I’ve been quite busy for the past few weeks. As I said before disappearing off the blog, my exams were looming on the horizon. Now they’re in the rear-view mirror. I had 5 of them – Social Studies, English, Maths, Science and French, in the same order. Well, it would be useless to go into a full-out explanation for each one of them, because frankly, who cares? I’m done with them, and you don’t care either. But since I mentioned them, I’ll write one line about each one of them.
Social Studies involved a decent amount of rote learning, and I had a bit of trouble piecing together the answers when I was giving the exam. Geography might will be troublesome. English was a piece of cake. Studying for it involves going through the literature lessons and the writing skill formats. Maths was pretty smooth as well. Might have messed up one small question, can’t be too sure. In science, biology was smooth, and maybe a hiccup or two in physics and chemistry. French is an untold disaster. I’ll take the liberty of saying that I’m not alone in my class in saying this.
So much for the exams. The results are yet to come out, so, there’s a lull before the storm. Let me shift the attention to JSTS or the Junior Science Talent Search. I’m not sure if I mentioned it earlier, but I had given the JSTSE (E stands for Examination), and I cleared the first round. The second round involved an interview, which was today, on Wednesday. Didn’t go to school, the interview was at 2 PM.
Fastforward to the interview. First – Biology. The interviewer was a nice person, and we got along OK. He asked me about my strengths, then about where I was from, then about the Code Warriors. Then he got more into Bio. I messed up quite a few of them. Didn’t know about the Blue Revolution, which phylum mushroom belonged to and about some medicinal plants. In fact it was so bad, that in the end, he asked me how much I expected out of 10. I said I expected 3-4, because, truth be told, it was bad. He told me look at how much he had given me.
It was a 7. I was a bit dazed.
Then was physics. He was interested in how much I liked my school, because the guy before me, Shikhar had been asked a question like that. I said I did. Then he asked me how much I paid. Then he asked me how satisfied(?) I was with paying that much for the school. I said that the returns would be monumental compared with the initial investment. Cheesy, yet true… He then asked me some SI units – length, mass, time, luminosity, current. No probs. Then he asked me to provide the volume of a 1 cm side cube in m3. Easy. Then the difference between velocity and speed.
Chemistry, the interviewer was an slightly aged man. Very slowly closed the file after reading my name, and very slowly took off his glasses and placed them on the folder. Hehe. He asked 3 simple questions. One about why there were so many carbon compounds. Another about fullerenes. And the last about the difference between isotopes and allotropes. The most simple one so far.
On a whole, I see no reason why I shouldn’t get through. Just the Bio might hold me back.


#1 by Apoorv Khatreja on July 17, 2008 - 12:02 am
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Nice to hear about more JSTS scholars. I am one myself. I got rank 35 in Delhi.
My interview too was similar to yours. The chemistry guy actually asked the same questions! Sounds stupid but they were stuck on carbon and its amazing properties 4 years back too!
What is sad is that even after so much work, all you get is a lousy sum of Rs. 500. And a dumb certificate which isn’t recognised at any place that is important. This is depressing.
#2 by The Nut on July 17, 2008 - 4:03 pm
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@Apoorv – Thanks…I didn’t know about the scholarship amount. But anyway, the it’s nice if you crowd up your CV/Application with a lot of stuff!
#3 by madgirl on June 27, 2009 - 9:04 am
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thanx yaar………
pretty helpful! i ws racking my brains on wat 2 do….n it didnt help dat the interview is in between my exams or dat my parents r after me 2 do sumthin 4 jstse………..its just dat the holiday mood is difficult 2 wear off…
but thanx
#4 by Sanuj on January 24, 2010 - 10:17 pm
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Thnaks man, but as JSTSE is coming nearer, it would be helpful if you could elaborate a little on the first round of the exam; as in, what level/type of questions or if you have some sample papers maybe?
Thanks
#5 by The Nut on January 26, 2010 - 11:58 am
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Well, I don’t have any sample papers, but I can tell you that if your school prepares you for the science bit, you need to take the GK bit seriously as well, because that’s where you can get an edge over the competition. The questions aren’t all that tough, but you need to be alert. Best of luck, and feel free to ask me more questions.
#6 by shiv on January 27, 2010 - 6:05 pm
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IS dis paper in d form of MCQ or subjective.???
#7 by The Nut on January 28, 2010 - 5:55 am
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Completely an MCQ
#8 by pranky on January 29, 2010 - 12:57 am
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Which is the best book to prepare for the written exam of JSTS and how to prepare for GK part???
#9 by maadahav on January 29, 2010 - 4:03 pm
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yeah. pls tell from where can we study for the science part and the GK
#10 by Dhruv Gupta on January 29, 2010 - 7:21 pm
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Hi….can u plzz tell me some of d gk questions…?
And wat was d level of the science questions?
#11 by The Nut on January 29, 2010 - 7:27 pm
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@Pranky, Maadahav and Dhruv – GK was rather basic. If you’ve been reading newspapers regularly for a while, you shouldn’t have any problems. In case you need a crash course in GK i.e. you are completely blank, I suggest you pick up an competitive exam GK book. There are such books made for the IAS exam. Since I gave the exam a while back, I forget what the science exams were like. But I can tell you they weren’t that off the school syllabus.
#12 by Sushobhit on January 30, 2010 - 3:27 pm
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thank u 4 ur article….
All i need to kno is that what is the cut off to clear the xam????
i am quite nervous.. hope nt to mess up the whole xam wid these butterflies in my stomach…
#13 by The Nut on January 30, 2010 - 7:51 pm
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@Sushobhit – I don’t know the cutoff. And, assuming you’re arriving at the test centre in a car, with a parent dropping you, I suggest you take some calm (not aggressive) music to sooth your nerves.
#14 by shikhar on January 30, 2010 - 8:31 pm
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tomoro is my jstse can any one tell me the syllabus plz????
#15 by Vaibhav on January 30, 2010 - 11:51 pm
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Hi
shikhar maybe we are in the same schoool or the same batch because i also hav my jstse tommorow
i also need to know the syllabus and am searching for some sample papers
bbye
and well, istudy in BBPS, Pitampura
you?????????????????
#16 by Sushobhit on February 1, 2010 - 11:48 am
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hey!! cn u tell me that do i hav a chance to qualify????
as i messed up all the fill in the blanks in gk n sum more questions too…
bt my general science and maths ws fantastic….
i want to qualify…
#17 by ankita yadav on February 1, 2010 - 6:16 pm
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actually it was very nice paper i think jstse is much simpler than ntse
#18 by Sanuj on February 2, 2010 - 3:20 pm
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Yesszz!!
It went well. Actually our invigilator had some GK stuffed in him. So he helped us!!
And Sci/Maths was mostly 10th.
Btw, how much marks do you have to get to get through…???
#19 by The Nut on February 2, 2010 - 5:35 pm
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@Sushobit – Since you’re science and maths were amazing, and assuming there are no subject-specific cut-offs, I think you can hope for the best.
@Ankita – Yes, but you need to remember that JSTSE is not on the same format as NTSE
@Sanuj – You’re lucky you had such an invigilator. And I don’t know the cut-off marks.