JEE Advanced 2020 Topper Interview: A talk with AIR 1 Chirag Falor

JEE Advanced 2020 Topper Interview: A talk with AIR 1 Chirag Falor

JEE Main 2020 was conducted between July 18 – July 23 in which 10,23,000 students appeared. Out of these, only 1,60,864 students qualified for JEE Advanced. JEE Advanced was held on September 27 across India.

With a total score of 352/396 marks in JEE Advanced 2020, Chirag Falor was the All India Rank 1 Topper. He scored 196 out of 198 in Paper 1 and 156 out of 198 in Paper 2. Moreover in JEE Main 2020, Chirag secured AIR 12 with 100 percentile.

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Currently, Chirag is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Physics from MIT. In this interview, he discusses his preparation strategies, overcoming difficulties, and much more.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Ojasvi: First of all, Chirag congratulations on achieving this huge feat. How did you react to being AIR 1 for JEE Advanced 2020?

Chirag: Well, it was not a complete shock for me as discussing among my circle of friends I realized that I have a high probability of getting the first rank. But, yeah I slept pretty late the night before at about 6 am as I had to catch up with some classes at MIT and I was woken up by my mother at about 11 am by a call from the director of IIT Delhi and he congratulated me that I was AIR 1.

I was baffled at that time and felt a rush of happiness within me. Soon, I also had a chat with the Minister of Education Ramesh Pokhriyal Ji, and then there was a flurry of calls from reporters across India and I was completely busy for the whole time just attending the calls and giving ‘interviews’ for each of them.

Ojasvi: You secured admission into MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) which is ranked number one in the world. It is one of the hardest universities to get into. Why did you prefer MIT over IITs? Is there a particular reason?

Chirag: I chose to attend MIT ‘over IIT’ because I found myself more fit with the culture of MIT than IIT. Moreover, I am inclined to study physics and MIT has much better facilities and faculty to help me develop and improve my aptitude in that field. I also feel that MIT is more research-oriented, while I have heard that IITs are industry-oriented (or even very ‘package-oriented’).

Moreover, I could study with my physics-oriented peers across the world and I highly value the significance of peer groups. The intellectual development of an individual and the collaborative atmosphere is another weight on the scales towards MIT.

Ojasvi: You scored 352/396 marks in the JEE Advanced Paper, which is impressive itself. What was your preparation strategy?

Chirag: I am blessed that I started early. Although, starting early was only effective as I could get an overview of 11th and 12th topics in 9th grade while preparing for NSEJS which I think helped me to boost my preparation a lot.

In 11th, I shifted to a hostel in Delhi, away from my family, without my smartphone. This helped a lot as I don’t have to pay attention to all the minor events happening in my home.

The unique thing in my preparation strategy was that I didn’t come in just to prepare for JEE. I was there to explore all possible fields (similar to MIT at a lower level) and go with what I liked. However, I can’t disagree that there were days where I studied only for JEE even though there were not many such instances. Not having the most common distractions like mobile, TV, computer games, etc, helped me a lot in doing so many things in this short time.

Ojasvi: Covid-19 was unexpected and sudden for all students. How did it affect you and your preparations? And what was your daily routine during lockdown?

Chirag: My experience is quite unique in the sense that I had been admitted into MIT and didn’t feel the pressure to study. So, I luckily reached back to my home a week before lockdown. After the lockdown, our revision classes had started and they pretty much extended the whole day. I also attended mock tests of JEE-adv once in 3 days or so. But, overall, I also spent time attending camps like Monsoon math camp or even preparing for exams at MIT which had a syllabus a bit beyond the JEE-advanced. This actually helped me to learn some new topics which could be used in the exam to speed up and also did not let me get bored.

Ojasvi: You excelled in both JEE Mains and JEE Advanced. What was the difference between your approaches for both these exams?

Chirag: JEE Mains exam is a bit easier than Advanced, so my thought process for solving any question in it was different as I had to just try to solve the question superficially rather than diving in depth. However, I can say that most of the preparation time was spent for JEE-Advanced and I just studied NCERT and solved archive papers a week before JEE Mains for its preparation.

Ojasvi: In the JEE Advanced Paper, which sections were easy or difficult for you? How did you overcome what you found difficult?

Chirag: I found the physics section of paper 2 a bit difficult because they weren’t routine questions and required insight about physics. Some questions of Maths were lengthy and difficult as well but were manageable. I found the first paper, overall, much easier than the second paper which is also reflected by the stark difference in my marks in both of them.

Ojasvi: You are a huge inspiration to JEE Main and Advanced aspirants. Would you like to give some useful tips or advice?

Chirag: I would say that JEE preparation is (very) long. There may be times when it seemed boring/worthless to do it. I don’t think it is good to spend these days/hours binging on YouTube series, playing mobile games, etc, because I feel that it generates a tendency to do such things even when we are motivated to study. So, I soon realized that a useful way to ‘pass’ time in such scenarios is to do something out of the syllabus but which helps in academic or personal development. This might include studying for some exam whose syllabus does not coincide with JEE (KVPY, NSEP, NSEC) or for some exam that is far from JEE (NSEA, RMO, SAT, Technothlon, TOSC, etc.) or do some online courses or read something out of curiosity, register for some interesting camp or qualifying level to that interesting camp. I mostly didn’t get bored by JEE preparation by doing other academic stuff but it's your wish how you want to keep yourself together.