Since, a lot of my juniors in college have asked me about my preparation for JAM, I have decided to share the main factors that were deterimental to my JAM preparation.
But before starting, I want to let all the aspirants or readers know that I do not consider myself as an exceptionally brilliant student. I personally think of myself as just an above average student who worked hard to crack the exam and any average student can crack this exam with the right combination of factors. I am listing out these reasons so that one can relate with it and make sure that their preparation is going in the right direction.
1) Determination and a strong Resolve-
This might be the most cliche reason given for cracking any exam but it is really one of the most important reasons behind my positive result in the exam. I had decided early that I wanted to do Masters in Statistics since I really enjoyed studying it and the idea of going deeper into Statistics and Mathematics excited me. I had the enthusiasm to know more and the will to go through more challenging proofs or problems. I also realised that I definitely had to study at one of the top institutes in India since I couldn’t tolerate attending lectures by ’bad‘ teachers. I was managing to survive by self-studying and watching YouTube lectures but I knew that if I had to do Masters then self-studying won’t be good enough in the future . Both of these reasons made by resolve stronger to study well for this exam and crack it at any cost. I had technically given my self an ultimatum that I must crack this exam if I really want to do Master’s. Although it brought stress and pressure but I think it really helped me in focusing on the exam and pushing myself to study even when things were not smooth.
But the reason why I really believe that this is one of the most important reasons behind my result is that I saw that my classmates who were appearing in the exam didn’t have the same level of motivation as I did and hence didn’t work hard enough. There might be multiple reasons behind their lack of motivation and I don’t blame them but it was ,no doubt, a critical factor.
2) Good Coverage of Fundamentals-
This again is a no brainer. A good coverage of fundamental topics of syllabus is necessary to crack any exam and I fortunately had a good enough knowledge of almost all the basic fundamental topics. I didn’t have an excellent coverage of all the topics, I was weak in some like Real Analysis and Calculus but I made sure to make myself good enough on an average for all the topics so that I could atleast attempt easy and medium questions from my weak portions.
One of my friends rightly said to me that the exam is only about solving easy and medium questions correctly and one doesn’t need to worry about solving all the tough questions. If you have a good coverage of fundamental topics then with enough practice you will be able to solve almost all the easy and medium questions correctly and that is what is needed to crack the exam at the end of the day
3) Lots of Practice-
Since I made sure to understand each topic at the basic level, all that was needed now was huge amount of practice. JAM as an exam is not really difficult because the question level on an average is moderate and the syllabus is not vast. This makes the exam easy to crack with the just the right amount of practice.
Since, I wasn’t an exceptionally brilliant student and had my own weak areas, therefore I really put my heart in practising a lot of questions. But since the amount of questions that are inherently ’exam-type’ are really limited due to less popularity of the exam so I approached analytically to this issue. I used to practice previous year questions side by side while studying a topic to understand my level of proficiency. Once I understood that I needed more practice then I used to go over all the previous year questions that had come from this topic and used to search for those questions in various books available on Internet and in the library. I did spend a lot of time doing this but since I had the time, it was worth the effort for me to find questions and practice them. I would suggest this approach to any aspirant so that he or she can practice sufficient amount of questions.
4) Great Planning and Implementation-
The final piece in the puzzle is using your determination, knowledge effectively and practising the right questions a lot of times in a proper way. My plan was to finish syllabus by August 2019 and practice more questions in weak areas, practice all the previous year questions topic wise till November.
Then in December, I had planned to review everything in 1 week just after my semester exams had finished and planned to solve all papers in a timed manner before the end of the year. I had also never attempted 2019 paper and reserved it for the end so that I can effectively use it as a mock. So after revising all the topics, I started practising previous year papers once again but in a time manner and also in a systematic way. And then finally, I came upon the 2019 paper and took it as if it was a real exam- attempted it on computer at 9 AM. I scored around 68/100 in that paper( AIR 2 had secured 69 in that paper). So I realised that I am in a good position and only needed to improve more in certain areas. After this, I had planned to attempt all the previous year papers again 2-3 times and also try questions from other exams such as ISI, CSIR UGC NET,ISS etc. Basically, I had planned to practice as many questions as I could until the exam. One important thing I forgot to mention earlier is that I had made formula sheets while I was completing the syllabus so I was constantly revising formulas throughout the year and didn’t need to look at notes frequently. This was really helpful because I didn’t had to look at notes and only needed to review my formula sheets and practice daily.
I successfully implemented all of this before the exam and my final plan was to attempt the paper efficiently.
(Ignore the bad handwriting and numbers mentioned on the left side indicates minutes from 0 to 180)
I again successfully implemented this plan, minute by minute in the real exam because I had practiced this plan repeatedly on the previous year papers. I did not find the paper lengthy and in fact I was left with 15 mins and no question to solve since I had already attempted almost all by that time(55/60).
So, I finally scored 66/100 in the JAM 2019 exam. One of the reasons why I scored 66 despite attempting 55/60 questions is that I made really really silly calculations mistakes in some of the easiest questions. During practice, I had noticed that I was making a lot of mistakes in calculation but didn’t work diligently to solve this issue. So, as a result, I made mistakes in the final exam too. I would advise all the aspirant to definitely analyse your mistakes and work upon them, otherwise they will happen in the exam too.
So this sums up “How I got AIR 16 in IIT JAM Mathematical Statistics(MS)”. I hope you’ve find this article helpful and it comes handy in your preparation. I am also sharing links to the books I used and the question papers below.
All the best!
UPDATE 1- Someone asked me to share my formula sheets so I am sharing the links to those here. Since my handwriting is bad so it won’t be possible to use the sheets directly but one can copy the formulas and create a formula sheet by themselves. It will take some time but it’s totally worth the effort and almost a necessary task for cracking JAM.
UPDATE 2- I have finally managed to get hold of pdf copies of notes for all the topics covered in JAM MS. But those notes aren’t mine and therefore I can’t share those publicly here, however if someone needs to look at the notes then he or she may contact me personally and I will share the link to the folder containing those notes.
thank you so much for this......
can you recommend which youtube videos you watch for your preparation?
Very informative , You are such a great and helpful person 😍! Thank you so much for this blog