Hey, so here I am with another exam unboxing video. On all of my previous exam videos
I was met with some comments from Indian viewers who would say, this is too easy
compared to the exams we do here in India, and specifically people mentioned the JEE
advanced paper as being a much tougher exam than the American, European and Australian ones that I was covering.
So thanks to those comments today I am coming after the JEE advanced paper. Now this is the
2016 copy I'll link it down in the description
along with the solutions because all of these past papers are actually available online. This is a paper
that would be sat by high school students trying to get into some of India's
engineering colleges and it stands for the Joint Entrance Examination.
So it's a bit of a beast of a paper,
it's pretty thick and it covers physics, chemistry and mathematics, and just taking a quick glance at it from here
it seems to really cover, you know,
all the fundamentals of those three disciplines, and
you know, wants to test you on what would be the basis of knowledge to go on and study engineering.
I'm going to have a look through some of the questions and just see if it lives up to the hype from people who have
been commenting on my channel and I'm also, at the end of this video, going to compare it to this paper,
which is a physics exam from New Zealand and it's what high school students there would sit if they wanted to go on and do
engineering at university.
So I'll see sort of how the Indian standard compares to what I would consider standard for high school students in Australia and New Zealand.
Also for my next video I'd like to fully work through the solution to one of the JEE
advanced questions. So if there's a particular question you'd like me to do for that next video,
leave it down in the comments and without any further delay, let's have a look at the paper. Alright, here we are
so the first thing that strikes me is that well, everything is multiple choice,
so the exam's got that going for it. And then there's the marking scheme,
so it looks like we get three marks for a correct answer,
zero if we don't attempt and
minus one marks if we get it wrong. Now that is really harsh and you know
exams like that where you get negative marks are really
discouraging from just you know, trying to have a guess
but it's also very
discouraging and very nerve-racking because you're always doubting yourself because there's so much at stake. You don't want to get the answer wrong.
So let's have a look,
I think we're starting off with some quite easy questions, this is the physics section and this first question here
looks like it's just got to do with the photoelectric effect. And really that would be as simple as just
plugging some of these numbers into one formula, so easy so far.
We have sort of similar type questions,
I think this question here is another just one formula that you'll need to know relating to the specific heat of water.
And then another pretty easy question here about a guess Snell's law and the reflection of light.
We've got a question here about an infinite line of charge,
this in particular is not something that I did at high school, but instead at first-year university
physics, learning how to do things like Gauss's law and finding out, you know,
the distribution of charge along different shaped objects.
So this, if you're having to derive the laws from scratch, is a little bit more advanced than I would have seen at school.
Moving on to question two now and it looks like things are getting even more
high-stakes, negative marks are minus two for all wrong answers. So yeah, probably be sweating by this point.
We've got some questions about nuclear physics,
soundwaves,
lenses and radiation and even some
thermodynamics. We've got a conceptual question about some
electromagnetism and even some vector
calculus. Then we've got section three on the physics section and it changes a little bit here instead of being multiple choice,
it looks like there's a single digit integer for each answer and some of these are a little bit more involved.
I do sort of feel that by the end of this physics section
we've covered material that, yes,
I definitely learned at my first-year university course.
I think from my experience with Australia and New Zealand,
this depth of physics isn't necessarily taught at high school
but it's because it doesn't have to be. I think the issue is that
engineering in India is such a competitive field or to get into the colleges are so competitive that
you really need to be at the top of your game and studying for exams like this JEE
to get a spot. I guess in Australia in New Zealand
I felt a little bit luckier in that we do I feel end up learning the same content
but it comes at a little bit of a later stage because getting into university itself is not so competitive.
The real work can really start once you get there rather than before you walk in the door.
We're moving on to chemistry here, which I personally haven't done since high school, but it looks like a bit of a similar thing.
We've got some negative marks for wrong answers a few
sort of questions where I guess if you've practiced this kind of thing and you know the
formulas and you know how to work through some of these easier questions
this should be okay. But, you know, this section and even the physics section, I do have a physics degree
but I'd need to do some study to be able to pass this
because it really focuses on the details and a very broad range of details. Details that you would only remember if you are
trying to remember them for something like an exam.
I think one of the hardest things about this exam just by looking at it was the sheer quantity of information,
it is so broad. It covers so many different areas and it looks like you're having to do it all at once so
for that reason this does look like a very, I guess, taxing exam. It does look difficult
i'll give it that, like I'm not going to say this is an easy and
especially for high school students.
It's you know, if you're passing this and getting a good grade on this, that's really quite impressive. So here's the mathematics section,
it looks like the mathematics section is pretty strong and you know pretty difficult.
I would say that the notation and the type of questions is more something I would expect to see at an Australian university
course rather than testing high school students to get in, with that being said, I feel that in mathematics
difficulty is relative to what you've been exposed to.
Sometimes questions are not inherently harder than other questions
it just depends on what order you've been learning them in and what content you've been focusing on in class.
So it's really hard to compare that relative difficulty because I can only assume that
this is what's being taught in a school in India for students who are wanting to sit this exam.
But I know it probably also does take a lot of self-study as well. There's a lot of material in this exam.
We do have a bit of mathematical analysis as well, which is impressive to see and getting into linear algebra and matrices.
Those were something that I personally again didn't see until university
but it depends on the order you're learning them in how difficult they'll be to you.
We've got what looks like a quite advanced geometry problem,
and something about a differential equation.
So that was the last page and and let's just have a little comparison with the New Zealand
physics paper for high school students who would be graduating and going on to university. The New Zealand papers are
separated up into lots of different modules, so this paper here only deals with electrical systems.
So this is really just to show you how it's going to look different. In New Zealand exams often
it's not multiple choice
but short answers and long answers focusing more on explaining questions and actually using your
communication skills and English and writing,
rather than just doing the pure calculation. For this question here is one set-up with several questions that follow on from it,
this is a difference to the Indian exam where everything is much more
segmented and there are just lots of
individual questions which are not really related to each other. So overall I think that studying for this
JEE advanced paper will take a lot of time,
that's because it is so broad and there are so many questions that you need to know how to do and
do well because you don't want to lose marks.
I think that doing well on an exam like this is going to take a lot of practice, a lot of practice
not just remembering formula about how to use them and actually how to
think and adjust to the way that the questions will differ slightly from whatever the practice material is.
So if you have done this exam, you've done well on it or even just attempted it i'd say well done to you
because it definitely would take a lot of study. I'm not really a fan of
saying that one
country's exams are harder than any others because I think it's sort of relative and it kind of evens out in the end.
You might learn more stuff up front but what matters in the end is
understanding of some of these engineering concepts and the ability to go on to use them in creative ways to
do great work in the world. So I hope that was a good insight into this exam
and like I said, I will do a full work through of one of the questions in my next video
so if there's a question that you'd really like me to do just leave it as a comment.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.