You studied, you gave up sports, you juggled between school and coaching, yet the efforts just didn’t yield the fruit. Now, here you are. Trying to win this battle of JEE/NEET again. With the fear of failure lurking around the corner, the pressure this time is just too overwhelming. With an additional year’s worth of preparation on the line this time, you have to get everything right. While it might seem difficult to think what possibly could be done this time to avoid what happened the last time and cracking JEE/NEET with an under 1000 AIR seeming impossible, just remember everything’s impossible until somebody does it. And who better to tell you that other than two IITians who made it to IIT Delhi in their drop year attempt. So, buckle up and let’s take a deep dive into the Ultimate JEE/NEET Guide for Droppers.
Take a step back
Remember your past one or two years? You were good at studying but everything seemed very complex. You had to manage your regular classes, your homework, weekly tests, daily practice sheets, notes, and whatnot. It was very tiring and taking a toll on your mental health. Well, you don’t want this to happen with you again. To clear your head and to lay down a clear path ahead, you need to first analyze your situation. This includes estimating the time left in your attempt, the syllabus you have to cover, your strong topics, and weak topics. And then using all this information to make a kick-ass plan for a challenging journey ahead. From now onwards, you need a daily, weekly and even monthly schedule to motivate you and to sail through this sea, smoothly without any unexpected hurdle.
Select your guns
You just can’t win this battle barehanded. To expose yourself with a vast number of quality questions, you have to have some good books and study material. While reference books provide you with limited but quality questions, study material lets you try every kind of question there are multiple times. You can choose any book or study material but only after thorough research on the internet or consultation with your teachers/mentors. One more thing, stick to limited books or you would get lost trying to solve every book. Instead of having books from multiple authors, a better strategy is to buy - a reference book, a coaching package and previous years’ booklet per subject.
Polish your guns
You might not realize this but you have an extra edge over students still in high schools. While they are busy with their class assignments, board exams, and practicals, you can revise the subjects more. Multiple revisions will help you improve your weak topics and retain concepts from your strong topics as it is in your memory. We suggest you prepare your own notes for revising any topics. Making notes in the class is as important as solving numerical since these will help you, a few days before every exam, to revise the important formulas and theorems in a short time. Note-taking is a very personalized activity but still, there are many points to remember while making notes. For eg: Using diagrams, flow charts, points, acronyms, and mnemonics to aid you later in your revision. You can read about making better notes for competitive exams here.
Stick to your guns
Anything more important than all those numerical and theorems is ‘sticking to your guns’ meaning no matter what, you are adamant towards your belief of cracking JEE and persistently continue putting your maximum effort. This also means that you don’t slack whether you score below average in a test or top in the exam. Again, a daily schedule with fixed sleeping timing will help you stay motivated and persistent throughout your preparation. We advise you to prepare your schedule for the next day every night just before going to bed. This way you will have a reason to wake up on time.
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall”. Sounds cheesy but then if you’re a Batman fan (which we are), you can’t help but quote him for the hundredth time. The decision to commit one more year of your life to attempt an exam which, for some reason, you couldn’t ace the first time, is by no means an easy decision. But then, did any success story ever start with an easy decision? Probably, no. And yours is a success story waiting to be told.
We, here, are trying to just fine-tune it the best we can. These are some of the strategies that worked for us and we hope they work for you too. Please let us know if you feel we missed something or wronged somewhere. Now go hit the mark.
Woah! How to select books? How to prepare notes? What is the strategy for the last two months? How did toppers do it? How is a preparation book selling platform able to also be the best preparation buddy, you ask? Well, just like Batman, Paperfumes can whatever the JEE and NEET aspirants want it to be. But now, we need help. We need you to shine that Bat- Signal onto the topics you feel we should address next using 'Ask Toppers Anything' on the bottom right of your screen and you can expect us to be on it stat.
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