Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) is one of the most popular entrance exams in the country. Every year, more than a million students appear for the JEE Main exam, from which around 2 lakh students move on to the next level, which is JEE Advanced.
JEE is the gateway to some of the best engineering colleges of the country like the IITs, NITs, IIITs, CFTIs and many other universities and colleges as well. Candidates appear in this examination with tons of preparation to get their dream college.
JEE is generally perceived as a very tough exam. It is already amongst the toughest examinations in the world. This nature of exam is generally due to two reasons, first and more dominant one is the huge number of candidates appearing in this exam. With around 12-13 lakh candidates appearing in the exam every year, being on the top list of candidates is not an easy thing.
And secondly, some of the questions appearing the exam have been very tricky. But this is somehow a workable difficulty as one can secure a handsome rank even after leaving such tough questions. This is because most of the questions are easy and moderate, and only a few of them are actually tough.
Every year, a lot of hype gets created around the JEE Main Question Paper, in which many candidates perceive many myths about the exam in their mind. Therefore, to clear all your confusion, we bring you answers to all your queries regarding the JEE Main 2017 Question Paper.
JEE Main 2017 Paper Analysis
What was the overall level of JEE Main 2017?
Well, to describe it in the simplest of ways, JEE Main 2017 was a moderate level paper. It cannot be said too difficult, and it was definitely not an easy one as well.
Candidates had the chance to score well in the exam if they had covered their syllabus well. However, it is also a fact that candidates who had taken coaching might have got a slight edge with some questions, due to the tricks and shortcuts they offer.
What was the sectional difficulty level of JEE Main 2017?
If you do a microanalysis of the paper, then it can be concluded that the Chemistry section was a balanced one. While Physics had a little trickier question, the mathematics section had lengthy questions.
Here is a detailed section-wise analysis of JEE Main 2017 –
Physics:- As mentioned earlier, this section did contain some tricky questions. However, if we compare it with previous year’s JEE Main, then physics section was actually slightly easier than the 2016 exam. One good thing was that there was no ambiguous question in this section and every question was within the syllabus of JEE Main.
An important aspect of the paper was that it contained more calculative problems that just theoretical ones. So, you had to devote some time to each question to get the answer. Physics section contained 6 tough, 10 easy and 14 moderate questions.
Chemistry:- Probably the most balanced section of the paper was chemistry section. Thankfully, this section did not give any shock to students. This section’s difficulty level was quite similar to previous year.
Most of the questions of physics section were based on basic concepts which can be found in NCERT books. This section had many direct theoretical questions, which made it a section which involved the least amount of time. Thus, without any changes in difficulty level and also due to more theoretical nature of the exam, Chemistry section was regarded as the easiest section of JEE Main 2017.
Mathematics:- The thing about this section was that it looked easy, but when you went on solving questions, they took a lot of time. Most of the questions in the mathematics section of JEE Main were formula based, but one needed to have a good grip on calculations, to perform well in this paper.
The difficulty level of this paper was moderate. While interpreting the questions was nowhere a tricky job, but solving them did require a little amount of patience. Due to time-consuming nature of this section, mathematics was termed as the most difficult section by many students.
What is the comparative importance of Class 11 and 12 syllabus?
Well, in no case you can choose to give lesser importance to any of these. Although class 12 syllabus is a dominant player, you certainly have to work on both of them precisely.
Take a look at the section wise division of Class 11 and 12 questions in JEE Main 2017 –
Physics:- 19 questions from class 12 syllabus, and rest 11 from class 11.
Chemistry:- 17 questions from class 12, while 13 were there from class 11 syllabus.
Mathematics: – This section had 20 questions from 12th standard’s syllabus while remaining 10 questions were from 11th standard.
So overall, 56 questions were from the syllabus of 12th standard, and 34 questions were from class 11’s topics.
What was the topic wise weightage in JEE Main 2017?
Well, to track every single question from its related chapter might not be a very good approach to analyze the paper. Rather, identifying clusters of questions will be a better method. Take a look at the division of sections in JEE Main 2017 according to their respective related topics:-
Physics:- The physics section of JEE Main had 11 questions from Mechanics, 3 from thermodynamics and kinetic theory, 8 from electrodynamics, 2 from optics and wave optics, and 6 question featured from modern physics and nuclear physics.
Chemistry:- Chemistry section was very well balanced between Organic, Inorganic and Physical Chemistry. While 11 questions were there in the exam from each of physical and inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry got 8 questions to its name in the paper.
Mathematics:- The mathematics section was algebra heavy as 15 questions featured on this topic. While trigonometry, vector algebra, and trigonometry occupied a space of 3 questions each, rest 6 questions were from calculus.
What was the cutoff of JEE Main 2017?
JEE Main cutoff is facing a downward trend due to many reasons. Some of these reasons are increased in a number of seats and colleges, increase in a number of candidates getting selected for JEE Advanced. The cutoff for general category was 81, which fell heavily as it was 100 in 2016.
On the other hand, cut off for NC-OBC was 49 (70 in 2016), while for SC and ST it was 32 and 27 respectively.
Where can I find the previous years’ papers of JEE Main 2017?
There are numerous sources from where you can get the previous year papers of JEE Main. Previous year papers are the most important and reliable source of preparation, which is why one must go through them before the exam. Take a look at some of the ways in which you can get the previous year papers of JEE Main:-
Books:- The best method is to purchase a book for this. There are many books available in the market which offer past year solved papers of JEE Main of up to 38 years. Here is a list of such books-
Book Name |
Author/Publisher |
15 years’ solved paper JEE Main |
Vikas Jain and DK Jha (Arihant Publishers) |
14 years IIT JEE solved papers |
DC Pandey and RP Singh (Arihant Publishers) |
38 years’ chapter-wise solved papers IIT JEE Physics |
DC Pandey (Arihant Publishers) |
Websites and Forums:- You can also download the PDF versions of JEE main previous year papers from many websites. Some of these websites are jeemain.nic.in, collegedunia.com, byjus.com, askiitians.com, jagranjosh.com and many others.
Mobile apps:- The handiest way of getting these papers is downloading mobile apps that offer previous year papers. Some apps that offer such free papers are ‘Solved previous year JEE Main papers by SKJ Studios’, ‘IIT Past year papers by SarkariBabu’, ’10 years JEE Main solved paper by SUPERCOP’ and many others.
So, through this article, we have answered some of the most prevalent questions of JEE Main 2018 aspirants. Hope, these insights will help you in preparing for this exam and also help you in making up your mind to appear for the exam.