Paper 2 tougher, say students who took JEE Advanced

Barring a technical glitch at one centre, the JEE Advanced 2018 went off smoothly on Sunday, with thousands of students trying their luck to gain a place at the top-tier technical institutions.

As many as 1,66,204 candidates took the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced 2018, an online-only paper. The test was held to fill 11,000 seats in the 23 IITs across the country.

Paper 2 tougher

Many students said the mathematics paper needed lengthy calculations and simplifications. "The chemistry paper is considered tougher than math and physics, but (in the test), math questions needed painstaking calculations," said Chirag, a BASE student.

Tanvi, also from BASE, agreed. Many students also found Paper 2 trickier than Paper 1. "The test was fairly easy," said Aniruddha Latkar from the Deeksha Centre For Learning. "The challenging portions were the same as last year. I thought math was a bit easier, while physics, as expected, was trickier and chemistry was moderate."

Since Latkar practiced solving a bunch of model tests before, he was able to finish the papers in time. "Yes, Paper 2 was difficult," he agreed. "Math was tougher, physics was comparatively easy, and chemistry is the same level as Paper 1."

Technical glitch

Students taking the test at ION Digital Zone, Peenya, had anxious moments as the system stopped to work after they finished their first paper. "We were informed that the second paper would be postponed due to technical issues," a parent said. "The paper was postponed to 4 pm, and even the elevators weren't working properly at the centre."

Another student revealed that they experienced glitches at the centre during the JEE Main as well. "The issues continued for two hours and we were given additional time," said a student Ashish (name changed). "Even after the tests began, we had to sit idle for two hours."

Ashish said the system began acting up 20 minutes into the test, which began at 9 am. Invigilators informed us that the tests would be postponed. The afternoon tests, supposed to start at 2 pm, were pushed back to 4 pm. The system continued to show that it was unable to connect to the server.