IITJEE Simplified: Study Tip 1 - How much should I study?

Every day I answer student’s queries related to how they should prepare for IITJEE; how much to study; what to study; when to study and so on.

I have been answering these question since last 13 years when I started teaching Mathematics for IITJEE.

So I decided to start a series of study tips “IITJEE Simplified” where I will write about the best approaches to follow while preparing for IITJEE exam. In this series, I will also answer most common questions that an IITJEE aspirant can come across.

Here is today’s tip:

How many hours should I study at home?

Some of you out there must be toppers of your class or among the top 10% of your class. But that is just a performance in your class or best at a school level. It means till now you have been competing among a small student base of 50 - 1000 students.

But once you start preparing for IITJEE or AIEEE entrance, the competition is huge. This year in 2008, over 3.2 lakh students appeared in IITJEE and over 9 lakh in AIEEE. So my advice is that you seriously need to scale up your efforts to face the competition.

Are you ready for this?

You need to prepare yourself mentally as well as physically to face this competition. Mentally, you need to think wide when you think of competition you are facing. Remember there are more than 10000 schools (just CBSE) in India. So don’t get defocused and remember that you have to compete with unknowns.

Most of you would have scored well in your school level examinations by not even spending 20 hours on studies at home. This is not going to be enough with such a huge competition. You need to scale up your efforts and set a target of 50-55 hours studies at home every week.

But just sitting in front of the books for these 50-55 hours is not enough. You have to study with full concentration, no disturbance, and continuously for 3 hour sessions. The idea is to simulate real exam conditions. While studying, you have to create an atmosphere as if you are sitting in exam. Avoid doing following during a 3 hours session:

• Study on a desk if you have it at home. Avoid studying while lying down on a bed.
• Don’t get up from your desk during 3 hours of study session. Even not for drinking water.
• Don’t listen music during studies. If you have a habit, then slowly come out of it by reducing it day by day.
• No phone calls and no SMS during studies.
• Study with 100 percent concentration as if you are sitting in exam.

Note: to make up 50-55 hours you need to study 6-7 hours every day during the week and remaining 20-25 hours over the weekend.