Story of How a guy cracked IIT JEE without coaching

with AIR 14 Navin Kabara

I managed to get a rank of 14 in JEE (1988) in a very unconventional way.
I will first give a conventional answer about how I studied (or rather did not study), and in the
latter part of the answer, I will speculate on why I think I did well.
The things I did NOT do:
No classes: I did not join any JEE coaching classes for the simple reason that I lived in Nashik,
and at that time, there were no JEE classes in Nashik. In fact, few people had even heard of JEE
or IITs. (I did join coaching classes for 11th/12th board studies, and my performance in board
exams is directly attributable to those classes. (Thank you Gadgil and Vanzari Sir.))
No skipping college: I attended all the lectures and all the labs and my classes in my 11th/12th.
No other exams: I did not appear for any entrance exams other than my 12th std board exams, and
JEE.
No losing sleep: I used to sleep for 8 hours every day.
No sacrificing 12th std: I was not really expecting to clear JEE, so JEE studies were a second
preference, and I studied hard for 12th std (HSC, Maharashtra) exams. I did well (2nd in Pune
board merit list).
No Resnick and Halliday / Feynman / Irodov: I did have my own copies of the two volumes of
Resnick and Halliday, but to this day, I have not read more than one page. I hadnt even heard of
Irodov or Feynman.
No marathon/heroic study sessions: I never studied for more than 3 hours per day (except in the
last month). In the last month, I did study about 8 to 12 hours per day.
No JEE preparation/classes in school: I hadnt even heard of IIT or JEE until my 10th std, so there
was no question of doing any IIT-related preparation in 5th/6th/7th as kids seem to be doing these
days. I started in 11th.
No practice exams: I did not appear for any mock tests.
No study buddies: As I mentioned above, I did not know anybody else in my city who was appearing
for the JEE seriously. So, I did not study with someone else.
What I actually did:
Agrawal Correspondence Course: In those days, Agrawal classes of Bombay (which no longer exists,
I believe) had a correspondence course. I signed up for that. I used to get one packet of study
material, and practice questions every month. I would go through the study material, and then solve
all the practice questions (by myself). Agrawal would also have practice tests, and mock exams, and
other such things. I never did any of those. If you sent them your answers to their practice
questions, they would send back corrected copies. I never did any of that either.

Board exams vs JEE: For most of my 11th std., I attended all my classes, labs, and the (non-JEE)
coaching classes, and did some studies, but not a lot. I started seriously studying for JEE around
the end of 11th std. From then on, for most of 12th std, I did only JEE studies, and did not bother
with college studies (except attending all lectures and labs and coaching classes). About 2-3 months
before the 12th board exams, I stopped JEE studies entirely, switched to studying only for the
board exams. After the board exams, I had about 1 month of studying for the JEE.
Regular Studying 3 hours per day: Starting from (roughly) the second half of 11th std, I studied 3
hours everyday. Regularly. This included JEE studies as well as college studies. I would start
studying at 10pm, after a good dinner, and watching about an hour of TV with my family. I would
study until 1am. Sometimes I would go on till 2am if the problem set I was working on had
particularly difficult problems. In any case, I would sleep until 9-9:30am in the morning, and then go
off to attend college (10:30 onwards), and labs (afternoons). I did not do any studying other than
during those 3 hours (except in the last month before my board exams and the month before JEE,
when I did not have to attend college, so I would study the whole day, roughly 5-6 hours during the
day, and 3-4 hours at night.)
Doing everything else: I attended college during the day. In the evenings (starting around 6/7pm) I
would go for a long walk. I had various friends and relatives who stayed 3-5km from home, an I
would walk to their house, spend an hour with them, and walk back home. In case of friends, I would
either goof off with them, or if close to college/board exams, I would help them with problems in
their studies. In case of relatives, I would play with my cousins (who were babies at that time).
After coming back home, I would watch TV (we had just 2 channels at that time) until 10pm.
Was it a fluke?
Since I never appeared for any mock tests, I had no idea how I would do in JEE. Only 1 guy from
Nashik had made it into IIT 2 years before I did, with a rank of around 200, and he had been a
state topper in the board exams. I did not believe that I was as smart as he was, so I would have
been very happy if I had gotten a rank between 1000 and 1500. But, I believed that there was a
very good chance that I would not get in at all.
So, I was flabbergasted when I got a rank of 14. Agrawal classes had invited the top-100 rankholders for a 3 day celebratory trip to Bombay, and when I met and talked to the others, I quickly
realized that I had not done any of the things that the others had done to crack the JEE. This
feeling got even more pronounced in my first few days in IIT-Bombay. A lot of my classmates were
students from Ruparel college, who used to talk about Feynmans lectures in physics, and the
difficult problems from Irodov, and some particularly arcane paradoxes involving angular
momentum, and other such things. In general, they had far, far more exposure than I did, and I
managed to get myself a massive inferiority complex, and would often wonder whether my JEE rank
had been a mistake or fluke of some sort.
I had an unhappy couple of months until the first mid-semester exams, when I out-scored most of
them and it slowly began to dawn on me that in spite of my lack of exposure to Messrs. Resnick,
Halliday, Irodov, and Feynman, my JEE rank was not a fluke.
So, what was my secret?
I dont know. But over the course of my 4 years in IIT, I realized one thing: my basics in Physics
and Maths were extremely clear. (The same couldnt be said for Chemistry, but that is another
story.)

I now believe that my success was probably due to some of the books (related to Maths, Physics,
and general Problem-solving) that I read (just for fun) between the ages of 5 and 15. (A list of the
books is included at the end of this answer)
When I was 6, my aunt (who lived in the US) gifted two books of brain teasers (Master Mind Brain
Teasers, and Master Mind Pencil Puzzles both by Joseph and Lenore Scott) to my sister (who was
4 years older). Many of the problems were too complicated for me, but I would simply read the
question, and then read the answer. I do think it helped me develop very good problem solving skills
(in spite of the fact that I did not actually solve most of the problems myself). Over the next 3-4
years, I would periodically return to those books and re-read them. (Thank you, Krishna
Rajadhyaksha)
When I was 9, my school gave me: Figuring the Joy of Numbers (by Shakuntala Devi). This got me
started on a life-long love of numbers and maths. (Thank you, Mrs. Roy.)
When I was 11, I got books on Physics and Maths by Ya. Perelman: Algebra Can Be Fun, Figures for
Fun, Physics for Fun and Entertainment, Parts 1 and 2. (I cant find a link to these exact books on
Amazon, but I believe this and this are newer editions of the same books). These books I continued
to read on-and-off for the next 3-4 years.
Important point to note: these books are not text books, and were not supposed to be study
books, and were not prescribed by any teacher or class. All of them are fun books that I read just
out of interest. In fact, my parents would (mildly) complain that I never studied. But it is because
of these books that I have very strong fundamentals in Physics and Mathematics (based on
intuition, and not just rules and formulas), and good problem solving skills.
I do believe that these books helped build the foundation on which I was able to crack the JEE with
much less effort than it takes most other people.
Random tidbits:

After all the 12th std exams were over, I promised myself that I would never again give
this much importance to academics (or indeed my career) again. I decided that I would take
an active interest in things other than studies/work. I have largely kept that promise, and
as a result, my career graph has not been as impressive as some people expect (based on my
JEE rank e.g. went to a top-10 Univ in the US, not top-5; did not become a fellow/CXO in a
large company; and now struggling with a startup that I *want* to do instead of a lucrative
job that I *should* be doing; etc), but I have no regrets. I have done other things that I am
proud of.
It is important to remember that not cracking the JEE does not mean that youre not smart
enough, or that youre not going to be successful in your career. Students will appear for
JEE, or have appeared and failed, and especially parents of such students do not give up
hope just because of bad JEE scores. I have seen enough people who barely managed to get
into tier 2 or even tier 3 colleges, and even there, barely managed to pass their exams, but
are now running extremely successful companies in which they hire IITians and later fire
(some of) them for being too lazy. I have also seen people who are clearly not as smart as
some of the other people around them, but when you look at their career over a period of
10+ years, you see them outperforming the others simply through hard work. Do not make
the mistake of underestimating someone (especially yourself) due to lack of academic
success.