Test Series and How To Analyse paper for IIT JEE

let's start with the fundamental question "Why do I need a Test Series? Is solving books not sufficient?" The answer is a plain "No". The reason is simple. JEE won't ask you routine problems. The problems involve multi-dimensional thinking at a time. You need to use concepts of stoichiometry in a multi-step organic synthesis to predict the percent purity and stereochemistry of the final product. Sounds daunting? It would do only till you are not used to these kinds of unforeseen situations where you need to act quick, taking into consideration every aspect along with accuracy. This is where a Test Series comes into the picture. It is a set of test papers designed to make the student comfortable with all possible varieties of questions along with the various ways in which the same question can be put in order to make the student sweat in the exam hall. 


So by the time you convince yourself about joining a test-series, another question pops up, which one? 

It depends on the rank that you are aiming for.

• Top 500 rank: go for FIITJEE AITS. It is the best in terms of competition. Almost all the top JEE rankers enrol for FIITJEE AITS. The competition is neck to neck. The best (worst?) part is the level of difficulty. They maintain a level above JEE and so, they help you stretch you to your limits, which in a way is good for you. However, it can be demotivating at times because you may feel that you aren’t prepared for JEE. The metric that you should measure is your rank/percentile.
• Others: go for Resonance Test series. They maintain a level close to JEE. The test papers are quite relevant for JEE Advanced since they maintain a similar level. Therefore, they are a good simulation of what you might face on the JEE exam day.

For those students already enrolled in a reputed Coaching Institute, there is hardly any need to join any other test-series. Just make sure to do the papers of your institute sincerely and you should be good to go. 

So the first part is done. We have selected the test series, but the job is yet to start. Just giving test papers every fortnight and leaving them as it is after the paper is doing no justice to its purpose. Unless you analyze your mistakes and strengths from a test the test-paper is merely a booklet with no use.  It requires a lot of patience, determination and the right approach to analyze a paper and learn from one's mistakes.

The basic way to analyze a paper is to divide the paper into two parts: Questions which you did correctly and questions which you got wrong or did not attempt. So this forms the first branch of the tree. Coming to the first one "The Questions attempted correctly", there are instances when you manage to get the answer just by guessing or eliminating the options. However, this is a very wrong practice unless it's the final exam. So the first step would be to find proper solutions to those problems. Having ensured this make sure to have a look at solutions provided along with the paper to those questions which you solved correctly just to ensure that you are equipped with other possible methods to solve a problem. 

The second part has further subdivisions, first being "Wrong Answers" and "Unattempted Questions". Let's consider the first one. You may get a question wrong due to broadly 2 ways namely Silly Mistakes and Conceptual mistakes. 

The first one is easy to find, it comprises all mistakes done in hurry, say, calculation mistakes, using the wrong formula, using the long approach and getting mixed up in middle, reading the wrong data etc. The only solution to it is "concentration" while solving the paper. Don't think about anything while giving the test, neither what the person next to you is doing nor about the result. Just focus on reading the question properly and solving carefully. 

The second requires a significant amount of research so as to pinpoint the topic you need to work upon. Say you weren't able to solve a question from Coordinate Geometry. First part of investigation done. So first figure out what were the different conics involved there. Say you figure out to be a question involving Parabola and Circle. Great! The second part of investigation done too. Next, what in Parabola? Tangents and their properties. Okay so that's it the investigation is over and now you understand that you need to work upon Tangents, their equations, properties etc (as related to the question). Now that you know where exactly you need to work, just pick up any resource and go through it once. Compare the process you adopted and the standard one and in almost all cases you will find your mistake here.

The second point in this list is questions which you didn't attempt. Again, there may be many reasons for it. Two major being "not able to read/solve the question in time" the solution to which is to increase your reading and solving speed by doing more problems at home and the second same as doing a conceptual mistake, this time not being able to solve the question due to lack of proper understanding. The solution is same as mentioned in the above paragraph.

 I hope you found it helpful.

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