Online resources useful for JEE and in general

I can’t remember ‘many’ resources which are present online, mostly because I didn’t use many. However, the ones I used, I used them a lot.

Resources I find useful:

• Wikipedia : Obviously, it is a renowned resource. However, it is not evident to many that it has so much content which is extremely helpful to JEE (or olympiads or high school or college or anything). I used Wikipedia to explore topic before class (all subjects: organic/inorganic chemistry, physics, maths), find some references to articles about any topic I am curious about (which of great help in academic writing but also to explore), many beautiful and interesting formulae which significantly improve speed during exam and, most importantly, I found so many ‘difficult’ concepts elegantly put. Wikipedia strives to be accessible to the general public and, hence, you could learn any high-level concept from its Wikipedia page if you pay attention thoroughly enough. As this is in JEE preparation, here are some wiki pages which I have referred multiple times for exploring topics of JEE:
  • These are easily googleable and you might have come across most of these so there is not much ‘gold’ here, but for people who have never used wikipedia to study or are lazy
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Integrals (many links are interesting to explore; relevant ones are all in the Integration methods)
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Calculus_topics (Everything except Multivariable Calculus, Vector Calculus and History of calculus seems relevant for JEE. However, these topics are interesting as well)
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Calculus_topics#Calculus:~:text=Theorems-,Lists (The same link but needs emphasis on lists. Try to explore all the lists at least once. I just went through each identity, integral, function, etc, and found many super-interesting ones. You could note them down if you want to, but it more of like a checklist of possible formulas to remember)
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigonometry (An okish page with not much advanced stuff)
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trigonometric_identities (So many amazing identities, take a notebook and a day and explore this page. Surely, you will love it, especially after trigonometry is over in class. I wished I found this page before)
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUPAC_nomenclature_of_organic_chemistry (Awesome way to learn nomenclature and possibly the latest one; However, JEE might not use the latest IUPAC nomenclature or there might be other discrepancies, so exercise caution while learning through this)
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_reaction#By_mechanism (Organic reactions as per mechanism. However, these have many non-relevant, but interesting stuff too)
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Electromagnetism (most topics here are relevant or at least helpful)
  • This isn’t an exhaustive list, but I hope you get the idea of how wikipedia has some good content which is worth reading and would recommend exploring it on your own

• If you hate inorganic, just like all JEE aspirants, I would recommend you to read this. I found this during lockdown and it changed my perspective towards Inorganic or even remembering other formulas from different subjects. I used Ankidroid and, because I couldn’t make all cards alone in such a short period of time, I collaborated with all the (pro) and ‘studious’ friends who I knew. The total number of cards are about 1700 which is not enough to cover the complete syllabus but covers many easily forgotten points. This helped ‘me’ in JEE-Main with 2 questions from cards which I surely won’t have remembered if I didn’t use this. (Note: this seems very less compared to the hardwork and patience devoted to it, but it was a lot for me because losing 2 questions would have a devastating effect on 296/300). Remember, the fruits won’t be equal for all students, however, it was helpful for me as I lost most marks because I couldn’t remember a formula or some compound or some property or similar. For reference, here is the github repository with the decks I made on my own. If you have made an awesome deck about some other topics, feel free to start a pull request. This could help other people who came along the same lines as you.

• Open courseware and other online course websites: This is especially for those who couldn’t get in some coaching institute due to financial reasons. I can’t emphasize this enough but MIT has put many courses open for the public on https://ocw.mit.edu/ . Extract as much as you want from it, because these are recorded from actual classes taught at MIT. Moreover, due to the pandemic, I have heard that there will be a huge wave of online courses coming up soon. Look out for scholar courses there (which have an SC in the end) as these are not just recorded videos but organized assignments, textbook readings, recitations, etc. In short, a complete course from MIT. Some course numbers to JEE syllabus correspondence:
  • 8.01SC - Classical Mechanics (Try 8.012 if you want something advanced)
  • 8.02 - Electricity and Magnetism (Similarly try 8.022 if you want something more advanced)
  • 8.03SC - Vibration and Waves (This has a significant part beyond syllabus of JEE, so choose topics wisely)
  • 18.01SC - Single Variable Calculus (The 5th part of it might not be completely inside JEE syllabus, but I found it completely useful anyways)
  • 18.02SC - Multivariable Calculus (Except of the first part of vectors and matrices, the rest is surely not part of JEE syllabus. However, some tricks from these helped gain some extra minutes in actual exam)
  • 5.111SC - Principles of Chemical Science (This should correspond to physical chemistry, but I haven’t completed it so I have no idea. Proceed at your own discretion)
  • 5.12 - Organic Chemistry I (This should correspond to Organic Chemistry of JEE, but I haven’t taken it so I have no idea even if a small fraction is relevant or not. Also, it’s very old)
• Then, there is edX and Coursera which have more ‘structured’ courses for online study. You can take, probably, all the courses for free (without getting any certificate for completion). There are courses on similar topics from JEE syllabus from top universities of the world, so you can try these out if you want.

Word of Caution: Obviously, the above online resources aren’t specifically designed for JEE, so you should explore them with your own discretion. I found things on wiki to be easily distinguishable between relevant or interesting or too advanced (I didn’t explore while categorizing but it seems easy to do so). However, with online courses it is much harder. I took some rotational motion and SHM after I had already taken classes on it and been familiar with it. It went pretty easy, and hence boring, for me. However, in the end I realized I could understand the topics way more conceptually than before. There was a significant increase in how well I ‘understood’ the ‘concepts,’ even though my question solving ability remained the same. (Eg. I realised that torque can only be defined around a point, while angular momentum can be defined along a point or an axis both). I don’t think this amount of conceptual understanding is necessary for JEE, but it might be helpful in, say, physics Olympiads.