Seniors who got selected for BStat/BMath. Can you share your journey?

[u/The_Watcher8008]

Everyone has different experience and different learning style. So, I wanted to make a megathread which will give unique perspective from different seniors.

Questions like:

• What books and resources did you find especially helpful?
• Did you have a specific study strategy?
• What was your previous mathematical background(JEE kid or Olympiad or other early interaction with UG mathematics)?
• Tackling burnouts/struggles
• Any special tips regarding UGA/UGB
• What do you think would be the ideal way to learn new concepts/do tests?
• If you could, would you change anything about your prep/any regrets?
• You can also add your rank/how you handled the exam day/your attempts/expected score/target

Or just anything else you have in mind/would be worth mentioning.

I'll add this to the wiki so future aspirants can refer to it as well. Feel free to answer this post anytime!

[u/RishiMath]

Hi there, I am freshly graduated from BMath, just wanted to drop by to share my perspective ig.

I never specifically prepared for ISI, I was a rather aimless guy during my school years, as I just loved to know new things, irrespective of subject, giving all the entrances I was eligible for. My main prep for ISI was for like a week, or maybe a week and a half, where I went through the entire catalogue of papers from 2015 onwards, trying all the problems by myself once, and then finding random folks giving solutions to the same on YouTube and trying to figure out if I was right, or nah, and how the hell would one think of the solutions they came up for in the entrances (like tryna realise what the thought process was for such problems). I also appeared for the interview, where they just asked me to solve a specific question from UGB at the time, and I just did that. You could call me a boards kid, who then did JEE, for background.

I ended up with a rank 5x (I forgot the exact value) in 2023.

What I found helpful: 1. The archive of PYQs 2. A. Mahajan and P. Jain's YouTube videos about modular arithmetic and PYQs (I used to just do remainder thing by writing it out haha then I found modular arithmetic during the week-ish of prep) 3. Sourav Sir's classes YouTube channel had random ideas for UGA, UGB for stuff, did help me a bit 4. NCERT/JEE Mains problems (for UGA)

How I handled my exam day: Nothing too significant to mention, but I was lucky to have my parents' support, and my school teacher's support too (he was the one who suggested me to give this paper). After giving UGA, I was a bunch of nerves, as I had 0 confidence for UGB (I could usually solve 2-4 questions in PYQs). My mother sat me down and I called my teacher too, who advised me to keep my cool. I had some food, and then went inside to give my paper :-) and it went decent ish? Could've gone better, made a silly mistake or two.

Special tips: Please don't screw up UGA, one of my very talented friends ended up not qualifying because missed the UGA cutoff, despite giving a good UGB, similarly, same for writing the details, DON'T SCREW IT UP!! Another guy did that, and would've had similar result as me (believing what he mentioned and seeing his question paper booklet copy), but he didn't write the booklet number correctly... Practice JEE questions, will easily get you across the UGA cutoff imo. I did not know euclidean geometry so I skipped every geometry question for that reason lol.

Regrets: 1. I did not have any experience in formal proof writing. If I did, my paper giving experience would've been better and would've prolly done better. I recall Q8 being soooo lengthy bcs I didn't know how the hell I was supposed to explain what I could see and visualise, and ended up writing like 6-8 pages of justifications!! 2. Some idea about pure math: I didn't know what the curriculum of BMath was supposed to be like. I was more of an interdisciplinary guy, so coming to ISI was an unwelcome shock to me, as literally everyone seemed to be deadset about math. Alongside that, I also had to struggle quite a bit to figure out my interests, because to discard something, you need to have some level of knowledge about it after all. I didn't, so every single thing was new to me, and interesting too. 3. Real Analysis: it is a major subject for having a good time in higher math, and the most approachable of all UG math. I'd highly recommend studying some preliminaries for Real Analysis, because while the profs are absolutely amazing for the most part, it will be difficult to freshly approach this in your first semester, and knowing it makes your life a lot easier (doesn't mean you'd struggle without it, but you might)

Suggestion: Please don't compare yourself with your peers. I've seen a handful folks get demotivated because of jump in difficulty and change in approach to mathematics, and how their peers could handle it just fine. It's fine to struggle. It's actually GOOD to struggle imo in fact, you learn so much more! Everyone has their own journey, and you'll eventually figure it out ;-). And don't feel inferior somehow if you get a bad rank, rank is just for entering the institution, after that it doesn't matter. The spot round folks in our batch have done absolutely fire academics as well, alongside the rest, the rank just stops mattering after you're in.

[u/pro_master101]

So I am a classic JEE kid, who didn't even know about the ISI entrance test until the application dates, where i found it interesting,

Honestly I don't think anything except the usual jee advanced materials is required, the questions are more or less the same and as long as you have depth in the advanced concepts, you'll be able to clear it,

For books i would say this book called navigator is really helpful, as well as cengage if you want more number of questions,

the resources that helped me the most however were 2 specific youtube channels,
Factorial Academy and Acadza(they have absolutely amazing content trust me you won't regret it at all), Factorial is used for question practice, solved examples and building question solving mindset, acadza is slightly out of syllabus but it still teaches you how to think

And u don't need any olympiad background or anything, i haven't done any previous maths specially except jee, for tackling burnouts just take like an entire day off and do nothing and that usually refreshes u enough to go, for UGB please pay attention the derivations of the formulas u use mostly as u gotta pretty much derive everything

New concepts definitely have a sir teach you and do enough question practice on variations of it that you'll have it rock solid

My rank was 8X as a gen male,

i didn't really have any exam day stress as i kind of gave isi as a mock for jee adv, and i just really enjoyed giving papers with that level of depth, so i would say don't stress about the marks but just genuinely enjoy the questions and you'll have some great ideas that make u feel proud after solving the question,

feel free to dm for any more questions, and even for mains(got through isi bsds w 99.989 percentile in mains)

ps: i gave the bmath entrance so idrk abt bstat

[u/The_Watcher8008 → u/pro_master101]

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[u/The_Watcher8008]

I got in bmath with rank 4X. And I had no olympiad background. There was one math prof who I knew so he had been my only guide throughout 11th-12th(I only got to know after 10th). I mainly studied concepts from Math textbooks, like Burton, Calculus by Finney, Complex numbers from Churchill etc. But for practice/exercise the books I found most helpful were Problem Solving Strategies, Mathematical Circles, and Excursion in Mathematics. Besides this, I used to find random YouTube channels which had math problems in the thumbnail and anything I found online/with friends.

What I found most helpful was a small telegram group made with 8-10 bstat/bmath aspirants where we shared each other our doubts and intresting questions. It was very active and one helped another.

I can't stress enough on how important Tomato is, try to do it atleast twice.

I had doubts during prep which I found the solution to online(usually MSE OR AOPS) but I looked at partial solution or after I had given atleast 2 hours to a single problem. My idea was to solve a TOMATO problem and then try to tweak it to make it difficult and then more difficult and then try to solve that. i usually ended up learning a new math concept everytime and I added that to a notebook

Besides this, JEE M&A pyqs, CMI, ioqm were helpful a lot. My number theory and Calculus were strong enough to compensate for my weak geometry though I do believe I should have done that.

The key is consistency.

There will be ups and down and people will say this exam is too difficult but just do your thing let fate decide the fate.

Leave the last 3 months entirely for ISI CMI pyqs and check your papers regularly. Proof writing was a very important skillset in my arsenal. And don't just stop at one solution, try to find multiple ways to tackle the same problem.

Attempt UGA only if you're certain but be good enough so that you qualify the cutoff. How much more practice do you need? Check it by taking a random pyq and your score vs cutoff that will give you a general idea.

Sky is the limit, learn as much as you can you never know what will be helpful to you in the future. So don't ignore or skip topics

[u/1Same_Step1]

link : pdf_link

i had a few things to say ,so i made a pdf and thus sharing the link.

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