The Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) Advanced was conducted on October 3, 2021 (Sunday) as a computer-based test for admission into the Bachelor’s, Integrated Master’s, and dual degree programs in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Centrally Funded Technical Institutes (CFTIs). The top 2.5 lakh students of JEE Main were eligible to appear in JEE Advanced organized by IIT Kharagpur this year.
Similar to previous years’ format, the exam was conducted in a two-paper format with both the papers conducted on the same day with a break in between. The three-hour exam was conducted in English and Hindi. The exam pattern was different in both papers as compared to the previous years. Each paper carried maximum marks of 180 divided into three parts – Physics, Chemistry, and Math. Each part had an extra section compared to three sections per part in 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017 papers. These extra sections had numerical value type questions of two marks each. Both the papers had a similar marking scheme across all sections.
Amazon Academy’s teachers mark the difficulty level to each question and using this as an input, their data analysis team inferred that this year’s exam was slightly easier compared to the average difficulty level of the exams in the last five years. In Physics, almost all questions were easy to moderate level. Maths was on the tougher side with an increase in difficulty level by 10% this year. There was an almost equal weightage of class 11 and class 12 topics across Math and Physics. Chemistry was about 7% less difficult compared to the previous five years. Interestingly, topics from class 12 syllabus contributed to 70% of the Chemistry portion.
JEE Advanced is considered to be one of the toughest exams in the country because every year the paper has a percentage of new questions with a unique combination of concepts or the way the question is presented. Answering these questions requires a high level of cognitive skill and a thorough knowledge of the subjects. The number of such questions this year in Physics, Chemistry, and Math was 6, 12 and 23 respectively which is lower in Physics and Chemistry compared to previous years, again suggesting lower difficulty of questions in these two subjects. Overall, Physics was the easiest while Math was the toughest of all subjects this year.
Out of the total 114 questions in both papers, 54 questions were numerical value type without any negative marking. There has been a gradual decrease in the number of objective questions in the last few years as we witnessed 40% of the paper without options this year. Considering this trend, future aspirants may consider laying more emphasis on practicing subjective questions.
Amazon Academy’s data science team uses predictive modelling to predict the probability of chapters from which a higher percentage of questions can be asked in upcoming exams. Based on these models, the JEE Advanced Crash Course offered by Amazon Academy focused more on 15 chapters in Physics, and 12 and 13 chapters in Chemistry and Math respectively. This year 78%, 63% and 76% of the total questions, respectively, in JEE Advanced were from these chapters.
Students can access the detailed solutions and answer key of JEE Advanced 2021 papers at academy.amazon.in or on the Amazon Academy App (Android only)
