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Decoding NEET Subject-Wise

· 7 min read
Anas Nasim

In biology, you can go to Biomolecules without studying Animal Kingdom but Physics will rip you apart if you go to friction without Newton's Laws!

The beauty of any competitive exam lies in the fact that pure knowledge in the subject can be overpowered with cheap tricks.

With competition increasing every year, it is extremely important for aspirants to have a clear view of the challenges that come with each subject…

Biology

Perhaps what most students perceive as the easiest of all subjects, biology is, in a very broad sense, easier than contemporary subjects.
One and only one book lies at the throne of this subject: NCERT

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Sab kuch NCERT se aata hai biology mein (everything in biology comes straight from NCERT)
If you are an aspirant you must have heard this at some or the another point in your preparation.

Is this correct?

Partially. Considering past years' questions, it is easy enough to say you don't need any more content than what's given in NCERT. But the problem is, is there someone who can?

fully understand NCERT?

Leave alone the hidden points, it's volatile nature, you can not understand what is written in NCERT without taking some help from teachers or side books. Chapters like ' Transport in Plants ' and ' The Living World ' are beautifully written ( tough), understanding these chapters fully is a mammoth task, and most aspirants knowingly or unknowingly mug these chapters up.

But the good part is, questions in biology in NEET are straightforward, mostly fact-based. The majority of them don't require interlinking concepts or fine understanding of the chapter.

In the mid of my preparatory years, when I was fed up with this volatile nature of biology, I approached my teacher who suggested me to solve more questions in biology, this was a queer thought for me at the time, but now, a year and a half I realize how this simple habit made this subject so easy.

Solving questions has multiple benefits -

  • you remember things better.
  • you are less anxious in between the paper.
  • getting a question you've already solved in your main exam boosts your confidence level.

In the end, I would like to point out that no matter the issues, biology is a high-scoring subject, even 5 digit rankers score more than 350 easily. Ignoring the subject can be disastrous, a simple combination of question practice, notes making ( if you are into it) and NCERT makes this subject a cakewalk!

Chemistry

The moderate one, I personally loved chemistry because of its flexible nature, some questions require you to mug up stuff, some want you to solve equations, while some want you to imagine.

Inorganic Chemistry

The Mother of all problems (for me, at least :p), As soon as you're tired of remembering stuff in biology, you remember you have a whole d and f block you have not read in the past 3 months! In the past few years, its weightage has increased in both medical and engineering entrance exams. This subject is vast, bulky, and time-consuming.
It is difficult to make concepts here and YOU JUST HAVE TO MUG UP SOME THINGS. Question-solving again makes this branch easy as you get a better view of what subtopics are repeatedly asked and important and thus helps filter out useless information from pages.

What scared me the most about inorganic chemistry is the fact that examiners can just take a random fact written in NCERT and frame a question out of it, the fact which you didn't even bother to see even after reading chapter 15 times! 😆

But the good part, this becomes the rank deciding question as very few people are actually able to remember and retain the facts in the main exam.
Again here, a combination of question practice and reading (after filtering stuff) will take you the way.

Organic Chemistry

The Jack of all Trades! This is a beautiful subject and requires understanding. Just focus on the concepts you learn in General Organic Chemistry and the subject will be a cakewalk. The first few chapters develop your understanding and they may seem tough and vague in the beginning, but with time you will become used to it.

Some reactions may require mugging up names and catalysts and they, thus become examiners' favorite. It is easy to create conceptually challenging questions in Organic (though never are they going to appear in NEET)
Again solving questions will develop your understanding more and more. You may refer to higher-level books for understanding some tough reactions but in the frame of NEET, just mugging up the reaction as is written in NCERT is the more efficient way!

Physical Chemistry

Formulas, formulas, and formulas! From the Mole concept to Chemical Kinetics, the entire subject revolves around formulas. There is a simple certain set of basic questions (formula-based or trick-based) that are repeatedly asked, so be clear with the formulas you come across. Some questions, especially those involving logarithms have heavy calculations and thus may prove time-consuming. So it's absolutely important to be thorough with the formulas and their application in the question. (some cheap mathematics tricks are always helpful in calculations! :p)

Similar to organic chemistry, examiners can at times frame value-based / fact-based questions ( straight from NCERT) and as usual, it is difficult to pay attention to them while reading, so it's better to go the other way round.. Solve questions, look for such fact-based problems, find them in NCERT, and mug them straight!

Physics

The very word Physics invokes different emotions in different aspirants. Some students just fall in love with it, some hate it to the very core of its existence, to some students it reminds of the hardcore mathematics they felt they had left long ago, to some it remains a satellite memory of their favorite subject!

Where does this difference arise?

Physics, especially in 11th, remains an ever evolving subject. You start from basic mathematical tools to motion to force and so on and so on... Each new day, each new subtopic will be nothing but a continuation of the previous one. You learned differentiation on Saturday, you will be using it to calculate velocity and acceleration on Monday. Okay, you got acceleration, now on Tuesday, you will have to find the forces acting which causes this acceleration. On Wednesday you will have to go the other way round. On Thursday you will have to remove ideal conditions and include friction. Friday onwards you will not consider the body as a point object so you will have to understand rotational motion. Saturday onwards you will not consider the body as rigid and from now on it is extensible and can be elongated and compressed.

That was a bit exaggerated but that's what actually happens here. It just keeps stacking one over the other and unless and until you are through with what you have studied earlier, you will never be able to grasp the upcoming topics. This is where Physics becomes different from the other two subjects. In biology, you can go to Biomolecules without studying Animal Kingdom but Physics will rip you apart if you go to friction without Newton's Laws!

So how to get over it?

Just the simple things again. Solve questions, more and more and more. They will improve your level of understanding, they will make you less fearful of the topic. Be thorough with your chapters. People ignore something for the other and gradually lose their interest in the subject leading to the most popular notion - “Physics tough hai”.. Physics isn't tough, it just requires your presence!