IIT Entrance: What It Takes to Crack JEE Main and Advanced

When you hear IIT entrance, the competitive exam process to get into India’s top engineering institutes, primarily through JEE Main and JEE Advanced. Also known as JEE, it’s not just another exam — it’s a filter that decides who gets into the most respected engineering colleges in the country. Every year, over 1.5 million students take JEE Main, but only about 25,000 make it to JEE Advanced. And from those, just 10,000 get into an IIT. This isn’t about luck. It’s about strategy, focus, and knowing where to put your time.

Most students think physics is the hardest part of JEE, but the real game-changer is chemistry, the most scoring subject in JEE due to its heavy reliance on NCERT and predictable question patterns. If you master organic reactions and physical chemistry formulas, you can gain 30-40 marks faster than you can in math or physics. That’s why top scorers spend less time on guesswork and more on drilling NCERT and previous papers. Then there’s CBSE syllabus, the curriculum followed by the majority of JEE aspirants because it aligns almost perfectly with JEE Main content. If you’re studying under ICSE or a state board, you’re often filling gaps on your own — which is why so many switch to CBSE-style prep even if they’re not enrolled in CBSE schools.

It’s not just about studying harder. It’s about studying smarter. You don’t need to solve 1000 problems a day. You need to understand why you got one wrong. You need to know which chapters give you the most marks per hour — like electrochemistry in chemistry or modern physics in physics. And you need to know that skipping physical chemistry isn’t an option — it’s the backbone of 30% of JEE Main’s chemistry section. The people who crack IIT entrance don’t memorize. They connect. They see how a redox reaction links to thermodynamics, how a graph in kinematics mirrors a calculus problem, and how a simple formula in stoichiometry can save you five minutes in the exam hall.

What you’ll find below are real, battle-tested insights from students who’ve been there. No fluff. No theory without application. Just what actually works: which coaching materials deliver results, why some chapters are traps, how to use your time when you’re stuck, and how to turn chemistry from your weakest subject into your biggest advantage. This isn’t about dreaming of an IIT. It’s about building a plan that gets you there — one smart step at a time.