How Kiran Sharma Scored 117/120 in JEE Main Physics

In July of her Class 12 year, Kiran Sharma was scoring 58 marks out of 120 in Physics mocks — below the national average for JEE aspirants. By January of the exam year, she walked out of the exam hall with 117. The 59-mark improvement did not come from discovering a secret method. It came from identifying exactly what was broken and fixing it systematically over six months. Here is her story, in her own reconstructed words.

The Diagnosis: What Was Actually Wrong

"I thought my problem was Electrostatics," Kiran says. "I would spend hours on Gauss's Law, re-read the chapter, solve fifty problems, and still get questions wrong in mocks. It took me three months to realise the actual problem was not Electrostatics — it was that I had a shaky grasp of vectors, and without vectors, Electrostatics problems that require superposition were impossible to set up correctly."

This diagnosis — identifying the root cause rather than the symptom — was the turning point. Kiran spent ten days doing nothing but vector decomposition and superposition problems, including the ones from the Kinematics and Mechanics chapters she thought she had mastered. Her Electrostatics score immediately improved when she returned to it. "Fix the foundation, not the surface" is the lesson she carries. If you are stuck in a similar loop, take a free mock test and carefully categorise your Physics errors before deciding what to study.

The Resource Stack and Daily Routine

Kiran's resource stack was minimal: HC Verma for concept building, DC Pandey for problem practice, and a personal error notebook that she called her "Physics diary." The diary had three sections: concepts she had misunderstood, formulae she had misapplied, and careless errors she had made more than twice. She reviewed the diary every Sunday morning before her weekly mock.

Her daily routine was rigidly timed: 6am–7:30am for new chapter study, 4pm–5pm for problem solving, 8pm–9pm for diary review and mock analysis. She studied Physics for exactly 3.5 hours daily — never more, never less. "When I tried to do five hours, the last two hours were low quality and I would carry mistakes forward. 3.5 hours at full attention beats six hours of drifting." For Kiran's favourite resource comparison, see our DC Pandey vs HC Verma breakdown.

The One Habit That Changed Everything

The single practice that Kiran credits most is what she calls "explain-it-back." After finishing every sub-topic in HC Verma, she would close the book and explain the concept aloud to herself as if teaching a student who had never seen it. If she stumbled, she re-read only the part she could not explain and tried again. "You think you understand something until you try to say it in your own words. That gap between thinking-you-know and being-able-to-explain is where Physics marks are lost."

She applied this technique to every chapter, including the ones she felt confident in. It revealed hidden gaps in Rotational Motion (she could not clearly explain why the radius of gyration matters), in Optics (she had memorised the mirror formula but could not derive it), and in Alternating Current (she could calculate impedance but could not explain physically why capacitive and inductive reactances subtract). Fixing these gaps converted 60-mark performance into 117. For the systematic revision approach that worked for her, see our 30-day Physics revision plan.

Kiran's Advice to 2026 Aspirants

"Start your error diary today, not after the next mock. Write down every concept you cannot explain clearly, every formula you had to look up, every careless error you made. Review it weekly. That diary becomes the most personalised study guide you will ever have — better than any coaching module or study material. Physics is not about working harder than everyone else. It is about knowing exactly which 20% of your knowledge is causing 80% of your errors, and eliminating those errors first." For the full preparation structure, see our Physics 100+ strategy guide.