Deepika Rao: Self-Study to JEE Main 99 Percentile in Physics

Deepika Rao grew up in Belgaum, a Tier-2 city in Karnataka with no JEE coaching institutes of national standing. Her family could not afford to relocate to Kota or Hyderabad. So Deepika prepared entirely from home — NCERT textbooks, HC Verma, YouTube lectures, and a WhatsApp group with four other self-study aspirants. Her Physics score in JEE Main 2025: 99.4 percentile. This is her story.

Building the Foundation Without a Teacher

Deepika began by watching Physics lecture series by Pradeep Kshetrapal on YouTube — a veteran teacher whose explanations of Mechanics and Electrodynamics she describes as clearer than anything she heard from local teachers. She paired video lectures with HC Verma, reading each article once after the lecture, then solving the in-chapter examples before attempting the exercise problems. "I never moved to the next sub-topic before I could solve three consecutive examples without looking at solutions. That took patience but it meant every concept was solid before I built on it."

Her biggest early challenge was Rotational Motion. She spent three weeks on it — twice the time she planned — because angular momentum was genuinely confusing. "I read five different explanations online. The sixth one, a forum post by a student from IIT Bombay, explained it using a spinning top, and suddenly the conservation law made physical sense." She notes that persisting through confusion until understanding arrives is the non-negotiable skill for self-study Physics. Take a free mock to identify your own confusing sub-topics before they become exam-day weak spots.

Mock Tests and Community Accountability

Every Saturday, Deepika's study group of five self-study aspirants shared their mock test results in a WhatsApp group. They did not just share scores — they shared error logs. "We would send screenshots of the questions we got wrong and discuss why. Sometimes someone else's explanation of why they got a question right showed me a shortcut I had never seen." This peer accountability replaced the teacher feedback loop that coaching students take for granted.

She used online test platforms for three full-length mocks every two weeks from September onwards, increasing to two per week from December. Her score progression: 65 (September) → 82 (October) → 94 (November) → 104 (December) → 112 (January — exam month). Each gain came from targeted error elimination, not from studying new material. For the mock strategy that she refined over this period, see our Physics mock test strategy guide.

The Chapters That Surprised Her

Deepika expected Modern Physics to be hard — it was actually her highest-scoring chapter. "It is conceptual, not computational. Once the Bohr model and photoelectric effect clicked, questions answered themselves." She expected Fluid Mechanics to be easy — it was her weakest chapter. "Bernoulli's equation looks simple, but the application — finding flow rates through weird nozzle shapes — requires visualising 3D flow in 2D diagrams, which is not intuitive." She spent an extra two weeks on Fluid Mechanics in November after a mock revealed 40% accuracy there.

Her advice: never judge a chapter's difficulty from its length. Some of the shortest chapters (Calorimetry, Communication Systems) are the easiest marks. Some of the apparently simple chapters (Fluid Mechanics, Thermodynamics) require more problem-solving intuition than they first appear. For a concise chapter-priority framework, see our important Physics topics for 2026.

The Exam Day Experience

On exam day, Deepika skipped questions she could not solve within 90 seconds on the first read and returned to them later. She finished Section A in 38 minutes, leaving 22 minutes for Section B (integer type). "I had practised this exact sequence in mocks so many times that it was automatic. I never felt the time pressure that students who had not rehearsed the sequence reported." She left the centre not knowing her exact score but knowing every question she had answered was correct. The 99.4 percentile confirmed her instinct. For the full self-study framework that made this possible, see our Physics self-study guide.