JEE Main 2018 Paper Analysis The JEE Main 2018 Exam (paper based) was conducted on 8th of April 2018. This is the sixth edition of the exam in its present avatar i.e. since 2013 and is conducted by CBSE. Slightly less than last year, nearly 11 Lakh students are slated to appear in this exam in online and offline format.

The Paper is conducted in two parts. Paper 1 is conducted for students aspiring for engineering seats in engineering colleges and was conducted from 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM. Paper 2 on the other hand is conducted for students aspiring for architectural degrees and was conducted from 2:30 PM to 5:30 PM.

The analysis presented in this report is of Paper-1.

Paper Format

The paper was conducted from 9:30am to 12:30pm. The paper pattern was unchanged from last year, with 90 objective type questions (30 each in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) each carrying a reward of 4 marks for the right answer and a penalty of 1 mark for the wrong answer. Each question had exactly one correct answer.

Class-wise Distribution Analysis

Following table illustrates the distribution of questions across class 11th and 12th for the three subjects. It is apparent from the numbers, class 12th had a bigger chunk of questions across subjects and overall as well.

Subject / Level Physics Chemistry Maths Total 11th 13 15 10 38 12th 17 15 20 52

Overall Difficulty Analysis

We divide the questions in 3 categories: easy, medium and difficult to analyze the overall difficulty level of the paper and come up with a prediction of the cutoff.

Subject / Level Easy Medium Difficult Total Physics 10 19 1 30

Chemistry 9 14 7 30 Mathematics 12 13 5 30

Total 31 46 13 90

It was observed that the difficulty level of Physics and Mathematics is similar to last year’s paper whereas Chemistry paper was slightly more difficult. However, we believe that there is a perpetual increase in the average intelligence of students and hence a slight increase in difficulty level of the exam is to be expected.

Based on the above analysis, we feel that the paper was similar to last year in terms of difficulty and hence the cutoff should not vary much from last year.

JEE Main cutoff across years Category Name 2015 2016 2017 2018 (Expected)

General 105 100 81 82 – 90 OBC 70 70 49 55 – 60 SC 50 52 32 38 – 42 ST 44 48 28 32 – 38

Subject wise analysis

We present in the following pages a break up of questions for each of the subjects across topics, classes and difficulty.

Physics

11th43%12th

57%

Class wise Distribution

Difficult3%

Medium64%

Easy33%

Difficulty Distribution

Communication3%

Electricity & Magnetism

37%

Electronics3%General &

Experimental3%

Mechanics37%

Modern Physics7%

Optics7%

Thermal Physics3%

Topicwise Distribution

Chemistry

11th50%12th

50%

Class wise Distribution

Easy30%

Medium47%

Difficult23%

Difficulty Distribution

Inorganic Chemistry

33%

Organic Chemistry

27%

Physical Chemistry

40%

Topicwise Distribution

Mathematics

11th37%

12th63%

Class wise Distribution

Medium43%

Easy40%

Difficult17%

Difficulty Distribution

Algebra27%

Coordinate geometry

27%

Differential calculus

14%

Integral calculus13%

Trignometry3%

Vector3% Jee Main Topics

13%

Topicwise Distribution