JEE Advanced 2018: Students find Paper 2 tough, Paper 1 moderate

The physics paper was difficult but maths and chemistry were easy in Paper-1, said most students who appeared for the JEE Advanced on Sunday. Overall, they said, the papers were of moderate difficulty. Opinions, however, differed. Aditya Singh, a student, said, “Paper-1 was tougher than Paper-2. Maths was the toughest and physics was the easiest for me. Chemistry was quite easy,” he said. The paper was tougher this year when compared to 2017, he said.

“The exam pattern has changed, they have introduced new type of objectives questions which did not have any options, for which we had to type the answers,” he said. Mr Ramesh Batlish, FIITJEE expert said, “Section-1 had six questions with four options in which one or more than one options were correct. The marking scheme in this section was +4 in case all options are correct, +1 for each correct response, 0 marks for no response and -2 for all other cases.” He said the maximum marks for this section was 24.

Mr Venkata Ramana, head of JEE, Hyderabad, T.I.M.E. said, Section 2 contained eight questions in the integer type. Answers ranged from 0 to 9. He said +3 marks would be given for the correct response and 0 marks for all other cases. “In other words, there is no negative marking.” Section 3 contained two paragraphs. Each question has four options, with +3 for the correct answer and -1 marks in all other cases. “In other words there are zero marks if none of the options was chosen. Overall the Paper 1 was moderate this year. The matching type questions had two columns to be matched. In 2017 there were three-column questions as well. Equal weightage was given to Class XI and XII. The total marks of each paper has been reduced from 183 to 180,” he said.