Board Or Iit-Jee

Certainly one of the biggest question among the folks preparing for IITJEE is whether to focus more on boards or on the JEE exams. Some people say that boards are very important. True. But some people say that by only reading for boards, you cannot secure a good rank in IITJEE. Again true. So for which one shall we go for?

Some say that focusing more on board will ruin your JEE and some say that focusing more on JEE will ruin your board exams. I will say that both the statements are highly exaggerated. According to me it’s true that if you are focusing only on board exams then getting a good rank in IITJEE has lesser probability because JEE requires more depth in knowledge of concepts. It has questions based on more than single concepts. Whereas reading for board exam is more about a mixture of learning concepts

as well as memorizing. Moreover the questions asked in board exams are generally straight forward and not multiple-concept based. But at the same time, cracking JEE requires clarity in basic concepts which is what board exams ask. So the conclusion is for a good rank in IITJEE, a good preparation of board exams is very helpful but the converse is not true i.e. just by having a good preparation of board exams, it’s difficult to crack IITJEE. In the next paragraph I will explain you how to synchronize between the two exams.

The syllabus of inorganic chemistry is same as the syllabus of combined chemistry of 11th and 12th of CBSE. During my preparation, I read inorganic chemistry only from the NCERT’s book. I will also suggest you to try out (and keep in mind the answers of) the questions at the end of the chapters. Similarly whenever you read a topic in any of the three subjects, just try out the question of the corresponding chapter from NCERT. If you have really prepared that topic well enough for IITJEE then you should be able to solve the problems of the NCERT book because they are the most basic questions. Further the number of questions in NCERT books is not very large. So it will take very less time for you to do them. Some of the chapters like ‘surface chemistry’ and ‘solutions’ have very good solved examples in NCERT book. Use the NCERT books as your concept revision tool. Whenever you want to revise a topic in short time or you want to just surf through the basic concepts of some chapter, just try out some of the solved examples and problems at the end of the chapter from the NCERT book.

Some students have misconception that by reading NCERT/solving problems from NCERT books is of little help towards the preparation of IITJEE. But believe me when you will try out the problems, you will certainly find that some of them are quite conceptual. Also if you are able to do questions from the book then be sure that you know the basic concepts of the chapter. So you can treat NCERT as a benchmark to test your basics. I hope that by now you have understood that board exam preparation is an integral part of the IITJEE preparation.