Introduction
Let me give a short intro of myself before stating my experience of the exam itself, because I feel that the exam is a culmination of my 2 year journey.
I never actually prepared for WBJEE itself. My focus was on JEE Mains and subsequently JEE Advanced and hence getting into the IITs. I started my JEE preparation late into class 12 when the world outside was struggling to survive the rampage caused by a ginormous protein molecule, better known as the Sars-cov2 virus or simply the coronavirus. Before the month of April 2023, just after the 11th class was over , I knew nothing about JEE or what an engineer is. Long story short, it was not until I got into class 12 that I realized the significance of JEE.
After a year of turmoil and having no aim of WBJEE, my parents told one day that I have to appear in WBJEE. That was the month of December when the application forms for Wbjee were out. The next 3 months I had little time due to boards and school pressure and along with that JEE prep.
WBJEE 2023 was scheduled on 30th April— and you may not believe me but the first time ever I saw a WBJEE paper was on 10th April (before that I had experience only in Mains and Advanced papers). I came to know about the 2 hour math exam and the 2 hour separate phy and chem exam.
Prepration
After 19 days of getting habituated to the pattern of WBJEE, I finally was ready — or maybe I was feeling that I am ready.
I arrived at the exam centre well ahead of time. First 2 hours was Mathematics. 75 questions — 50 questions carrying one mark each and 25 questions carrying 2 marks each.
Now, most WBJEE 2023 candidates will agree with me that the math paper this year was quite lengthy and different from the previous year papers. And for nervous people like me, who aren’t ready to face new problems, the math paper was tough to manage.
Paper-1
I couldn't solve most of the paper. I saw that each problem was taking too much time. I started to solve the 2 mark questions first; solved most of them and went to the one mark questions. When i looked at the clock on the wall, 45 minutes were remaining and i had attempted only 38 marks out of 100. My hands started trembling and I felt like choking up. After that, I barely managed to solve about 15 questions out of 50 questions. And I knew that my WBJEE was miles away from good.
I came out after the math paper was over, went straight to my car and started to think how much i should focus on the next 2 hour paper. I had some food, drank water and at about 1:40 p.m. went back to my exam room. At 2 p.m. began the 2nd paper- Physics and Chemistry.
Paper-2
Physics and Chemistry were 50 marks each, and had 30 one mark questions and 10 two mark questions per subject.
Chemistry was quite easy. Most problems could be solved with no pressure at all. Physics too wasn’t that difficult, although the 2 mark questions were reasonably more difficult than the previous year questions. I finished this paper with comfort and felt that I would score at least 75 out of 100 in phy and chem. Combining that with the nightmarish 52 out of 100 in marks I was expecting around 120 total — against my hopes of getting a 140.
When the answer keys along with the recorded omr responses were released a week or two later, I was hoping for a pretty good confirmation of the 120 marks. To my horror, I saw that many answers of mine in the phy and chem paper were wrong, and my expectation of 75 came down to 60. The 52 in math, thankfully remained 52 — giving me a 112 out of 200.
Most of my friends told me that they too scored quite bad and weren’t expecting anything great in their ranks. I lost all hope for the results as well, and as for an approximate expectation in ranking( I am a general category candidate) I chose the figure of 500.
On the result day, which was on 17th June, I was quite tensed, but not at all hopeful. I knew that there would be students who would score better than me and that no one was silly enough to make mistakes in an easy chemistry paper as that. When I clicked on ‘Get Rank Card’ I was shocked to see my rank. Shocked as in I never expected to get a rank better than 500, and also shocked to realize that I could have done so much more to get into the top 100.
Results
I wont state my exact rank here but as you got to know my marks already I will say I was in the 250 to 270 range.
That’s it. That’s how my WBJEE 2023 ended. I know in my heart that it could have been much better, but we live with what we got, don’t we?
Thanks,