Career
When is the right time to start your preparations for competitive exams like NEET or JEE? When do the toppers begin their studies? These are natural questions that flood all engineering and medical aspirants once they decide that these are the paths they want to take. Both competitive exams like NEET and JEE guarantee seats to the top colleges.
The higher you rank, the better the prospects you have. Increased competition has made these examinations even more difficult where not only your knowledge is tested but your time management and strategic skills come under the scanner as well. The top 10 CBSE schools in Gurgaon do start guiding students on the competitive lines, but the onus is on the students as well as to decide when to start bifurcating their available time between the boards and the competitive exams.
When it might not be right to start preparations? when is the correct time to start preparing for your competitive exams?
Many IIT and Medical aspirants believe that preparations must start as early as 6th standard to beat the complexity level of the associated competitive exams. Even the coaching institutions guiding students on similar lines and actually absorb students that young to study for examinations that will take place 6 years from that moment.
There are two pronounced drawbacks to this approach. One, children are increasingly being robbed of their childhood and becoming burdened with academic pressure when there is no need for the same. And two, preparing strictly on competitive exam grounds make the boards suffer as the pattern is quite different irrespective of similar syllabuses. A student learning to solve MCQs from the 6th standard will miss out on the skills required to write long-form answers. In the boards, the grades will suffer.
When it might be right to start preparations?
As a rule of thumb, the 9th standard is ideal to gradually start preparing for your competitive exams like NEET and JEE exams. Here, the syllabus exists in its basic level that looks to create your foundation for higher school education and the competitive exams ultimately test you on your 11th and 12th standard knowledge. Even the top schools in Gurgaon gradually introduce MCQs into their classes, bring basic competitive level questions up for discussions and guiding students to the expected complexity during the 9th standard.
While preparing for your math and science topics, you can very well start solving the easier questions of the mock JEE and NEET papers and slowly move forward as your class progresses.
What if you did not start in your 9th standard?
Then you can begin in your 11th standard. By this time, you will already find your teachers and peers talking about competitive exams and the perks of joining as elite college. You will rarely need a separate push to start your preparations now as the surrounding buzz will act as your motivation. Sure, the pressure might mount a bit owing to the delayed start but that does not mean you are late to the event. 11th and 12th standard CBSE syllabuses are more linked to the competitive exams and it will be easier for you to catch up and prepare fast, despite the time when you decide to start.
Your classes will now surround the competitive curriculum even more as good schools amp up discussions of JEE and NEET questions and focus more on MCQs. Keep in mind that with the right amount of hard work, you can clear the competitive exams even when you start in your 11th standard.
Starting early is a bonus, but not the only way
Middle school is the time when students learn to deal with greater complexity. It needs to be a manageable step where students coming from the primary stage can make the jump. If competitive exam preparations are thrust along with the middle school curriculum, that progress often becomes overwhelming for many students. Any top school in the list of best schools in Gurgaon will naturally advise against this approach.
However, the institution will always keep in mind that there are a few students in the batch who can take the added pressure, who can deal with the jump and swallow the complexity. For these rare talents, the schools look to organise personalised sessions.
The Alpine Convent School follows such a methodology when it comes to guiding students with competitive exams. The school understands the relevance of starting early but never enforces the belief among all its students as a whole. Alpine teachers monitor closely and guiding students rightly from the pre-primary stage and introduce only those academic nuances that the children can handle going forward. For the entire class, competitive exams are held off until the right time comes. For a selected few, the required exposures do start early. Similarly, as a student, you need to judge your potential. Take help and start whenever you can.
