After mention in Kota Factory Season 3, a pertinent question — Is 2015 JEE Advanced paper still haunting students?

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In the Kota Factory series, the actors are seen in a classroom full of students which is wrapping up. One of the students asked Vaibhav Pandey that he had heard that the two of them (Pandey and Balmukund Meena) were not able to solve the 2015 question paper.

Frustrated by the question, Vaibhav answered angrily: “Yeah, we could not. Go ahead and solve it if you can. Also, go win the 2015 World Cup as well. Will you?”

The friends then calmed him and the classmate went ahead and mocked Pandey and Meena to solve the board exam paper and said, “Who knows maybe you won’t even score 75 in those.”

The JEE Main marks required to become eligible for JEE Advanced in 2015 were 100 for the General category candidates, while it was 70 for OBC-NCL, 52 for SC and 48 for ST in 2015.

In JEE Advanced in the same year, the topper scored 469 out of 504 total marks which was 93.05 per cent. This was lower than the marks obtained by the 2014 topper who scored 334 out of 350 marks (95.42 per cent marks). In 2016 and 2017, the toppers scored 320 out of 372 marks (86.02 per cent) and 339 out of 366 marks (92.62 per cent), respectively.

The JEE Main cut-off for the General category was 115 in 2014, while it again dropped to 100 in 2016.

The indianexpress.com reached out to several experts and IIT professors to know in what ways the JEE Advanced paper in 2015 was difficult. Let us see what they said.

In the JEE Advanced paper of 2015, Himanshu Gupta, Physics Faculty, Physics Wallah (PW) said, more than the questions, it was the marking scheme that made the paper difficult.

There were no single-choice questions in either paper 1 or paper 2, the faculty added, saying that while paper 1 consisted of integer type, matrix match and multiple options correct type questions, the paper 2 consisted of integer type, multiple choice correct type and comprehensions with multiple correct options.

The marking scheme of multiple choice questions was +4 if all correct options were marked; and -2 if the student either marked an incorrect option, or left a correct one. This made the paper extremely difficult and lengthy, Gupta said.

“Even the matrix had a negative marking scheme,” he added.

The type of questions and their marking scheme keep changing in JEE Advanced. Over the years it has been trending towards helping students score well. Step marking for multiple choice questions are also introduced and the negative marking in matrix-type questions are removed now.

According to Saurabh Kumar, senior educationist with over 22 years of experience, “With JEE Advanced, it is always difficult and the only thing common about JEE Advanced is that nothing is common.”

He further added, it never repeats questions, it never takes questions from any reference books, it never gives you any hint about the pattern of the exam.

In 2015, Kumar added, the JEE Advanced paper was obviously a very good collection of questions, if he analyses them as a teacher. But from the perspective of a student taking the exam in that limited period of time and in an environment which anyhow stresses the students, the paper was difficult.

The matrix-match type questions were introduced for the first time in 2015, he added, saying that comprehension type questions also entered for the first time. There were multiple one-of-its own questions in the physics and chemistry paper of JEE Advanced 2015, the educationist added.

However, Kumar said, “Stress did not come due to the pattern of the paper or the difficulty level of the paper, but due to the competition of the exam, the cut-off, the number of applicants taking the exam and the number of seats involved.”

He believes if the paper is difficult, it is difficult for everyone and if the paper is easy, it is easy for everyone. The stress is due to the ratio of the number of students appearing and the seats involved, he added.

An IIT professor, wanting to stay anonymous, said that the nature of the questions in JEE Advanced make it an advanced level of exam. “It is not only an exam but an opportunity to be taught skills and get hands-on training in addition to the curriculum and among the best in the country. At all the IITs in the country, there are societies and clubs where students’ interests are nurtured and steps are taken to excel them. Therefore, the JEE Advanced exam must be at that level so that only the bright minds are selected,” the professor said.

With repetitions in a pattern of the exam, the test, in fact, loses the core idea of evaluating students, he added. Therefore, to not give an edge to any of the students, the marking scheme keeps on changing, the IIT professor said.

The JEE Advanced 2015 paper saw approximately 1.22 lakh candidates from over 350 centres across India appearing for papers 1 and 2 competing for 10,000 seats across IITs and ISM Dhanbad. “We have always carried negative marking in the JEE-Advanced exam, but the only major change we made this year was to increase the weightage of the paper,” the organising chairman of JEE Advanced 2015 of IIT Bombay said after the exam.

The exam, which usually consists of 350 marks, carried a weightage of 504.

A teenager then, Aditi Garg, who had appeared for the exam, said, “The paper pattern was unexpected and I was quite shocked although I had practiced a lot of paper styles. The JEE Advanced 2015 paper was very different and difficult.

“The questions, which were multiple-choice, had negative markings and several had more than one correct option. With so much negative marking, it was difficult to decide whether to answer a question you were unsure about,” she added.

Kshitiz Goel, another student who had appeared for the exam back then, however, said the JEE Advanced 2015 paper was a “good and balanced one”. “It was not very easy but not too lengthy either,” he said.