IIT-JEE is the one of the toughest entrance exam in the world. But the mentality of the students makes it even more tougher and sometimes makes it easier. This is the reason we see every year, some kind of miracles, students expecting a rank under 100 sometimes gets a rank under 10 or sometimes above 1000 and also some students who are not even in the race or have very few chances to qualify may gets a very good rank (I am talking about selection due to reservation).

All this dramatic results happens due to our past. You may be surprised by this but it is actually the truth because I am the one who experienced it. I will try to explain this to you.

Suppose there are two students Siddharth and Varun. Siddharth always gets good marks. In every exam he is scoring above 90 percent. As you all know for scoring more than 90% you must have to answer almost all question in your exam.  As Siddharth is a brilliant student, he attempts all question and gets what he deserves. He enjoyed this momentum till 12^th board exam.

On the other hand, Varun is average student. He  generally scores anywhere between 50-70. Sometimes more than 70 or less than 50 based on subject and toughness level.

 Now for JEE Mains both the students prepared according to their strength. No doubt, due to good academic record in school, Siddharth has a benefit and he grasp the concept faster than Varun. It is normal for everyone to expect good marks from Siddharth than Varun.

But it did not come true. Varun gets more marks than Siddharth. Why ??? Am I joking …..No

In JEE Mains we get 4 marks for correct answer and minus 1 for incorrect answers. As I told Siddharth had a long past record of scoring around 90 percent, so in exam time he cannot resist himself from attempting around 85 questions out of 90. He confidently knows the answer of around 50-55 questions but due to his past he answered another 35 questions which is definitely going to be costly for him.

Lets make some calculations :

He can solve 50 questions correctly and can score around 200 marks which is a very very good score.

But he tries to solve 85 questions due to his past reputation, and now he gets only 40 correct out of that 50 because doing extra 35 questions reduce his time to solve that 50 questions and in that extra 35 question which he tried unnecessary, he may only get around 5 correct answers.

So now his score becomes : 40*4 – 10*1 + 5*4 -30*1 = 135 marks

It is 65 marks lower than what he can actually get.

On the other hand, Varun had no pressure to solve 85 questions. He always getting aroung 60% so the situation seems more comfortable for him. He don’t want to solve all question. JEE Mains has 90 questions and 3 hours time to solve. It means you get 2 minutes to solve 1 question. But Varun has no mind to solve all 90 question. He already knows that he wants to solve only 45 questions, so he gets 4 minutes to solve 1 question. He solved 45 questions and gets 40 correct answers.

So his total comes to be :

40*4-  5*1 = 155 marks   

So now you can see how a average students beats a brilliant students. This is something similar to the story of Rabbit and Tortoise. Yes, it is similar. But it is not a story. It is based on my experience.

The aim of this article is to tell that you should know your position before giving the exam. Accepting what you are always help to succeed in life.

Thanks for reading