BHUBANESWAR: Sarthak Behera secured an All-India Rank (AIR) of 29 in the JEE (Main) exam, the results of which were declared on April 30. The youngster, the son of a police officer, prepared for the top engineering entrance exam at a private coaching centre here. The boy who devoted five hours every day to his studies has only four words of advice for others who want to crack the exam: focus on classroom teaching.Sarthak said students should pay attention to classroom lectures and ask questions whenever they face difficulty in understanding a particular subject. "Sometimes, students remain absent from classes and skip important lectures. Later, they don't follow up and this becomes a problem during exams. They should go to the teacher and clear their doubts as fast as possible," he said.He placed emphasis on making notes for all subjects rather than using several books for each subject before the exams. "We have to set a deadline to finish chapters and revise the subjects to gain confidence during exams," he added.Sarthak said he answered difficult questions first before attempting the simpler ones. "It becomes difficult to answer tough questions at the end of the exams. If you don't know the answer to a question, leave it. Don't waste time," he said.Another student, Pragyan Chakrabarti of the city, who secured an All-India Rank of 63, said he relied on self-study, besides tuitions and special coaching classes. "A student should finish his homework on time and understand the subjects well. There are no short-cuts to achieving a good rank. Proper planning and focused study will bring good results," he added.Pragyan, a Plus II student of a city-based private college, prepared for the exam for the last two years. His next target is to crack the JEE (Advanced). "I will complete my BTech in computer science from an IIT of my choice. Then I will go for an MBA or MTech programme," he added.As many as 44,488 candidates from the state had registered for the JEE (Main) this year. Some of them had appeared for the exam in the offline mode while others took it online on April 15 and 16.

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