Here is what my timetable during JEE preparation looked like:
- Wake up at about 7.00 AM.
- Freshen up, have breakfast – ready for study by somewhere around 7.45 AM (Edit – my mother read this answer and she told me that it is 6.45 AM and not 7.45 AM. Moms are moms :’))
- Continuous study session till 11.00 AM. During the morning session, I used to focus a lot on 2 things:
- Areas where I was weak.
- Areas that were new to me.
- Over time, I realized that my most efficient and most productive study time was morning from 8.00 AM to 11.00 AM and so, that was the reason that I used this time for weaker areas and new concepts.
- Take a break till about 12.00 PM.
- Continue for another couple of hours till 2.00 PM.
- Take a break till 3.00 PM.
- FIITJEE classes used to be from 4.00 – 8.00 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So, if it was a coaching day, I used to leave by 3.00 PM. If it was a non-coaching day, another study session from 3.00 – 5.00 PM.
- By 5.00, much of the day used to be over unless I had something more to study. For instance, there were days when I had to solve FIITJEE material like GMP, RTPF, AITS papers, etc. That was basically additional work. In such situations, I used to take another 2-hour long session from 6.00 PM to 8.00 PM.
- I never studied after 8.00 PM partly because I used to get exhausted and partly because my dad didn’t appreciate it since studying at night may lead to poor eyesight (dads are dads).
- After 8.00 PM, the activities usually included dinner, sitting with parents, browsing the internet, playing something (GTA fan here!), etc. Sometimes I also used to hang out with a couple of friends after 8.00 PM. However, that was quite rare.
The best part here is that since I did not actively attend the school (I was enrolled in a dummy school), I got lots of time during the morning which I could use entirely for my JEE preparation. That helped me to maintain a balanced lifestyle. I feel sad to say that most schools in India at the 11th and 12th standard levels are least concerned about the competitive exam results. They care only about marks in the board exams. Talking specifically about engineering – board exam marks do not matter (at least they didn’t matter during my year). They did matter for JEE Main, but then I was targeting JEE Advanced. Of course, there was that “20 percentile criteria”. However, the cutoff for that was barely 78% (CBSE board). By all standards, it is easy to score that (in CBSE).
