Elimination Strategy Works Quite Well for Difficult Questions in JEE Advanced

 

JEE Advanced 2014 might be the toughest and the most competitive exam but there are some smart ways to score some extra mark in it. Just by understanding the exam pattern of JEE Advanced  well, you stand a chance of extra 25-30 marks in the paper.
 

Highlights of JEE Advanced Exam Format

• JEE Advanced has two papers: Paper 1 and Paper 2. Both the papers have objective, multiple-choice questions (MCQs) with four options each. Only one answer is correct.
• Negative marking is employed to discourage students from just guessing the answers. If you choose an incorrect answer, ¼ to 1/3 of the marks assigned to the question will be deducted from your total score.

• You are given marks on the fact that you mark the correct bubble. Nobody can find out if you knew the concepts, guessed them sensibly or cheated somehow (until you get caught).

• To keep the students from getting an undue advantage, examiners make sure that answers are not grouped in a particular order. They distribute answers equally among all the four options – a, b, c and d. It means that 25% ‘a’ options will be correct, 25% ‘b’ options will be correct and so on…

• Solve all the easy questions first that can be solved quickly. Then, work on the questions you can definitely solve but take a little longer to solve. In the end, re-read through questions you are not sure about and see if the answer strikes you.

• For the questions you are not sure about, you can:

  • Leave the questions un-attempted. In this manner, you will not score negative marks at least.

  • Take chances, do some sensible guessing and choose the most probable answer.

• If you have too many questions un-attempted, it is better to take risk and employ ‘elimination’ strategy to guess the answer.

Exam Strategies for Solving JEE Advanced Questions

What is elimination strategy?

Elimination strategy means that if you fail to find the correct answer to a question, try matching each option with the question and see if it can be its answer or not. Usually, each question has one or two options that are absolutely silly and can easily be struck off. That narrows down your chances to guess the correct answer considerably.

Here are some of the ways you can use to eliminate incorrect options:

• Check units of the answer: If the question asks you to calculate ‘force’, the answer has to have the unit of force. It can be ‘N’ for Newton or ‘kgm/s²’. Any option with incorrect unit can easily be eliminated.

• Comparing options: If all the units are correct, the unit that has been mentioned in three of the options, there are high chances that it will be the correct unit. You can eliminate the fourth option.

•  Use dimensional analysis: Dimensional analysis can help you eliminate your options in problems with weird orientation. It works quite well for Physics questions related to Mechanics and Electromagnetic fields.

• Use fundamentals: You will easily reach at JEE Advanced 2014 solutions, especially in Chemistry and Class 11 syllabus of Physics, by paying attention to the basics. Brainstorm about the properties of the element, the nature of electrons and fundamentals of the topic. You will see that there are options that simply do not fit into those parameters. You can rule them out.

Should you risk solving a JEE Advanced question by eliminating two options?

If you are working on question with no negative marking (like Match the Following), definitely take your pick.

For questions with negative marking:

If you have eliminated two options, you have 50% chances to pick the correct answer and 50% chances to pick the incorrect answer. You will lose ‘1 mark’ for choosing the incorrect answer while you will get ‘3 to 4 marks’ for choosing the correct answer (depending on the type of question you are solving).

So, the scale tips to ‘risk taking’ in such cases.

Other point that might determine the answer for you is the fact that how many questions you are sure about and how many you are not sure about.

The general trend indicates that you need to score 230 or more to get a good enough rank to seek admission to a popular course in a prestigious IIT. So, if you have solved a good number of questions ‘correctly’, you might take your chances.

Try out these techniques in a previous year JEE Advanced question paper and calculate how many extra scores you net because of them.