The best JEE coaching providers charge lakhs of rupees for the two-year or one-year engineering exam preparation packages that roll out. If you are not being able to enrol in them just because their affordability is an issue, here are some of the ways in which you can save money without compromising on your education prospects:
Apply for Scholarships
Top JEE coaching institutes offer scholarships to meritorious students. These scholarships might be based on their Class 12 scores or the performance of students in the scholarship and talent search exams they conduct. For example:
- Aakash conducts Admission Cum Scholarship Test (ACST), Aakash Talent Quest where top 50 students can get scholarships up to 100%, and Aakash Talent Hunt exam for students of Class 8, 9, and 10.
- Allen Career Institute conducts Allen Champ and Tallentex (ALLEN’s Talent Encouragement Exam) exams which offer scholarships, cash prizes, and mentoring to students who qualify these exams.
- Resonance conducts Student & Talent Reward Test (STaRT) for students of Class 7 to 11. Besides, this institute also offers scholarships on the basis of students’ performance in their board exams, government-sponsored or recognized scholarship or talent reward exams, career-oriented competitive exams, or Resonance National Entrance Test (ResoNET). Past association with Resonance, children of Defense Personnel and NCC certificate can also win you scholarships here.
There are a few coaching institutes that might offer you fee-waivers, discounts, and scholarships if you are from a financially weaker background.
Apply for Need-based Social Initiatives
There are many social initiatives to help talent but underprivileged children, such as:
- Super 30 started in Patna with the sole purpose of selecting 30 meritorious students from economically backward sections of society and groom them for IIT JEE. The program offers free study material, lodging, and food to the selected students too. The success rate of this program is quite high. In 2017, all the Super 30 students managed to crack JEE Advanced exam again. Earlier, all the students had managed to clear the exams in 2008 and 2009.
- Super 30 co-founder Abhyanand parted ways with Anand Kumar and founded another program called Rahmani30 which is based on the similar principles as his former initiative.
- Mr Abhyanand also joined hands with Vedanta Foundation to establish Vedanta Super 30 centres (one in Mumbai and one in Jaipur) and Vedanta National Super 100 centre in New Delhi. These centres select students from poor backgrounds and offer them IIT entrance coaching for free.
- FIITJEE has also started a Fortunate 40 program that offers world-class training to poor but deserving students who want to crack JEE and other competitive exams.
- Sankalp is an initiative by the student club of NIT Jamshedpur that has helped over 2,000 underprivileged students to complete their secondary education. It will soon start coaching facilities for those who want to prepare for engineering and medical entrance exams in India. It was started in 2007 and took inspiration from a similar IIT (ISM) Dhanbad club called Kartavya.
There are several such programs being run across the country these days. You just have to find the one in your area and find a way to get in.
Save on Living Costs
Basic lodging and food facilities in a big city for one year can alone cost over one-two lakh rupees! If you do not have access to a good JEE Main coaching institute near your home, it might be more affordable for you to join a good and trusted online engineering entrance exam coaching provider. You can attend live lectures online and access study material from anywhere, anytime you want. Top IIT JEE coaching institutes in India who are well-known for their offline classes have also started offering online programs these to offer greater flexibility to their students.
Go for Modular Coaching Options
Many students do not need complete coaching packages. They are self-motivated, disciplined, and can learn on their own. They need academic support only for the topics they find difficult. In such cases, it doesn’t make much sense to pay lakhs of rupees for the complete package at once. You can instead go for subject-wise, chapter-wise, or topic-wise study assistance available online these days. A little research into prominent online coaching websites will help you find options where you can buy a study package for a particular topic (which includes recorded video lectures, practice papers, tests, quizzes, revision notes etc.) or its contents separately too. Pick and choose the topics in which you need help and pay only for them. Similarly, you can opt for studying on your own and test your mettle against your peers nationwide from time-to-time by opting for the online All India Test Series for JEE Main and Advanced exams. These tests familiarize you with the online exam formats, give you an approximate assessment of what rank you might expect in the actual JEE Main and Advanced exams based on your concurrent preparation levels, and generated detailed student reports for you. The student reports identify topics in which you are strong, moderately efficient, and in which you are weak and include suggestions on how you can improve yourself.
Ask for Help
Zia K. Abdelnour, President & CEO of Blackhawk Partners Inc, rightly said, “Be strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help, and brave enough to ask for it.” It is not always possible to control everything in your life at all times. It is a sign of strength to understand when you need help, to find out who can help you with the problem you have in hand, and to ask for that help. Your school teacher, a senior, a neighbour who is an IITian now, or an online forum can be your saviours at times. While there are people who might refuse to people, you’ll find that there are ones who go out of their ways to help you too. You may ask them to help you with the topic you are not being able to understand, give you references of a teacher of a coaching class who might volunteer to help you with your JEE preparation or guide you to people who can lend you money until you complete your studies and find a job. Success never comes easy. Do not let Money come in the way of your Education and Success. Write to us in the comment section below to discuss your particular situation with us: