Choosing a Coaching Institute
This is one of the biggest dilemmas for any student preparing for IIT JEE. When you just get into class XI, the first thing you do is to choose for a coaching institute. The first obvious choices are generally Kota and Delhi. There are two very important things to remember. 1) It is not the coaching that is going to make a difference, It is you! They wont clear IIT JEE, you will. They can only help you, learning is something you have to do. 2) No coaching is better than bad coaching. The lucrativeness of setting up coaching institutes for IIT JEE because of the money involved a lot of useless coaching institutes have sprung up in every city. It is very important that you don't join a coaching institute just for name. It is far better to do some self study with a few very dedicated and sincere coaching friends than to join these useless coaching institutes.
The first and foremost thing you should do is to find a very good peer group, a set of friends who are ready to give it all for IIT JEE for the next 2 years. It is more essential than joining a good coaching institute. If your school does not give you that opportunity to meet a few such bright students, you could consider a change of school. It could make a huge difference. It is because of this reason that schools like DPS RK Puram, DPS Vasant Kunj churn out huge number of students who clear these competitive exams.
When you are to chose a coaching institute, especially in a smaller town, you should realize that these coaching institutes are run by individuals. There, a teacher is more important that the institute's name. So if very good teachers have left, it is important that you find out where he is teaching. It is very vital that you find some good friends online. There are good websites where you can meet and make friends with genuinely interested students. Such sites include our own, TargetIIT.com.
In a larger city, make sure that you don't join the coaching institute next door just because you did not get admitted to a good one. Even in cities like Calcutta, even large institutes are not very good. Not to say that they are bad in other cities. You should try to meet some of the students who are studying in that particular coaching institute, take feedback from them and then decide. You should also not get blown off by the ads in the newspapers about how many students were selected from a particular coaching institute. The best way is to talk to students at that center.
It is also important that a South Delhi center of a coaching institute may be far better than the one in East Delhi. So any generalization could be fatal.
This whole article is not to intimidate you but to say that join only the best. If you are not able to find one, it is not worth spending so much money on bad coaching. You should rather find a very good and competitive peer group who can help each other.
Good luck.