IITJEE 2010 Paper Analysis and Discussions

Around 4.5 lakh students appeared for IITJEE 2010 entrance exam all over the nation. There were some major changes in the pattern of the examination. 

Change in Pattern

Change of pattern of exam is very important to select the good talent. The change in pattern of the exam brings unpredictability and students who can think on the fly and has good IQ perform better as compared to those who slog a lot.

In last few years equal weightages were given to paper-1 and paper-2 but this year the trend has been broken. Paper-1 was for 252 marks where as paper-2 was only 237 marks with physics, chemistry and mathematics combined together. Also in paper-1,there were more number of questions as compared to that in paper-2. Paper-1 had 84 questions in all whereas paper-2 had only 57 questions. It means paper-1 had 47% more questions than paper-1. Why IIT would have done this? This might be because of the reason that generally students get tired in paper-2 and find it difficult to perform up to their abilities.

Another change was the partial marking in more than one choice correct type of questions. It was never there in IIT but this year you can get marks even if you could not tick all correct choices.

Difficulty Level

Mathematics :

Mathematics paper was definitely trickier and tougher than last year papers especially paper-2. It was little more difficult to score this time.

In paper-1 there were 28 questions as compared to 20 questions in JEE 2009. With same level of questions it was expected to solve 50% more number of questions. Many students were surprised and got confused when they saw 28 questions to be done in 1 hour. Students who spent more time in trying questions lost their productive time and had to leave those which they could have done correctly.

Paper-2 though had less number of questions compared to paper-1 but was equally or more difficult to score. The questions were not straight forward and had lots of calculation steps. The students who could pick the average level questions would perform better than others. There is no change in number of questions as compared to JEE 2009 paper-2.

Analysis: So overall I would rate mathematics little difficult to score as compared to last year. So average score should fall due to this. Some counter effect would come from more than one correct type of questions where partial parking was introduced for the first time.

Chemistry :

In Chemistry paper – 1 and 2, some of the questions were very easy and straight forward (especially Physical Chemistry). Organic Chemistry questions were also straight forward with a moderate degree of difficulty but still easier as compared to last year exam.

Inorganic chemistry was in a totally different format as compared to last year. The paper didn’t require the mugging of inorganic reactions but the questions were much more factual and most of them were based on qualitative aspect of Inorganic chemistry.

In paper – 2, there were only 2 match the columns questions as compared to 4 last year exam. Also, the single answer questions and link comprehension questions were easier with a moderate difficulty in Subjective questions.

Since there were more questions (unexpected) in the paper – 1 but lesser difficulty level along with some vagueness in the questions and partial marking in multiple answer questions, Chemistry is roughly at the same level (in terms of scores) as compared to last year.

Physics :

Since the paper – 1 had more questions than the last year, this should obviously decrease the individual score in Physics. In Paper – 2, the number of questions were same.

Overall, the difficulty level may be assumed to be slightly on higher side. Also, the paper had more rigorous calculations requirement relative to last year.

Paper – 2 level was roughly the same as compared to last year exam.
So, as per the analysis, scoring in Physics paper would be little less as compared to last year.


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