Now re-read the question with all the values at your normal speed. You may even think re-reading would waste time. No? Nope. It’s exactly the opposite. There are many questions in the paper that you’ll likely be never even able to solve! Knowing this would help you save time because you will not waste time in solving these unsolvable questions.  And that is a smart decision. To save time in difficult questions and spend this spare time on questions from your confident chapters.

Practice re-reading during your weekly papers and save as much time as possible in the final exam! Reading a question twice reduces the chances of making silly mistakes by half. More on this topic, read here.

2. Standardization of Units

Most of the physics formulae you know are based on SI-units. The numerical values in JEE questions are sometimes in non-SI-units. Common examples are g (gram) instead of kg and calories instead of Joules.

Ignoring these units leads you to wrong options! Thousands of students are making this same mistake every year. To never fall prey to such silly mistakes, you should make a habit of converting these units into standardized units (With some exceptions, like Km/hr speed unit). Here’s a table of basic physical quantities and their SI units.

3. Write neatly on supplement papers.

You will get a 32-page long supplement sheet to do your calculations in JEE main and advanced exams.

It makes perfect sense to make silly mistakes in dirty rough-work. Loads of things are going through your mind during the exam time. Adding such dirty work only increases complexity. Good handwriting is not necessary, but writing neatly is a good habit. The more organized your thoughts are, the better you perform during the exam.

One last point, Neatly writing your calculations not only reduces your chance of making silly mistakes. It gives you the chance to quickly go back and re-check where you went wrong in your calculations.

Other miscellaneous hacks

• Do the calculations in variable form as long as possible before substituting the numerical values. You can always verify the last formula with dimensional analysis if none of the answers are matching.
• Read the Instructions. JEE changes pattern every year. Sometimes questions have -2  negative marks instead of  -1. Check how NTA gives you AIR based on your percentile from here.
• Every year JEE makes some mistakes in the final paper. But you only get the free marks if you’ve attempted those questions. So let’s say there’s a question in ‘Single choice correct’ where more than one option can be correct, then at least attempt one.
• Never forget to add Integrating constant while solving Integration problems in Physics or Maths.
• Most of the silly mistakes happen while attempting IOC and OC. Just be careful and read twice in these questions when in confusion.
• During matrix multiplication and vector addition, students commonly make mistakes in + and – signs.

To summarize, you have to change your habits from today, to see the effects in the JEE Mains and Advanced. All of these hacks require practice along with patience.

UPDATE: I’ve summarised a list of strategies you can use to increase upto 50 marks and give a massive boost to your JEE Main preparations. Here are those JEE Main tips

Editor’s note: If there’s a good looking girl in your exam hall, you’re more likely to get distracted. You may laugh all you want but this can happen to anyone! So you’re advised to keep control over your testosterones. 🙂 This is 100% going to help you reduce silly mistakes in exams (and in life too!)