JEE Main Pattern Practice Questions

Marking scheme

Thirty single-correct questions, four options each. A correct answer scores $+4$, a wrong answer scores $-1$, and an unattempted question scores $0$. Over four options a blind guess is worth $\frac{1}{4}(+4) + \frac{3}{4}(-1) = +0.25$ marks, so the arithmetic sits very slightly in favour of guessing rather than against it. The edge is tiny, and it disappears the moment a wrong option looks attractive for a wrong reason — every distractor in this paper was built from a specific mistake a student actually makes. Knock out one option on chemistry you are sure of and the odds move sharply your way.

Time budget

Sixty minutes for the set. Twelve items are single-step — one reagent, one order, one rule — at about a minute each, which is 12 minutes. Thirteen items need a structure written out or a mechanism traced, at about two minutes each, which is 26 minutes. Five items are long, at about three minutes each, which is 15 minutes. That is $12 + 13 + 5 = 30$ questions and $12 + 26 + 15 = 53$ minutes of working, leaving 7 minutes of the hour for a second pass over whatever you flagged.

What the paper tests

The mix is four questions on alkane preparation, physical properties and boiling-point reasoning; four on free-radical halogenation, including product counting and the individual chain steps; three on conformations, one of them on butane; five on addition to alkenes, covering Markovnikov orientation, the peroxide effect, the stereochemistry of halogen addition and carbocation rearrangement; four on oxidation and ozonolysis, two of which run backwards from the cleavage products to the starting alkene; four on alkynes, on acidity, distinguishing tests and hydration; three on aromaticity and Huckel counting, one of them on a heterocyclic lone pair; and three on electrophilic aromatic substitution, its mechanism and directive influence — thirty in all. Five items are statement-based or assertion-reason. The five long ones are Question 3 (four statements to judge separately), Question 5 (counting monochlorination products), Question 7 (a relative-rate percentage), and Questions 18 and 19 (both worked backwards from cleavage products to the alkene).

What you are allowed

Allowed:

• a printed periodic table
• rough paper, and you should use it — write every skeleton out instead of holding it in your head

Not allowed:

• a calculator
• log tables
• any data booklet of bond enthalpies, boiling points or reagent tables

Nothing here needs a calculator. The single item with arithmetic in it, Question 7, reduces to one division you can finish on paper in a few seconds.