KVPY

This is a culmination of numerous answers on KVPY I have written so far on tips to prepare for KVPY SA stream and get a rank in top 100.

If you are preparing for JEE advanced seriously then you only need a little bit of help in Biology. A good base of class 10 biology will help you score much more. For that you can refer to any reference book of class 10 which you used, which is a bit easy to comprehend than the NCERTs. They usually gave questions in biology which you would have learnt in classes 8 and 9, like where are mangroves in India and so on, But in my year the biology part was quite difficult.

In chemistry they focus on Organic.

Physics is totally like any engineering exam.

For maths,

As per SA paper of 2016, most of the question I found were much easier as compared to JEE maths, almost all the problems require some sort of new thinking or modification of old methods. All the approaches are similar to JEE maths, just that you need to get the question in terms of approachable form. Don’t think of them as maths question, rather approach them as general aptitude based questions. You can practice from past papers to get an idea as to what they are trying to test you for. I can assure you none of the questions were out of syllabus as seen through a JEE aspirant. Maybe as you are in Class 11 you must have not done some of the topics yet.

For the 2 mark questions you would need to spend some time solving them, other than that you are good to go.

Some of the area’s I thought important are(as per 2016 SA paper)

1. Quadratic Equations and applying those fundamentals for higher polynomials(Very important).
2. Geometry : Concepts till class 10th should be more than enough.
3. Some small topics like logarithms, permutation & combination and probability.

Of this most questions were from polynomials, I would recommend you to focus on this and learn how to manipulate the polynomials and work through them.

Usually they don’t go outside class 11 syllabus. So focus on class 11 and remember that the aptitude test also weighs 75% of your final result. The questions that come from the latter part of 11th and 12th which usually includes Organic chemistry and Optics are generally on the easier side, these questions need to be solved for a top 250 rank.

For study material if you want something specific go for Resonance. I used Resonance’s KVPY Package for a week and it really helped me.

First step should be to solve previous year papers, and find out what all areas you need practicing.

Some past year papers can be found on the official site of Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana (KVPY)

For Interview:

There are no specific questions asked.
The first few questions will be General.
Then they will come to your favourite subject and chapters.
You will have to answer few questions on those topics. If the interviewers want they will switch to a different subject and then ask you your favourite chapter in that subject. I was asked questions in all the three subjects PCM.
Just brush up basics and rest depends on you and your interviewers. Be confident on whatever you say, and work with the interviewers and take account of their tips in case you get stuck somewhere.

Just tell them your favorite subject and chapter with care. Because one of my friend took his favorite chapter to be Number theory and he was really grilled on it. As far as I remember I had started with mechanics and was asked questions on center of mass and its real life applications, which were simple enough to solve. If you are conceptually strong in Physics then going with it is a good idea.

If there are any other angles I forgot to mention, feel free to comment them.

Footnotes

[1] Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana (KVPY)