. You keep persevering for your goals with the same passion irrespective of temporary setbacks.

Grit, my friends, will be one of the biggest factors that will decide whether you get through JEE or not.

Apart from grit, also remember that it is important to employ your resources in the most effective way. You might be studying hard for JEE, but studying hard is not enough [Read this –  Why Studying Hard Is Not Enough!

To summarize: everybody knows how to play cricket, everbody know which books to read, everybody does the same syllabus. Nothing is different. However, winners do things differently. They dont give up in those setbacks. They realize that these setbacks are temporary. They also study efficiently. Be a winner. All the best!