u/Rimuru_Tempest_FSQ

Guys, let me share my experience at the Brilliant Pala JEE Advanced batch. I was a state board student, but I was kind of a topper there—I scored full marks in Plus One and only lost 9 marks in Plus Two (PCM). I did go to entrance coaching (KEAM) during Plus Two at a local institution nearby, but that was a Sunday batch thing. You only got classes twice a week, and I didn't learn much from there. I got an approximately 10k rank in KEAM and 69% in JEE that year.

So, like everyone else aiming for JEE, I too joined Brilliant Pala. I joined the Advanced batch, and many of my friends joined the Mains batch. My hostel and my hostel mates were really nice, so I didn't feel any particular homesickness. The food was kinda meh, but everything else was nice. They allow phones during the first week; after that, it is restricted to 1 hour, 3 days a week. On Sundays, you get half an hour to go outside and buy what you need—that's when we stocked up on snacks for the week. There are 4 shops inside the campus plus a canteen where you can buy things too. Brilliant has some of the best mutta puffs.

Our hostel rent was ₹9,800 (₹3,800 for rent and travel, and ₹6,000 for food, which is ₹200 per day for 30 days). If you opt for the laundry service—which allows 100 clothes a month and collects everything except undergarments twice a week—it costs ₹1,200 more. (Students usually share laundry, by the way: 1 subscription for 2 students or 2 subscriptions for 3 students). Alternatively, you can wash your clothes yourself.

You can either get a tablet or a laptop and have it customized there. No iPads or Macs are allowed. Laptops are really easy to crack; some crack it the same day they get it, or they install a new Windows OS to completely remove the customization. With tablets, there are only loopholes that allow browser access, which get fixed after some time, prompting students to find a new way—this repeats the entire year. Even if you find a way to remove the customization from your tab, don't do it. You will need to write online exams from your devices, and they can detect if a tab is un-customized during an exam. This isn't an issue for laptops, though.

You get an Onam vacation (7 days) followed by a model exam, but there is no Christmas vacation, just a 2-week break after the first session. They finish classes by November 15th. After that, it is only exams, though you can go to the campus for reference.

If you don't get a scholarship, the total expense looks something like this: ₹1.4 lakh for the course fee + ₹1 lakh for 10 months of rent + the cost of your tablet if you don't have one (you can buy it on your own or via Brilliant, but they only accept certain brands) + your monthly expenses, which are usually about ₹1,500 a month (so ₹15k total there). So, the grand total is around ₹2.8 lakh.

We had classes from Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM (and every Saturday towards the end of the course). My hostel was about 5km away from the center. They arrange their own buses, and travel usually takes 15 minutes. There are two 10-minute intervals and a 45-minute lunch break. We had 12 batches named i1 to i12, each containing 80 students. The i11 and i12 batches were for students who scored above 90% last year. They get classes taught by the top faculty for each subject throughout the year, while the other classes have different teachers for each chapter. Aside from those top batches, the numbering means nothing; it is completely random, so it's not like i6 is better than i1 or i2. There were also girls-only batches.

Now, for the real thing. After a few days, you will feel the workload building up. They started online classes in May, so when I joined at the beginning of June, I already had a backlog of 3 chapters—and big ones at that (Ray Optics, for instance, had 19 parts, each being a 2-hour class). We had an exam covering about 7 chapters every Monday. The first week's exam was at the CUSAT level, but after that, all exams featured literal JEE Advanced questions. They include some easy questions, but everyone gets those right, so your rank and grades heavily depend on the Advanced-level questions.

At first, the exams and classes are in sync, so it won't affect you much. But later on, we get different chapters to study at the campus, which means you have to revise those at the hostel PLUS handle online classes at the hostel. It was overwhelming. For example, the Probability chapter had 7 classes of 3 hours each, and they gave us just one week to finish it 😭. Combine that with a weekly Advanced-level exam on 7 chapters and having to watch solution videos for the previous exam. Compared to what I was studying here, they taught me nothing at my state school. Every single chapter felt entirely different from the state syllabus. I also didn't like Chemistry much, which was another hurdle.

No matter how much I studied, I couldn't cover more than 3 or 4 chapters a week. By the end of October, half the syllabus was in my backlog. During this 5-month period, you simply won't get good marks in the exams because you are studying 3 or 4 chapters for a 7-chapter test. Every week brings new chapters, so performing poorly on the last exam doesn't even give you a breather. So all week kashtappett padikkum and you won't get a good mark, and you repeat this cycle for 4 or 5 months. Man, I was completely burnt out by then. Every single time your parents call, you have no good news to share. That is the worst feeling ever. My parents didn't force me to go there; I went on my own, so it felt like I was the one wasting their money. Full mood povum.

Slowly, November arrives, and Brilliant says portion full theern. Meanwhile, there you are with a half-portion backlog, and you don't even recall what you studied a few months prior due to a lack of revision. In total, you only truly know about ⅓ of the syllabus. Brilliant's own faculty and mentors tell you not to concentrate on the weekly exams as they won't matter for your final exam, but how could I not care? That was the only progress metric I had to share with my parents and peers.

Don't think I didn't like studying or anything like that. I didn't get my state marks by doing nothing. The problem is that up until Plus Two, I got instant results when I studied. If I studied for an exam, I got good results in that exam itself. But that didn't happen here. It was effort with no results for 5 months straight, and I couldn't handle it. When I came here, I thought I could manage it, but that feeling of not improving even after everything you do is absolute hell.

Somehow, I managed to finish over half the syllabus by December, but after that, the full-chapter model exams started. I scored below 120 on every exam, and that was the breaking point for me. Pina maduth. I started getting sleepy when studying and couldn't focus at all. I was like, enthina padichatt padichalum mark kitilalo. The real exam arrived, and I got the worst possible shift. The paper focused heavily on the chapters I hadn't studied and excluded the chapters I was good at—there were no questions on circuits, modern physics, or YDSE. I got 78% on that shift. Yes, only 78%. And you know what? It was the exact same story for almost ¾ of the students in my hostel. Out of 140 of us, only 5 scored above 99% in that session. Some of us improved in the second session—I managed to get 88%. And that was the end of it. I vacated the hostel and am currently back home. Finally, my advice to my juniors: if you are from the state syllabus, the Advanced batch is nothing like what we studied before. Try watching Physics Wallah one-shot videos and practice some hard JEE Main questions. If you can confidently finish 5 chapters per week, go for it! There is still one month left before all offline classes start, so pick your stance before then. Don't be like me; you really need a strict plan and constant revision. I am sure I would have gotten a better percentile if I had found at least some motivation from the weekly exams. I think the Mains batch would have been better for me, as I didn't gain much from the Advanced batch and would have saved me 70k. However, I heard from friends that the Mains batch hostels and hostel mates weren't as good. Both batches have their pros and cons. I can only speak for the Advanced batch since that's where I was.

There are about 6k repeaters from all institutions across Kerala, and about 1.5k integrated Plus Two students. These 7.5k students stand at the top of the KEAM rank list. Only the top 700 will get into IITs or NITs, and a few into BITS (₹40 lakh), Manipal (₹28 lakh), or VIT (₹18 lakh). After that, you need to be ranked under 500 to get into CET, and under 1500 to get into TKM or MEC (for CSE, of course). So, ¾ of repeaters won't even get into MEC for CSE. However, I can guarantee that if you repeat, you will definitely get a better college than local private KEAM colleges, along with some really valuable connections. But I can't guarantee the same for NITs or even MEC. I know it's a long-aah post, but if you have any doubts, feel free to ask!